"Burgundy & old pain" - Cooke recalls sting of fumbling away Redskins to Snyder

[madinmaryland]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/20/AR2009102003616.html?hpid=artslot

The last surviving son leaned forward and put his elbows on the stained mahogany partner desk, the same Canadian Victorian antique at which George Allen and Joe Gibbs used to sit across from his father. Built in the 1920s, the desk was moved 10 years ago from a spacious corner office in Ashburn into a muted-yellow cottage at the family estate just outside Middleburg.

On the roof of the cottage is a bow-and-arrow-toting Indian, a rusted-steel weather vane gifted to his father by George Preston Marshall, the original owner of the Washington Redskins. Same with the cigar-store Indian beside the door, "which I think George Halas gave to Marshall," John Kent Cooke said.

"At least that's the story dad always told me," Cooke said, sizing up the kitschy figure.

The first football snapped at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium -- now FedEx Field -- is on a bookshelf, above the chess set depicting the Redskins and Denver Broncos before Super Bowl XXII. Needlepoint coasters, each representing a 50-year arc of the team's helmet design, line the desk. Behind Cooke, through the sunlit window, lies the panorama of majestic green fields. The winery next door is teeming with Bordeaux grapes.

Personal wealth. Priceless mementos. Unending nostalgia.

Jack's son has it all -- all except the team.

When Jack Kent Cooke, the Redskins' flamboyant owner with three Super Bowl championships, died of heart failure in April 1997 at 84, his son was left to engage in an acrimonious auction that ended with Daniel M. Snyder, then a 34-year-old businessman, emerging with the Redskins.

..snip

[trumad]

1. Almost as bad as Jones fumbling away Johnson

[Kingofalldems]

2. It was a sad day when that viper got the team