FMIA: Snyder’s Long Goodbye, and the First-Round Case for Bijan Robinson

I’m going to top the column today with news that’ll make sports fans in the Washington area weep tears of joy. They’re already weeping. Now, I know the Caps won the Stanley Cup in 2018, and that’s fantastic, and the Mystics won the WNBA a year later, and Nationals shocked the Astros to win the World Series in 2019. Yuge, all of them. But the pro football team in Washington being on the verge of NOT being owned by Daniel Snyder is cause for the biggest parade in the city this century.

On the verge being the operative wording. This thing’s not done.

When NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the leader of the prospective new-owner group, Josh Harris, spoke on Wednesday, no one knew exactly what the topic was. But as one ownership source told me over the weekend, “Calls like that would be Harris saying he had a tentative deal with Snyder.” I believe that’s likely, and word spread through ownership circles that, basically, Ding dong, the witch is dead. Snyder’s selling!

The terms, reportedly, were the Harris-Mitchell Rales group paying $6.05 billion for the team and Snyder, the most reviled owner in the NFL, disappearing. By the weekend, the NFL was no-commenting up a storm, refusing to acknowledge even whether Snyder had communicated to the league that he had a tentative deal or had forwarded the requisite paperwork so the league could begin to process the deal. Adam Schefter reported that it wasn’t a done deal, that Canadian billionaire Steve Apostolopoulos was still in the mix. And the strangest part: It was widely reported Snyder’s deal with the Harris-Rales group was “non-exclusive,” meaning he retained the ability to barter with other potential buyers.

The hang-ups could rest on maximizing the sales price, of course. Or