The Washington Redskins sent out a press release on Friday morning stating that they will officially begin the review process for the teams name. This review is meant to bring up discussions about the name, and could end with them eventually changing it, amidst the recent outcries.
In the statement, team owner Dan Snyder said that this process “allows the team to take into account not only the proud tradition and history of the franchise, but also inpt from our alumni, the organization, sponsors, the NFL, and the local community it is proud to represent on and off the field.”
While this announcement doesn’t mean that the name will officially be changing, it is a major step in that direction. There can not be a change without a review first.
Head coach Ron Rivera also stated that “this issue is of personal importance to me and I look forward fo working closely with Dan Snyder to make sure we continue the mission of honoring and supporting Native Americans and our Military.”
The suggestion box is open — not in the team’s offices — for what could be the next nickname for Washington’s NFL team.
In the land of presidents, there is precedent for changing the inappropriate nickname of a professional sports team
Dan Snyder has referred to his Washington football team’s handle as a “badge of honor.” Changing it to something that doesn’t inspire ire racist overtones, and controversy would be honorable. All he has to do is look at what the late Abe Pollin did with the nickname of his NBA team.
For decades, the Washington NBA team wore the handle “Bullets.” Pollin became uncomfortable with it for a number of reasons, including the assassination of his friend, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The Washington Post wrote about other issues/reasons that sparked the change from to Wizards:
Sports Illustrated wrote that Pollin “didn’t want to contribute to Washington’s reputation for violent crime.” USA Today said it was because “gun violence is at epidemic level in far too many parts of this country.” The New York Times said Pollin changed the name “after his friend Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s prime minister, was shot to death.” The AP said it was “because of the violent connotation.” The New York Post said it was “in reaction to violent crime in Washington.” Mike Wise said it was “to honor the memory of his friend, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated.” Mike Lee said it was “after his friend, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was gunned down.” Christine Brennan said it was because Pollin “was so concerned about violence in the D.C. streets.” The Dallas Morning News said it was “in deference to the high gun violence rate in Washington.”
Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
Team management addressed its history when two of its players were suspended for incidents involving guns in the locker room last decade.
The NBA announced today that they have suspended Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton for the remainder of the season. We understand and fully support their decision.
Both players violated D.C. laws and NBA rules by bringing guns into the locker room. Their poor judgment has also violated the trust of our fans and stands in contrast to everything Abe Pollin stood for throughout his life. It is widely known that Mr. Pollin took the extraordinary step of changing the team name from “Bullets” to “Wizards” in 1997 precisely to express his abhorrence of gun violence in our community. We hope that this negative situation can produce something positive by serving as a reminder that gun violence is a serious issue.
HEATHER HALL/AFP via Getty Images
More from the Post:
Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in November of 1995. And yet the reporting on a possible name change began in May, shortly after the Bullets ended another miserable season …
Washington Bullets owner Abe Pollin said yesterday that he’ll decide this summer whether to change the name of his team out of sensitivity to the number of gun-related deaths in the area. He indicated no final decision has been made, but his comments suggest he’s leaning toward dropping the name the franchise has carried for the past 31 years, including the past 22 in Washington.
“We’re considering that,” Pollin said. “We haven’t made a final decision. In the old days, our motto was Faster than a speeding Bullet.’ That’s how we were envisioned in Baltimore. Today the connotation is a little different. It’s connected with so many horrible things that people do with guns and bullets. I don’t know. We’re considering it. We’ll make a decision this summer.”
The New York Times’ George Vecsey spoke to Pollin, who discussed the topic at length:
“I’ve thought about it for 31 years….Bullets connote killing, violence, death,” Pollin said. “Our slogan used to be, ‘Faster than a speeding bullet.’ That is no longer appropriate.”
The nickname has a glorious history in professional basketball. The original Baltimore Bullets (1947-54) echoed, alliteratively, the tradition of the Old Shot Tower, still standing in Baltimore, a 234-foot brick shaft built in 1828, where molten lead was cooled in tanks of water, producing bullets for war and peace.
But the American love of guns has long since got out of hand. Children have guns. Children are being killed by bullets. The current basketball team was named on June 4, 1963, after the Packers/Zephyrs moved from Chicago to Baltimore. I can remember going to games in downtown Baltimore and hearing the sound effects of a rifle being fired when Earl (the Pearl) Monroe performed the dipsey-doo.
