Former Washington Commanders TE Chris Cooley declines team's invite to ceremony
The Washington Commanders will be celebrating the franchise’s 90th anniversary with at least one less honoree than they’d hoped.
On Sunday, the team is having a ceremony including 10 former players that will be added to its greatest 90 players list. Former Commanders tight end Chris Cooley declined the invitation.
“At this point, I don’t have a lot of desire to be involved with Washington Commanders,” he said on The Kevin Sheehan Show, "I don’t have any interest in doing this."
He was selected to two Pro Bowls and played his entire nine-year NFL career from 2004-12 for Washington before its rebrand.
“I’m very appreciative of being voted in, and I’m very appreciative of my time while I was there,” Cooley said.
While he chose not to further elaborate, he did joke about Commanders fans wearing paper bags that read "sell the team" during a game against the Chicago Bears. "That was me" he said on the podcast.
The Commanders’ controversial context
Cooley made a point to add that “it’s not the team name that does it,” alluding to the mixed reactions surrounding the Commanders’ 2022 name change.
His comments were part of a longer discussion about Colts team owner Jim Irsay’s recent comments regarding Commanders team owner Dan Snyder.
Irsay said on Tuesday at an NFL owners meeting that 'there's merit to remove' Snyder from Commanders ownership, and he believes that the league’s owners potentially have enough votes to make that happen.
Irsay is the first owner to publicly mention Snyder’s possible removal, a cause that has seemed to gain momentum after a striking ESPN report in which Snyder recently told an associate he has enough information to “blow up” several NFL owners, the league office and commissioner Roger Goodell.
Snyder currently faces investigations by the NFL as well as a congressional committee for issues surrounding workplace misconduct and sexual harassment.
Financial issues are also abound for Washington. Aside from allegations of the Commanders withholding ticket revenue, a Commanders season ticket holder recently received their $14,000 raffle prize from the team two weeks late, only to have the check bounce. The Commanders blamed it on a “bank error” and announced that they wired the fan his money on Wednesday. Cooley concluded his comments with empathy for fans.
“I feel for all of the fans for where they’re at and I still appreciate the people that are still fans, that are still diehards” he said.
Clearly, even they are not exempt from the dysfunction that seems to ooze from every aspect of the franchise.
