This past Sunday my local paper (that’s The Washington Post) ran a story under the headline “A training camp deal that went south.” Front page of the Sports section, and it couldn’t have been better.

The piece, written by hit-and-miss author Liz Clarke, points to the “deal” the Redskins struck five years ago with the City of Richmond to hold their preseason training camp in Virginia’s capital. What sounded like a good idea at the time…

I visited Richmond a few weeks ago, at the beginning of the mania that surrounds every preseason, and yes, the atmosphere was congenial, of course. It’s always fun until the bill comes. According to Clarke (who scores a touchdown with this article), not only is the City of Richmond paying the ‘Skins upwards of $500,000 a year for the privilege of hosting, the team has made good on only about 10% of the money it “borrowed” from Richmond to build that flashy new $10 million training facility. Sidenote: the Redskins are the NFL’s fifth-most valuable franchise, estimated to be worth just under $3 billion. That’s billion with a “b.”

Redskins economists point to increased tax revenue and charitable contributions in an attempt to balance the scales. It’s funny because this is what the government usually does to justify spending public money on sports, not the other way around. It seems here that public officials in Richmond have embraced the Vanguard way of thinking about such deals (that tax dollars spent on sports is useless and unfair) but are now stuck. Clarke notes decaying infrastructure in Richmond City Public Schools (which should benefit from such a deal, no?), a cheap journalistic trick I’ll let slide because in this case I agree. Schools with decrepit facilities while the city funds millionaire athletes. Sounds like a bad comic book storyline on display.

Amusing sidenotes include the revelation that under the deal, the ‘Skins are not allowed to play scrimmages against other teams in other training facilities. There are football and fan reasons for undertaking such exhibitions. Can’t do it under the current deal though. Good one, guys. Reminds me of one of the more ridiculous stories still discussed in Washington circles: that shortly after owner Dan Snyder bought the team he decided to charge fans to come to preseason games. Distasteful but not stupid, right? Well, when you give the tickets away you can sort of vet who’s getting them, no? But when people are buying them they can sort of go to anyone, right? Guess who figured this out and started coming to ‘Skins practices? Try “scouts” (spies) from other teams in the league. Whoops.

That one’s in the “what sounded like a good idea” file as well.

File’s getting pretty thick.