“I’ve had people say I was changing the name just to make money from a new nickname, new colors, a new logo,” Pollin said. “I find that distasteful. It’s not a question of money.”…
“It was a peace gathering. He was about to leave, but he walked back again. They were rejoicing for peace. I walked those steps. I realized it was time to get this done.”
And getting around to how the name change was accomplished:
The ensuing contest was indeed run through Boston Market, and the restaurant reportedly received 500,000 name suggestions involving around 3,000 separate names …
The finalists–chosen by a panel that included Pollin, Susan O’Malley, George Michael, Juwan Howard and others–were Sea Dogs, Express, Stallions, Dragons and Wizards. Fans had three weeks to vote among the five finalists via a 1-900 line; the $1 cost was given to anti-violence efforts.
Now, there is a collective movement for social change and to end racial injustice. Snyder isn’t being singled out. He would be stepping up by changing the nickname from its current racist association.
SHAWN THEW/AFP via Getty Images
The late, great Chris Chase, a USA Today sports columnist and founding member of its For The Win, wrote about options in 2014. The debate is percolating, more like boiling over, as major corporations such as FedEx and Nike have thrown their weight in the discussion seeking change.
Chase loved the name Washington Football Club. He described the fit this way:
The Washington Football Club would be a trailblazing name for a major American sports team. All other teams have nicknames. Washington would be the first to go that route. It sounds cool, even if it has the stuffy pretentiousness of soccer. It also doesn’t alienate the many fans who will be upset at the change (and there will be many), the fans who have spent thousands of dollars over the past few decades accumulating Redskins gear. In Snyder’s eyes, it could allow the name to live on, if only in absentia.
What else could Snyder use his creative team to come up with for the present and future? Heck, he could open the ideas to the fan base, too, and come up with some kind of clever contest. The winner gets lifetime season ticket or maybe a season’s worth of tickets.
Here are some other possibilities:
Warriors, which is trending and trendy. It’s also not unique as the basketball team in Northern California will tell you.
Renegades
Redtails
Whale
Walrus
Citizens
Power
Wolverines
Presidents
Monuments
Washingtonians
Hogs
Defenders
Dragons
The Wish
The last one is probably what many hope Snyder grants to end this controversy once and for all.
New reports are surfacing that Nike has removed all Redskins-related gear from their NFL merchandise website, Nike.com. The website has every team listed on the left side of the page, and the Redskins are the lone team missing from that list.
In a separate report from ESPN’s Josina Anderson, stating that team owner Dan Snyder had ‘no official plans’ to address the name change, a picture of the Nike website was featured, with no results coming up for the search ‘Redskins.’
As of tonight I'm told Dan Snyder has no official plans to address the renewed call to change t/ Washington team name. While internally they say no other owner has contributed more to the Native American community monetarily &/w time pressure is rising for him to address publicly pic.twitter.com/HQd9CdIGAG
— IG: JosinaAnderson (@JosinaAnderson) July 3, 2020
Nike has not released an official statement declaring that Washington changes its team name, but the message seems to be loud and clear.
As pressure for Dan Snyder to change the Redskins name has increased, the owner reportedly has no intention of making a statement.
As of tonight I'm told Dan Snyder has no official plans to address the renewed call to change t/ Washington team name. While internally they say no other owner has contributed more to the Native American community monetarily &/w time pressure is rising for him to address publicly pic.twitter.com/HQd9CdIGAG
— IG: JosinaAnderson (@JosinaAnderson) July 3, 2020
The calls for Dan Snyder and the Washington Redskins to change their name have gotten extremely loud over the last couple of days, but a new report from ESPN’s Josina Anderson states that Snyder does not plan on addressing any of these any time soon.
According to Anderson, Snyder “has no official plans to address the renewed call to change t/ Washington team name.”
The biggest call for a name change came on Thursday afternoon when FedEx, one of the Redskins biggest sponsors, released a statement saying that they had requested the team change its name going forward. The request from FedEx came a day after several investment firms and shareholders encouraged FedEx, Nike, and PepsiCo to terminate their relationship with the team unless a change to the name was made.
While losing the FedEx relationship would be huge — Washington plays at FedEx Field, and the CEO of FedEx is a minority owner of the Redskins — the pressure to change the name would only grow as more companies threaten to end their relationship with the team going forward. The feeling around Washington circles is that FedEx was simply the first domino to fall, and several more might follow.
