 }})
As to Jeff George we can do a ton of those with Dan but that's certainly one of them.
I get your point about Bruce but i don't take it that literally. Agree at first Bruce didn't have the power but Shanny did. Ultimately he did have the power and the rest is history.
I think Bruce running operations was the death knell for Dan and in retrospect am glad it happened. Dan thought that being more hands off and letting a "football" guy run the operation was a change that fans and his critics should embrace. The problem was Bruce wasn't a football guy, he was a money guy with political skills. Can you succeed that way -- yeah if you hire stud underlings but Bruce-Dan didn't roll that way for the most part.
But I think the kicker with Bruce is how cheap he was with everything. The stadium-facilities started falling apart. They became cheap with contracts as to coaches-players, etc. Yet Bruce was as smug as Dan -- he celebrated mediocrity, wasn't fan friendly, on and on. Just like Dan he had his head in the sand. Dan found a more polished-political version of himself and they crashed the Titanic together.
The organization became even more smug and sleazy than the pre-Bruce years -- yet they were boring as hell (The Vinny era was bad but not as bad -- they won more in the Vinny era, sold more tickets, and were more entertaining even though they were incompetent) and Bruce-Dan couldn't pull an elite player whether it was FA or the draft if their life depended on it. No stars typically. More sleaze. More smugness. And eventually it all crashed under Bruce including the attendance sinking like a rock, and losing their national signifcance. In short Bruce put in motion everything that needed to be done to crash the brand for good.
