So how did the DC government get rid of a free stadium paid for by Jack Kent Cooke?

"It speaks volumes to what we can't do," said D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), opining for many who view the loss of the team as a metaphor for a diminished city. "We dropped the ball, and now we're trying to blame everyone else, which is the common theme."

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Which raises another question: Why are the Redskins leaving? Or, to better capture the aggrieved tone of the debate in the District: Who lost the Redskins?

Some might view their move as inevitable, another scrap of urban America yanked loose by the migration to the suburbs. In 1961, the District was ringed by a loose collection of small towns. Today, the region is a vast megalopolis, peopled in part by the children of former D.C. residents.

"It symbolizes the suburbanization of the D.C. metropolitan area," said Jamin Raskin, a professor and dean at American University. The loss of the team "comes as a blow to municipal self-esteem, but this is really just a move to another part of the Redskins territory."

Still, District officials often thought they were on the cusp of retaining the Super Bowl champions. In late 1987, Cooke began lobbying for a larger, more modern home, with 78,000 seats and a raft of lucrative luxury boxes. His first choice, he said repeatedly, was to erect a new stadium alongside the old one. And he set the first of many deadlines for D.C. officials to get him a deal.

Mayor Barry embraced the challenge. "The Redskins are ours," he proclaimed in 1988. "We're going to keep them."

Barry's optimism appeared justified. Prince George's and Montgomery County officials expressed no interest in the team, and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments said the team should remain in the District. In September 1988, Barry told business leaders that he and Cooke had "reached an agreement."

Weeks later, the deal evaporated, establishing a years-long pattern. Cooke would flirt with Virginia and Baltimore and suburban Maryland -- and each time return to the District. In August 1990, The Washington Post reported that the District and Cooke had "all but finalized an agreement." A year later, Cooke was quoted as saying a deal with the District was "almost a given."

It never happened. From Cooke's point of view, the negotiations presented a never-ending series of hurdles. The land he desired belonged to the federal government, and acquiring it required time-consuming permits, approvals and environmental impact statements. Discussions over easements, roads and new highway ramps inevitably turned on the availability of federal highway dollars because the fiscally besieged District had little wiggle room.

In the middle of it all came Barry's political sabbatical, when he was arrested, convicted and replaced by Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly.

The District, too, has reason to doubt Cooke's true intent. The city put more than $100 million on the table. And time and again, negotiators for Barry and Kelly found themselves within inches of an agreement, only to hear Cooke raise another seemingly insignificant objection, from the timing of an announcement to what publications he would use to advertise for building contractors.

"We kept asking ourselves, `If Mr. Cooke really wants this deal, why is it sitting there after all these years without a spade of dirt turned?' " recalled lawyer Langley Shook, who represented Kelly in stadium negotiations. "We thought we were moving closer, but it was always halfway to the goal line."

Then there was the infamous, alleged grope, where the billionaire entrepreneur (whose $40 million divorce settlement once graced the Guiness Book of World Records) is supposed to have ended a negotiating session by patting Kelly's rear. True or false, reports of the incident did nothing for the atmospherics of stadium talks.

"A billionaire bully," Kelly called Cooke months later, after negotiations broke down completely.

"He's a difficult man," Evans said, "But the bottom line is that our government couldn't make it happen. It's a huge, huge loss."