It’s About Time Rfk Stadium Gets Demolished

The polite thing to do would be to pen a flowing tribute, I suppose.

The proper thing would be to eulogize RFK Stadium as one of the NFL’s hallowed cathedrals, or maybe to relive some fond RFK memories, or to quote Shakespeare and get misty eyed and blubber about how much I’m going to miss the old place.

But do I look crazy or something?

RFK Stadium was named for the late Robert F. Kennedy, and I have long wondered why the Kennedy estate did not immediately sue.

The place is a toilet, a toilet with 55,600 ill-fitting seats. It is a dank cavern of narrow hallways and uncomfortable perches, all looking out over a playing field where the notion of healthy, green grass has failed to exist.

Nevertheless, it is time to say goodbye to the old oval. The Redskins’ final game at RFK will come today with a measure of poetic justice, some would say - against the hated Cowboys. A halftime ceremony will bring back 33 of the franchise’s all-time greats. Names like Sonny Jurgensen and Billy Kilmer, John Riggins and Art Monk.

Fans will stand and weep. Someone will play the music from “Field of Dreams,” and with any luck, the old eyesore will become an instant corn field.

It will be emotional. A friend at The Washington Post said he has heard it will resemble the classic 1991 send-off that the Baltimore Orioles gave old Memorial Stadium.

Said Redskins coach Norv Turner: “This game is an important football game to everyone in the Redskins organization. Everyone who has been a Redskins fan. We’re going to have ex-players there. It’s a game that is awfully important to all of us.

“I think our team will be ready to play.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the emotional tracks, Barry Switzer, poet laureate of Valley Ranch, has said that he will treat the day as a bye week. Emmitt Smith, Mark Tuinei and Troy Aikman are not expected to play, and those that do will probably wish they hadn’t.

Switzer is right to rest his playoff-bound best players. He has bigger mullets to fry than the Redskins.

But the particulars of the day - the fans, the ceremonies, the possibility of seeing Jurgensen try to squeeze into a Washington uniform - have all the makings of an afternoon that Cowboys fans will want to soon forget.

Let us review the Cowboys’ anticipated role in the festivities. They get to play the role of the Washington Generals. Just play along, laugh on cue, and no one will get hurt.

Personally, it was alarming to see in the releases that RFK Stadium was only 35 years old. Whew. Talk about the Zsa Zsa Gabor of stadiums.

It was outdated almost from birth. Owner Jack Kent Cooke talked to The Washington Times about the time he first bought a share of the Redskins.

“To be truthful,” Cooke said, “I was a little disappointed in the stadium.”

That was 1961. The place hasn’t been improved much since.

People in the first 10 or 15 rows behind the benches have to stand the entire game just to see. And with senators and diplomats regularly gracing the premises, it remains a mystery how anyone, even in 1961, could not have foreseen the need for a VIP box or two.

Annoyances abound. The rust. The foot-long rats. The concourses, painted like one of Mayor Barry’s bad crack trips.

There is one elevator at RFK, and it has provided most of the good memories. Over the years, we’ve shared rides with Tip O’Neill, Ted Kennedy, George Will, Ted Koppel and Jesse Jackson. It reminds me to tell you that RFK was built on federally owned land. And you thought Three Mile Island was a mistake.

In short, RFK Stadium was like a welding class gone horribly wrong.

I’d weep at its passing, but in the RFK press box, there’s not enough room to cry.