Wise for Dan Snyder to Hire Terry Bateman?

Was it a smart move for Dan Snyder to hire a longtime business associate, Terry Bateman, to help Ron Rivera run his front office?

On Monday, the Washington NFL team promoted Terry Bateman to be its executive vice president and chief marketing officer, giving the organization its first front office addition since the firing of President Bruce Allen.

This will be Bateman’s third stint with the team, as he has had a long-standing relationship with team owner Dan Snyder that goes back to 1994. He was the president of Snyder Communications marketing services from 1994-1997, and has been a close confidant to the Washington owner ever since.

Bateman will now oversee the team overall business strategy, including supervising the team’s rebrand and selection of a name, its sponsoring and marketing strategies, as well as its broadcast media operations.

Considering the relationship with Bateman, you can see the connection and overall vision of why Snyder would hire him. Over the last year and half, Snyder has lost several close friends within the building, including Allen, media personality Larry Michael, and longtime friend Larry Hess who had been with the organization for 17 years. He also has a strained relationship with minority owner Fred Smith, CEO of FedEx, who Snyder has long looked to for guidance.

Snyder is now on a lonely island in Ashburn, and needs someone he can trust fully to rebuild his organization. But was it the right decision? I’d argue no.

The team is supposedly in a rebirth, and is expected to go through a change in culture. There is a stigma around the organization that Snyder can be condescending and hard-headed, and that he engages in cronyism. The hiring of Bateman further pushes that narrative.

Snyder would have been better served if he had a clean break with any businessman or marketer that had previous connections to the organization. He should have reached out to NFL officials in New York, and coordinated a list of clients that were vetted and approved. This would have provided true evidence that he was ready to try new things, and do whatever it takes to improve the organization.

Hiring Bateman, although comfortable for Snyder, is poor optics and comes off as business as usual in Ashburn. And as we have seen over the last 20 years, that’s more like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. 

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George Carmi is an editor/contributing writer to FullPressCoverage.com or @FPC_Redskins. He is a native of the DC metropolitan area and is an avid fan of DC Sports. A former journalism major at the University of Maryland, his focus is now in public education. His earliest memories consist of Darrell Green, "The Posse" and Super Bowl XXVI. Follow him on twitter @Gcarmi21