Snyder might not have any plans to address the name change at the moment, but you can almost guarantee that if another big-name sponsor threatens to pull out unless changes are made, he’d start to consider it a bit more. Stay tuned going forward.
FedEx has asked Dan Snyder to change the nickname of the Washington football team.
The pressure is ramping up on Washington team owner Dan Snyder to change the nickname of his football team. Snyder hasn’t shown any indication he will budge, — calling the nickname a “badge of honor” — but there now are a lot of dollars that could evaporate from his business model.
And now, the team sponsor of the stadium the Washington team plays in wants the nickname to change, too:
A FedEx spokesperson releasing this statement, per WJLA :
We have communicated to the team in Washington our request that they change the team name.
FedEx holds the naming rights to the home stadium, a deal that pays Washington around $8 million per year and runs through 2025, according to reports. FedEx President and CEO Frederick Smith owns a minority stake in the Redskins.
This comes on the heels of major companies looking to pull their dollars and association with the team. The team name is widely held to be a racist slur against Native Americans.
EXCLUSIVE | Three separate letters signed by 87 investment firms and shareholders asked Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo to terminate their business relationships with the Redskins unless the team agrees to change its controversial name. https://t.co/kB8ghs0PZV
Per Adweek’s Mary Emily O’Hara, 87 different shareholders and investment firms, whose financial involvement totals more than $620 billion in assets, have asked Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo to end their business relationships with the Washington Redskins due to the racist nature of the team’s nickname.
While team owner Dan Snyder has said that he will never change the team’s name, citing franchise tradition, he has been pressured for years by different groups to do so. Now, the pressure is financial in a way it hasn’t been before.
Letters from the investors to the three major brands include representation from First Peoples Worldwide, Oneida Nation Trust Enrollment Committee, Trillium Asset Management, LLC Boston Common Asset Management, LLC Boston Trust Walden Mercy Investment Services and First Affirmative Financial Network. About 80 other firms and trusts have added their names.
Snyder hopes to build a new stadium on the site of RFK Stadium, where the team used to play. Those plans received a jolt, per the Washington Post:
There is no scenario in which Daniel Snyder will be able to build a new Washington Redskins stadium on the federally owned RFK Stadium site unless he changes the team’s name.
That was the unequivocal message from Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives; D.C. Deputy Mayor John Falcicchio; and U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, in separate telephone interviews with The Washington Post on Wednesday.
“I call on Dan Snyder once again to face that reality, since he does still desperately want to be in the nation’s capital,” Norton said. “He has got a problem he can’t get around — and he particularly can’t get around it today, after the George Floyd killing.”
Dungy, who is now an NFL Analyst with NBC, says that he won’t say the name ‘Redskins’ on-air as his form of protests for a name change.
While some big money around the nation is calling on the Washington Redskins to change their name, a few NFL personalities are speaking up about the issue as well, detailing how they’ve dealt with the name over the years, and what they wish to happen going forward.
One of the most notable people to do so is NFL analyst and former NFL head coach Tony Dungy. In an interview with The Undefeated, Dungy stated that he won’t say the name ‘Redskins’ on air anymore.
“It’s not hard to change the name,” Dungy said. “When I’m on the air, I try to just refer to them as Washington. I think it’s appropriate. If the team doesn’t want to change, the least I can do is try not to use it.”
While Dungy and some other people have voiced their opinion on the matter, it will likely take a bigger statement to get Dan Snyder to go through with a name change. It was released on Wednesday that numerous investors have reportedly urged Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo to end their relationships with the franchise unless the name is changed.
Several government officials have also reportedly denied Washington from potentially moving to RFK stadium in the future if they remain the Redskins.
“You can say, ‘This has been a historic name and we’ve used it for this team for X number of years, but in this day and age, it’s offensive to some people, so we’re going to change it.’ I don’t think that’s hard,” Dungy said.
Years ago, Snyder declared that he would “NEVER” change the Redskins name, but the pressure to do so has increased exponentially. We’ll see if he reconsiders that declaration going forward.
The Redskins are looking for a site to build a new stadium in the near future, and the RFK site in D.C. was a top option for Dan Snyder.
Dan Snyder and many fans of the Washington Redskins may not wish to change their team name, but there are growing pressures to do so.
