Washington isn’t changing its nickname, unfortunately

Posted on by

May 14, 2024

by Steve Thomas

A few days ago, Washington head coach Dan Quinn was seen wearing a team shirt with a feather on it that looked like a callback to the original, true team nickname, Redskins:

I’m told that this t-shirt generated some significant chatter on social media – apparently, some believe that this is some sort of tiny, small signal that ownership may be getting ready to cave on the horrible “Commanders” nickname and either return to “Redskins” or go with something else instead.

Allow me to dispel that notion.  The t-shirt doesn’t mean anything.  At most, it’s a minor callback to better days.

Look, nobody hates the name “Commanders” more than me.  It’s a terrible nickname in every respect.  A “commander” is either a mid-grade Naval officer or the singular leader of a military organization.  Therefore, the team is either named after a rank that is in the middle the of the food chain, or it is calling everyone in the building a “commander”.   The latter, of  course, would mean that nobody really is in charge.  Put aside the fact that nothing was wrong with the “Redskins” name for a moment, and that it never should have been discarded in the first place, particularly by a guy who never really loved the team and merely did it for personal financial reasons.  Many other quality names were discussed among the fan base and the media that would’ve been a hit: Warriors, Redtails, Hogs, Red Hogs, and others.  The name “Commanders” was barely mentioned, for a reason.  Many of those other proposed nicknames would have been embraced to a much larger extent than “Commanders” has been.

However, Washington’s ownership hasn’t given a single sign that it is seriously considering changing the name.   Our friend Rick Snider reported that there’s nothing to the name change rumors, saying “it’s not on the radar, anywhere, on the team level”:

I suspect that Rick is correct.  Remember, this new ownership group isn’t from Washington, and while they obviously know the history of the team, they’ve shown no inclination that they are emotionally attached to “Redskins” or that another name change is on their radar scope in any way.  Merchandise sales are small for this team in comparison to most other teams.  It’s tough to find stats for overall, gross team merchandise sales, but thanks to the last 30 years of team history, team merchandise sales are clearly low.  That doesn’t directly hurt the team, as profits from merchandise sales are split evenly amongst the 32 team, but team ownership, along with all of the other team owners, obviously wants Washington to improve its sales numbers.

However, I suspect that owner Josh Harris and his staff probably believe that winning will cure all, and they’re most likely right.  Ownership doubtless hopes that the team will soon become a winning franchise.   The fact of the matter is that the number of people like me, who disassociated from the team thanks to the name change, are going to grow rarer and rarer over time.  There’s a generation of younger people, from children up through folks in their 20s, who have very little positive connection with the “Redskins” name that many of us love.  Conventional wisdom suggests that those younger types will eventually come along and start to buy merchandise if the team becomes a consistent winner again for the first time since 1991.

That logic is why Harris and company aren’t focused on making another name change – that process costs significant time and money.  Sure, they are probably willing to pay some homage to the past to some extent, especially when it’s something as easily done as a new t-shirt, but don’t expect more.  No matter what I think, conventional wisdom is that building a winner is the best way for people to forget about the past and embrace the name.  Whatever it is.

Even if Harris were to entertain a name change, there’s exactly a zero point zero percent (0.0%) chance that “Redskins” would be the choice.  For one thing, the woke mob would revolt.  There’d be an army of people with bad purple hair and nose rings screaming out in front of Washington’s headquarters in Ashburn, fresh from protesting in favor of a terrorist organization, were the team to do that, no doubted encouraged by the decidedly left-leaning sports media contingent.  Harris doesn’t want any part of that.  Not to mention, they also surely want to bury any reminder of the Snyder era.  These are the same reasons why the team hasn’t issued legacy Redskins products, even though that would be both easy to do and extremely popular.  A feather is possibly all we’re going to get.

So, people out there, don’t get your hopes up.  Dan Quinn’s shirt with the feather on it is just a shirt, nothing more, probably a simple throwback to the past intended to appease the older segment of what’s left of the fanbase.  Rumor has it that Quinn’s shirt may not have been an official team item, and that he might have created it on his own.  I don’t know the truth, and it doesn’t really matter.  But that’s all it is.  The past is gone, and it isn’t coming back.  The mostly likely future is the Commanders, which is unfortunate, because it’s an atrociously bad nickname which I refuse to adopt.  They can still count me out, but I don’t matter so much, as the team is banking on many other people to come aboard.

What do you think?  Let me know in the comment section below.