Hey, Josh Harris: Here’s Your Crash Course in NFL Ownership

Conor Orr lays out his version of a five-step plan to help the new Commanders leader with his transition to an exclusive club. Any questions? Call the commissioner.

Josh, welcome to your first day as an NFL owner. You’ll find your ownership packet over here, which contains all relevant HR information, including your code of conduct. LOL, of course we’re kidding. We get these made up as gags. You get to do almost anything you want. What’s that? Oh, yeah, especially the stuff you punish players for. It’s wild here, man. You’re going to love it.

Inside your nuclear fallout-safe bunker here at the Arizona Biltmore, you’ll find all the modern amenities required for life as an NFL owner. Here’s your very own “Yes Man” team president, complete with the default switch preventing them from overriding your desire to walk into the war room on draft night, dismiss the work of dozens of people who haven’t seen their families in months and draft the quarterback with the face tattoo because he reminds your nephew of Post Malone. Here is your Macallan 1926 IV drip station, and here is your key to access a bank of regenerative blood.

I’m your personal assistant and image consultant. Behind the scenes, I’ve crafted some of the greatest hits of public-facing ownership through the years, including that face you’re going to make when confronted by a reporter or, say a fan wearing one of your team’s jerseys in that brief second of daylight you’ll see between the air purifying secret tunnel and your luxury box (yes, exactly, the face that looks like you’re holding a newborn possum, that painful look that combines awe for something unfamiliar mixed with a pronounced hybrid of confusion and horror).

Jerry Jones and three of his other owners—I mean the commissioner, has asked me here today to share with you his five-step plan for your first few months in office. Please sit back on this sofa constructed entirely of the 116 remaining Kakapo in the world and enjoy. Let us know if you have any questions.

NFL owners unanimously approved the $6.05 billion sale of the Commanders from Dan Snyder to a group led by Harris, who also owns the 76ers.

Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports

1. Hand over the rest of that blackmail

This shouldn’t be difficult since your current facilities are falling down anyway. But we’re going to need you to get a crew in there as soon as humanly possible to sweep the place. Check the walls for anything Mr. Snyder may have accumulated that could negatively impact the league. You know how skilled we are at circumnavigating bad public relations, after all.

Thumb drives, printouts of old AOL Instant Messenger logs you may have acquired belonging to a young Roger Goodell (SCREEN NAME: RUSH4LIFE2112), polaroids of other owners in troubling costumes. What’s that? Tax stuff? Yeah, anyone’s taxes. None of that is going to be good.

While you’re at it, you should check some of the old answering machines. The blank videotapes. Unmarked envelopes. Sheaths for medieval weaponry. Obviously the safe below the German Shepherd pen.

That’s it. Put all of that stuff right over here on Roger’s desk. Yep. Good. Good.

2. Summon enough heat lightning to melt FedEx Field

We’ll show you how to use our weather manipulator on the weekend retreat by the way. But, obviously, we’re hoping for a new megastadium to be built here in the next few months. Ha. Ha. It should be SUPER difficult to find misallocated funds to build a massive, unnecessary structure in a place such as Washington D.C. right?

Anyway, we’re thinking of something tasteful right behind the Lincoln Memorial. Something emblazoned in gold with a massive rotating hog on the top. Our goal is to have NFL Licensed™ slot machines twirling on a video board so large that no one will ever notice what is taking place on the field again. Hard to complain about whether or not that was a first down if you didn’t see it, right?

But in all seriousness, this stadium needs to celebrate its surrounding area. The beautiful architecture. The iconic skyline. Take a look at what we did in East Rutherford, New Jersey, for example. Set against the most beautiful stretch of building and industry in North America, we built a completely claustrophobic looking cheese grater next to an old horse racing track that locks people into traffic circles for nightmarishly long periods of time. *Kiss noise* is the epitome of the high life.

3. Change that name again

Yes, as it turns out, when we asked Daniel Snyder to rebrand, he ended up just hiring the guy who made those Tapout shirts and promised us everything was taken care of. Apparently, plenty of soldiers don’t like the idea of NFL players who haven’t served in the military dressing up like soldiers on Sunday and calling themselves something named after a rank of significance in their very difficult and demanding field. Whoops! We should also avoid calling ourselves the cops, firefighters, teachers or nurses, either, according to our latest focus group material.

Anyway, it’s up to you whether you want to pay the paltry sum of money that would free some of the actually compelling nicknames from trademark court. That would involve an actual personal financial investment which, you know, we’re not trying to make a habit of around here.

Feel free to play around with the Clip art software. I’m sure the generic Madden template for “Sharks” is available somewhere on Google Images.

4. Re-sign a castaway franchise legend

We’re all about storybook endings here at the NFL. The reign of Snyder was something all of us could have obviously ended a long time ago but decided to wait until the last minute to solve via the most honorable way possible: congressional hearings and leaking things to television partners.

Anyway, it’s time to give something back to the people who suffered through substandard play, roster management and facility decline. It’s time to bring back one of the absolute legends who prowled the field during the Snyder era who was turned away unceremoniously. I’m talking about the real heavy hitters of Wasington football over the past decade. You know, the big stars, the guys who transcend the sport.

Just look back at this list of amazing Commanders. Ah, I mean, these guys. Phew. Take your pick. So many big names to choose from. Just imagine how good this franchise could have been if they could have held on to, mmmm, any of them really.

I—uhh—well, I think Kirk Cousins would do it. You should bring back Kirk Cousins. People liked Kirk Cousins, right?

5. Offer lawsuit free season ticket packages

We want the new Commanders experience to feel safe and fan friendly. That’s why we’re imploring you to offer certain fans in a partially obstructed section of the stadium tickets they can purchase free from the possibility of being sued out of existence.

This was obviously a fear of Commanders fans for quite some time. Not anymore! There’s a new sheriff in town! I remember that the warmest moments of my own childhood were hearing my parents tell trembling commoners that they generously decided to settle the lawsuit in exchange for merely bankrupting a decades-old family business.

Now that you have a crash course in NFL owner behavior, you can start to squash fan rebellion and unhappiness in less destructive ways. See a critical sign you don’t like? Have the person vanish from existence like an ousted warlord. Someone tweeting about cringeworthy pro shop offerings or geographically incorrect signage? We’ll give Mark Zuckerberg a call and create a power outage on Threads.

We are looking forward to your great contributions. This is a proud group of people as exclusive, immovable and personally infallible as the Supreme Court, another institution in which nothing seedy or controversial could ever take place.

Any questions? [Finish with joke here]