Sausage making

If the Discovery Channel series How It's Made ever did an episode about sausage, I'd quickly turn the channel. There's an old saying about sausage making—you never want to see it if you ever want to enjoy eating sausage again.

A massive operation that's very similar to making sausage has been going on in and around Redskins Park for the past few weeks—the search for a new head coach.

It hasn't been pretty.

Two high-profile, high-priced coordinators, thought to be the keys to keeping the legacy of Joe Gibbs II alive, were summarily dismissed. The once—and perhaps still—leading candidate for the job reportedly complained to an associate that he felt manipulated. There was an explosive negative reaction from all corners of Redskins Nation to the possibility of that top candidate getting the job.

The process has been done backwards with the coordinators being signed before the head man has been hired. Days, even weeks passed without communication from the principals making the decision to those most affected by it, the team's assistant coaches. And so on.

What makes matters worse is that those responsible for making the sausage are trying to do so in secret. That, of course, has the media digging for information and details.

The snapshots of the process that are getting the most attention are of the more unseemly parts of the process.

The details of long hours of fruitful conversation with prospective coaches don't get leaked out because such topics make for boring stories in the papers and bad fodder for talk radio. Smear campaigns, accusations of disloyalty, rejection, disagreements and the like get put under the bright spotlight because such things drive circulation, create ratings spikes and generate website traffic.

Many of those watching the process have been repulsed, annoyed, discouraged, and even angered by it. It's difficult to blame them, given what has come out about it.

The best advice, however, is to wait until the process is complete and then judge what comes out on the other end. Perhaps it will be a nice, well-seasoned Italian sausage. Maybe it will be a bland but decent German wurst. Better yet, wait until the fall, perhaps even until Christmas time, to pass final judgment.