Jack Kent Cooke

After touring Washington, Alexandria and Laurel, Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke appears ready to pull up stakes and take his traveling circus of lawyers, public relations flacks and architects on the road again. The octogenarian billionaire says he has all but given up on his plan to build a football stadium in Laurel in Anne Arundel County and wonders aloud if the perfect place wouldn't be Prince George's County.The news isn't completely surprising. Mr. Cooke has been battling public opposition in Laurel for more than a year, and last fall Anne Arundel's Administrative Hearing Officer Robert C. Wilcox refused to grant the zoning waiver Mr. Cooke needed to build the stadium at the Laurel Race Course site.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - To get a taste of the strange twists and turns charity has taken in the aftermath of Sept. 11, tag along on Anne Hohlweck's tortured quest for assistance. One scholarship fund, called Power of America, never returned her call seeking help with college tuition for her daughter, Robin, whose father died in the World Trade Center. Another charity sent $5,000, no questions asked, and told her to pass it on if she didn't need it. A third, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, asked for so much personal financial information that she balked.

Laurel residents who opposed Jack Kent Cooke's dream of a new stadium for his Redskins won, in part, because the rich and powerful football team owner had to play by the rules. Anne Arundel officials subjected him to the same zoning process as anyone else. He didn't get special treatment, even though some politicians quietly coveted the tax windfall a gleaming, expensive stadium would have brought.Mr. Cooke has now moved on to Prince George's County, where the County Council is considering his request for a boatload of favors designed to whisk him through the review process in less time and with less public scrutiny than ordinary mortals.

IT'S AN ODD day when the powers that be actually long for the good old days of the late Jack Kent Cooke. Remember that for years, Cooke and Maryland officials battled over his efforts to build a new football stadium here. Cooke, then in his late 70s and early 80s, could be blustery and unpredictable, always egotistical. But Maryland officials also considered him a man of his word. In 1996, Cooke and his army of lobbyists negotiated a deal in which the state was to spend about $70 million to help Cooke build his stadium in Landover.

ONLY ONCE DID success elude mega-millionaire Jack Kent Cooke.He struck it rich with radio and TV stations, newspapers and cable television. He reaped rewards from a large racing stable and Kentucky horse-breeding farm, a fabled West Coast sports arena, pro basketball and hockey teams and, of course, the Washington Redskins. But "The Squire" never achieved his final dream: Attending the fall opening of his $200 million football stadium in Landover that now is almost certain to bear his name.

Is there any doubt that, in deference to Jack Kent Cooke, the National Football League wants to keep a football team out of Baltimore? So, in deference to Baltimore, let's keep Jack Kenmands therapy, and this is the best I can think of. Let's turn the lawyers loose to keep Old Jack from building his obnoxious stadium. (The Redskins are appealing an initial denial of their proposal to the Anne Arundel County Board of Appeals, so now's the time to make your feelings known.) Let's play the way the NFL does, too -- dirty.

Jack Kent Cooke, the courtly but iron-willed owner of the Washington Redskins, who amassed a vast fortune from a humble start peddling encyclopedias in his native Canada, died yesterday. He was 84.Paramedics were called to Cooke's Washington residence at 10: 45 a.m. yesterday, and they rushed him to George Washington University Hospital. He died about 30 minutes after arrival and was pronounced dead at 12: 09 p.m., hospital spokeswoman Merle Goldberg said.A statement from the team attributed the death to congestive heart failure resulting from heart disease.

Since Jack Kent Cooke hasn't yet been able to cut a deal to build a stadium for his Washington Redskins in either Virginia or Maryland, he should exercise his best business option and head for Los Angeles. The void there is immense since two teams vacated the No. 2 TV market in the country, the Rams defecting to St. Louis and the Raiders returning to Oakland.Los Angeles is devoid of pro football for the first time in more than 50 years. Before the Rams settled there from Cleveland in 1946, Los Angeles had a team in the Pacific Coast League called the Bulldogs.

LANDOVER -- In one corner of the Ravens' locker room, 325-pound defensive tackle Tony Siragusa was doing his little victory dance. In another area, defensive tackle Larry Webster was talking about some of the negative publicity the team had gotten in the past three weeks. And then there was rookie outside linebacker Peter Boulware, hoping that the team's latest victory had captured the hearts of Baltimore and possibly created a major turnaround.In an ugly and bizarre contest dominated by Bam Morris' career-best, 176-yard rushing effort, the Ravens defeated an old Baltimore rival in the Washington Redskins, 20-17, yesterday before an announced crowd of 75,067 (and several thousand unannounced no-shows)

IT'S AN ODD day when the powers that be actually long for the good old days of the late Jack Kent Cooke. Remember that for years, Cooke and Maryland officials battled over his efforts to build a new football stadium here. Cooke, then in his late 70s and early 80s, could be blustery and unpredictable, always egotistical. But Maryland officials also considered him a man of his word. In 1996, Cooke and his army of lobbyists negotiated a deal in which the state was to spend about $70 million to help Cooke build his stadium in Landover.

