Dan Snyder is a piece of shit, but should not be forced to sell his team

In my life, I have always tried to pride myself on being a man of strong convictions and principles. I believe your principles should be applied ubiquitously in life. Meaning, if a time comes when someone you are not a fan of is wronged, then you should stand up and support that person even if you don't like them. I believe that if you compromise your principles when it is convenient, then you are a person without any principles at all.

I am no fan of Dan Snyder. Granted, I don't know a ton about him, but everything I've heard about him in bits and pieces has not been positive. So my opinion on him has always been "cautiously negative." I don't loathe the guy, but I tend to believe one has a poor reputation for a reason. Dan Snyder has given the public a plethora of reasons to doubt his character as a human being. His insistence on keeping a racially insensitive team name, when many people openly supported changing the name, including in his own fan base. Failing to stand by his own player, Trent Williams, who was diagnosed with cancer, allowing a rift between one of the team's best players and the organization. Allowing discord to grow behind closed doors among executives and staffers that created for a toxic working environment. Not to mention many other rumored issues. And now, the latest information comes via The Washington Post, where as many as 15 women have come forward alleging sexual harassment and improprieties in the Redskins organization. The indictments on Snyder just keep piling.

Dan Snyder himself was not accused in this report. He is guilty of allowing toxic behavior to run roughshod in his organization, and for him that is a terrible look that just adds to his ever-growing negative reputation. However, in my opinion, these should not be grounds to have a sports franchise that he legally purchased and owns taken away from him. I will never support morality policing. Ever. Under any circumstance. Dan Snyder's culpability in the wrongdoing of his staffers is both subjective and arbitrary. I think almost everyone will agree that is makes him look incompetent at best, and a slimeball at worst, and that the owner of a team is responsible for those who work under them. But, that's from a moral perspective, not a legal one. And being incompetent and a slimeball is not a crime. Nowhere is it said that to own a sports team, you have to be a great and respected human being. If Snyder himself committed sexual improprieties or was proven to have actively encouraged others to engage in harassment or inappropriate behavior, then that would be a different story, and I would be first in line to support his ouster, but as of now he was not alleged to have done so. As this story continues to unfold, he, as of now, is basically accused of gross incompetence and/or negligence. Which in my opinion doesn't meet the NFL bylaws for owner removal of directly engaging in detrimental conduct themselves.

In this country, we always have separated morality from legality. It's a necessity. For Dan Snyder to have his team stripped away from him because he did something morally wrong, is morality policing to a T. It sets a terribly dangerous precedent that I want absolutely no part of in society and in the sports world. Where every time a sports owner does or says something people deem immoral, they can just have their sports teams they legally purchased taken away from them. Especially when morality is an ever-sliding scale that seems to shift based on whatever the vocal outrage mob decides to take up arms against on any given day. We simply cannot allow a reality to exist where the general public, and a small portion of it at that, gets to decide matters of legal precedent based on moral standards. Ever. Especially when in today's absurd social climate, things deemed morally inappropriate by some in the vocal minority include: using the term "master bedroom," saying men can't get pregnant, and starting a restaurant that cooks food not typically associated with the owner's personal ethnicity.

Think that's hyperbolic and it would never get to that point? Maybe. But then again, I never thought I'd see the day where someone lost their job for cracking their knuckles out their car window, a soccer player be released for something their wife posted on social media, or major media publications would call for the banning of the Star Spangled Banner and celebration of the 4th of July. Once you open the door to where morality and subjectivity rule the day, in the age of social media, it's now those with the loudest voices, and not the soundest, who will decide what is right and wrong based on their personal ethics. Forgive me for not even wanting the remote possibility of living in an age where some crazy scenario like the public pressure of an angry mob scaring a league and its owners into forcing the sale of a team for an owner's wife being photographed in public wearing the jersey of a player who said something bad on social media 10 years prior, is something that is no longer considered crazy.

Two things can be true: Dan Snyder is likely a piece of shit who doesn't deserve the privilege of owning an NFL team, but there is no precedent here to allow morality to dictate legality. And until he or any other owner commits a crime or violates a legal statute agreed upon in NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL's bylaws, then I will support that person's rights to continue owning their respected teams, while condemning their actions on a moral level. Most of all, I feel fucking gross even remotely having to "defend" Dan Snyder in any way.