The Redskins made my daughter cry...Not cool

Going through a divorce, as I am with my formerly beloved Washington Redskins, is a painful experience.

It's impossible to shut the feelings down completely, but you feel angry and betrayed.

You may even want revenge.

For the first time in my life, I found myself this past Sunday actually rooting for the other team to win.  Perhaps like a loved one who is an alcoholic, you realize that the only way that they can right themselves is for them to hit "rock bottom."

So, playing against a team without a victory for the 6th week in a row (an NFL record) and one that had only one two out of its previous 30 games (Kansas City), I reckoned that a loss would possibly helpl the incompetent and inept leadership recognize that they "needed help."

Note: I am talking purely from a football perspective since somehow they have increased the value of the team from a financial perspective.

On Saturday night,Paco, Tonka, and I were discussing our plans for Sunday and thanks to my "eat in the den only if we are watching football rule," they are now big fans.

I explained that the Redskins were playing the Chiefs and the kids were asking who I wanted to win.

"I don't know," I said. "I really don't know."

At which point, Tonka literally started cyring (not sobs, but definitely tears) and said, "It's not fun rooting for the Redksins....they ALWAYS LOSE!!"

I've said for a few years that I don't care for which team my kids root, but I want them to appreciate the game of football...we're on our way...and that being a Redskins fan was too difficult. Now, they were causing my little girl to cry. That was the last straw.

I'm in a phase in life where I tend to look at the historical era into which I was born and analyze it so that I don't just assume "this is the way it is and has always been."

If you are between 30 and 40 and grew up in the DC area (as a fan of the Redskins), your formative/adolescent years took place at the moment in history where the team was at is absolute zenith.  

Four Super Bowls (3 championships) in 10 years, a contender pretty much every year, and dominating teams. Clearly, the glory days.

And, this happened when you were old enough to be aware/conscious of what happened, but young enough that you didn't have the real responsibilites of life (and thus could devote a lot of time to cultivating this passion.)

So, it's particularly tough to rip out this core part of my developmental DNA. You can play with my emotions, but once you start making my daughter cry?

My grandfather, Poppy, introduced me to the game and helped grow my love for Redskins and I thought once or twice  that "it's a good thing he's dead b/c this would have killed him. (He would have appreciated this joke, trust me...and it is a joke!),

Like the stock market and great empires, what goes up must come down and now, the Redskins are like the rest of Washington, a city of bailouts (great article here, btw).

And the kids of Washington have grown up and come of age during the past 10 years, culminating in this most recent ignominy?

They are crying themselves to sleep now...and won't be in the stands in the future.