RALJON -- This hamlet of 81,000 part-time inhabitants will disappear next week, peeled from local history like an old decal from a car window.The neighbors say good riddance.Daniel Snyder, new owner of the Washington Redskins football team, is restoring Raljon to Landover.Born in the spring of 1996 on 200 acres of Prince George's County farmland next to the Capital Beltway, Raljon was the football kingdom of Jack Kent Cooke, the mercurial and powerful owner of the Redskins. He stitched together the names of sons Ralph and John in naming the turf beneath his stadium and the vast expanses of blacktop surrounding it.The U.S. Postal Service even bestowed its blessing -- not only accepting the name Raljon, but granting Cooke's request for an exclusive four-digit extension to the Landover ZIP code.

CRYSTAL CITY, Va. -- The Americans worked out and then were to watch some foreign films together -- of German women playing soccer.The Germans took yesterday off, some sleeping into the afternoon. They had a date for dinner across the Potomac River and exploring Georgetown.Thus two teams prepared for tonight's 7 o'clock Women's World Cup quarterfinal at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium in Landover between the favored, 3-0-0 U.S. team and Germany, generally considered Europe's second best despite its hardly fearsome 1-0-2 group-play finish.

Orioles majority owner Peter Angelos said yesterday he will consider bidding for the Washington Redskins again but wouldn't be likely to match the $800 million offer that won the first round of bidding. Angelos, who said he dropped out of the first round at $625 million, said that an $800 million bid would leave the club strapped for cash once the debt service was paid on the team each year. "Our review of the numbers of all the details pertinent to the franchise did not establish that kind of a value [$800 million]

Howard Milstein, the New York real estate developer who was attempting to buy the Washington Redskins with a debt-laden $800 million bid, withdrew his offer yesterday, paving the way for current owner John Kent Cooke to get a second chance to retain the team.Facing almost certain rejection at a special National Football League owners' meeting in Atlanta after the league's powerful finance committee split 3-3-1 on his offer, Milstein withdrew his bid and promised not to sue the league.The $800 million would have been the highest price for an American sports franchise, surpassing the $530 million that Alfred Lerner paid for the NFL's expansion Cleveland Browns.

It's Dallas week in Washington and no one seems to much care.The 2-2 Cowboys still resemble the Cowboys, but the Redskins are definitely not the Redskins of old as they prepare for today's 1 p.m. game at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium.The Redskins are off to a horrendous 0-4 start that has shaken the entire organization and eroded a lot of coach Norv Turner's support.Even the staunchest Turner backer, Redskins president John Kent Cooke, has cooled a lot in his long-standing support for the embattled coach.

An investor is apparently close to buying the stake in Maryland's major thoroughbred tracks now held by the estate of Jack Kent Cooke.The investor, described by sources familiar with the transaction as a small New York investment banking firm with no gaming experience, is in final negotiations for the Cooke shares in Laurel Park and Pimlico.A deal could come in the next week or two, sources said.The white knight buyer would be a relief both to the state's racing industry, which had feared a casino would buy the shares, and Joseph A. De Francis, majority owner of the tracks, who would avoid having a hostile minority partner.

In a move that could boost Maryland's football fortunes in both the NFL and the General Assembly, Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke has apparently agreed to support the shift of the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore.Mr. Cooke has notified Gov. Parris N. Glendening that the Redskins, who as recently as November vehemently opposed the move of the Browns to Baltimore, would vote for it Friday when the National Football League owners take up the issue at their meeting in Chicago, State House sources said yesterday.

LIQUOR, LIKE BLUE smoke and mirrors, is a staple of politics.Liquor licenses, that is. Licenses for bars, for restaurants, for clubs, for package stores and even for mega-million-dollar sports stadiums -- all are grist for the petty mills of self- aggrandizement, patronage and jockeying for position.Last week, for example, at Prince George's County's House delegation meeting, an application from Jack Kent Cooke was on the agenda.Cooke wants a license that would allow him to serve alcoholic beverages at his new Redskins Stadium in Landover seven days a week.

Final record: 8-7-1No playoffs: The Redskins narrowly missed the playoffs for a second straight season because of some home-field upsets. Last year it was a 37-34 loss to the Arizona Cardinals at RFK Stadium; this season there were defeats by the Ravens (20-17) and St. Louis Rams (23-20) at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium.News: Coach Norv Turner said yesterday he doesn't believe holdout defensive tackle Sean Gilbert will come to contract terms with Washington. Gilbert sat out the entire season when the Redskins would not raise their offer from $3.5 million to $4 million a year.

As the Washington Redskins prepare for a final playoff stand today against the Philadelphia Eagles, not one player has even mentioned the advantage of playing this crucial game at Jack Kent Cooke Stadium.In past seasons, the Redskins always relied on a mystique and the rocking stands of old RFK Stadium to help bail them out of tough situations.Now all that appears to be missing at the new $170 million stadium in Landover, and the additional 25,000 fans who show up each week seem to be more sophisticated and are considered a wine-and-cheese crowd.