NFL owners will meet Tuesday in lower Manhattan for their annual fall meeting in New York, and even though it’s not on the agenda, expect there to be plenty of discussion about the owner of -Washington Commander Dan Snyder.
There is a renewed focus on Snyder in light of Thursday’s ESPN report where sources told reporters that Snyder has stated that he has “dirt” on several fellow NFL owners. Snyder will not be at the meetings, and Washington will be represented there by his wife, Tanya, who has been running day-to-day operations since last July.
The agenda itself is pretty smooth, but there is time for a closed session. In that session, which is scheduled for 5:40 p.m. ET on Tuesday, only one representative from each team will be in the room to discuss (what is intended to be) confidential matters. It’s there those conversations can be had about Snyder.
“I don’t know that other owners even take his calls [anymore],” one team executive said of Snyder to CBS Sports.
Snyder cannot represent the team at league meetings until he meets with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, multiple league sources told CBS Sports. This is disputed by Snyder’s lawyers, who said in a statement obtained by CBS Sports that he is “no longer under any NFL restrictions related to his involvement with the team.” The meeting with Goodell would probably not take place before the conclusion of the two investigations by Mary Jo White about Snyder – one about alleged financial improprieties and another about alleged sexual harassment.
My fellow owners have not yet been moved to vote for Snyder. The findings from investigator Beth Wilkinson’s 2021 toxic workplace culture report have not been released, and the league has no plans to release it. No NFL owner has ever been voted out, and it would take 24 votes to remove Snyder.
The removal of an owner would be unprecedented in today’s sporting world. Jerry Richardson put the Panthers up for sale in 2017 before a serious investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and racist language ever began. The owner of the Clippers, Donald Sterling, was banned for life from the NBA, and the team was sold after his wife removed him from the trust. Suns owner Robert Sarver put his team up for sale last month after a one-year suspension and among sponsors and minority owners asking him to sell. Kelly Loeffler, who previously owned the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, sold the team after clashing with the players over the Black Lives Matter movement.
Snyder, whose penchant for hiring private investigators was revealed during the House Oversight Committee’s inquiry into workplace culture, is reportedly threatening a lawsuit against fellow owners. . Megan Imbert, a former Washington staffer who had a dossier placed on her by Snyder’s lawyers, wrote on Twitter on Thursday that the idea that Snyder would not do this for fellow owners was “comic.”
Another former employee in Washington told CBS Sports that she has been harboring suspicions that Snyder “has dirt on people”.
“It never made sense to me that he could remain an owner for this long,” said the former employee. “I already knew he had a history of looking for people and just using everything against people. The only way it would make sense was if he had dirt on people.”
Snyder’s attorneys John Brownlee and Stuart Nash, partners at Holland & Knight, said the allegations against Snyder are “categorically untrue.”
“Dan has never hired or authorized a private investigator to investigate the owner of any other NFL franchise, nor has he hired anyone to do so on his behalf,” the attorneys said in a statement obtained by CBS Sports. “He has no ‘dossiers’ collected on any owners.”
One proposal in the ESPN report involves withholding financial aid to Snyder to build a new stadium. The NFL usually approves debt limit exemptions for owners when they build new stadiums, and there is usually a $200 million loan that the league gives for stadium funds.
“The league’s only real tool is to starve itself of funds to build a stadium,” a team president told ESPN.
But one high-ranking club executive disagreed. “This is not a legitimate strategy,” the source told CBS Sports. After all, Snyder has shown he’s comfortable operating his team in the league’s worst stadium for years.
Also in that closed session, the owners plan to discuss the $790 million relocation settlement St. Louis as first reported by The Athletic. A league source tells CBS Sports that a “reasonable conclusion” has essentially been determined on how the settlement will be paid, which likely means Rams owner Stan Kroenke will pick up a good portion of the tab and split the rest. among the other 31 teams.
Another owner who will be absent from the meeting is Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. Ross, who was suspended in August for a game integrity violation for his team tampering of Tom Brady and Sean Payton, will have his suspension lifted on October 17, a day before the meetings. But the terms of his suspension dictate that he still cannot “attend any League meeting prior to” the major owners’ meeting in the spring of 2023. Ross was also barred from entering Dolphins team facilities from August until Monday.
League sources indicated that Dolphins CEO Tom Garfinkel will represent the team Tuesday in meetings.