Not only was it announced that several big-name sponsors are being encouraged to cut ties with the Redskins over their name, but there is also a report, via The Washington Post, that Washington may not be able to get the stadium deal that they wish for in D.C. unless the mascot changes as well.
There is no scenario in which Daniel Snyder will be able to build a new Washington Redskins stadium on the federally owned RFK Stadium site unless he changes the team’s name.
That was the unequivocal message from Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives; D.C. Deputy Mayor John Falcicchio; and U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, in separate telephone interviews with The Washington Post on Wednesday.
“I call on Dan Snyder once again to face that reality, since he does still desperately want to be in the nation’s capital,” Norton said. “He has got a problem he can’t get around — and he particularly can’t get around it today, after the George Floyd killing.”
Said Falcicchio: “There is no viable path, locally or federally, for the Washington football team to return to Washington, D.C., without first changing the team name.”
Of course, there are other sites where Washington could build their new stadium, be it somewhere in Maryland, or even in Richmond, VA. However, if the calls for a name change increase and more and more advertisers are pressured to cut ties with the Redskins over their name, it could become increasingly hard for Snyder to find a new home. It seems that the ball is well in motion now, and there doesn’t seem to be many things that can stop it at this point.
Investment firms, shareholders ask Nike, FedEx, and PepsiCo to terminate relationships with the Redskins unless they agree to change name.
There is increasing pressure for the Washington Redskins to change their name to anything but the Redksins.
According to a report from Adweek, investment firms and shareholders worth a collective $620 billion have asked Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo to terminate their business relationships with the Washington Redskins unless the team agrees to change its name.
On Friday, three separate letters signed by 87 investment firms and shareholders worth a collective $620 billion asked Nike, FedEx and PepsiCo to terminate their business relationships with the NFL’s Washington Redskins unless the team agrees to change its controversial name.
The report also said that there was a belief among many that, though this fight for the Redskins to change their name for decades, this time might be different with the push for racial equality so strong in America right now.
Dan Snyder may have chosen not to listen to many calls in the past about needing to change the name, but if FedEx, Nike, and PepsiCo all threaten to terminate their partnerships with the team, you can almost guarantee that Snyder will start to think twice about his “NEVER” statement.
Washington D.C. Mayor Bowser said Friday that it is past time to change the mascot of the Redskins to something that doesn’t offend people.
In a time when much of the American nation is forced to step back and take a look at some of their practices and historic landmarks that likely cause offense to people of color in our nation, the mayor of Washington D.C. is calling on the Washington Redskins to change their name.
The ‘Redskins’ name has long been controversial, as it acts as a slang term for Native American Indians that inhabited our lands long before Christopher Columbus traveled to America and practiced genocide to take over the area and settle it for his own. Now the Washington football team treats that slang term as a mascot, and for decades they have been ridiculed for it.
“I think it’s past time for the team to deal with what offends so many people and this is a great franchise with a great history that’s beloved in Washington and it deserves a name that reflects the affection that we’ve built for the team”
We’ve seen teams change names and mascots in the past, mainly with the Houston Oilers becoming the Titans. In years past, team owner Dan Snyder has not seemed willing to make such a change, but we will see if the invigorated culture changes his mind at all.
Should the 2020 season go on without fans, many NFL teams are preparing for a huge financial hit.
The NFL has a brutal pill to swallow over the next couple of months. They will have to come to terms with the fact that the 2020 season will likely be played without fans in the stadiums due to the novel coronavirus, and for the owners, that’s going to present an incredibly large financial burden.
While coaches and players are trying to get their minds wrapped around the idea of playing in empty stadiums, the decision-makers in a franchise have a bit more to lose on that front. When you consider the high volume of ticket sales, the cost of a ticket, and the concession income each week in an NFL season, the number starts to get pretty big. For the Washington Redskins, if they are to play the 2020 season without fans, the team will lose approximately $205 million in stadium revenue, according to Forbes Magazine, which is the seventh most in the NFL.
The NFL announced earlier this spring that they would be set to lose $5.5 billion if the season were to go on without spectators, and some teams will feel the hit more than others. While gameday revenue is based on ticket sales, concessions, sponsors, parking and team store sales, teams like the Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots make a lot more in that department than the Cincinnati Bengals or Los Angeles Chargers.
So while Ron Rivera and his players are finding a way to take advantage of life without fans in the near future, Dan Snyder may be trying to find a way to ease the pain of losing out on over $200 million. That’s not a problem I want to have.
