Thoughts on nicknames, logos, and stadiums
December 9, 2024
by Steve Thomas
The name “Redskins” was a wonderful nickname, wasn’t it? Most of us loved it, and many of us still do. To me, it was never racist in any way. There’s been quite a bit of chatter in recent times regarding the possible use of the Washington team’s former – and proper – nickname. It was in place for 83 years, until the team unceremoniously dumped it along with the famous logo back in 2020 in an unnecessary bow to political correctness. I wrote an obituary about this event (click here) at the time it happened. We then had to suffer through a couple years of “Washington Football Team” before prior ownership finally arrived at the stupidest nickname of all time that nobody likes, “Commanders”, announced by the prior owner in a typical amateur-hour extravaganza.
The general gist of the marketing of the name “Commanders” is that the key marketing demographic, people under 40 years old, will more or less come around on the new name because they are all too young to have fond memories of “Redskins” anyway. The team was a trainwreck under Dan Snyder and they don’t have memories of the great days of old. The truth is that building a winning franchise will cure all ills for most fans in this age category, and in time, most people won’t care one way or the other about the nickname. The older crowd who lived through the golden era will be a harder nut to crack, but many of them, particularly the locals, will also eventually jump onboard as well. If some of them do not, then that’s something ownership can probably live with given the ages of these folks, assuming the franchise can become a normal, professional, winning team again.
In other words, generally, bad nicknames can be tolerated for winning teams.
This means that if you are holding out hope of the team returning to its proper “Redskins” nickname, give up the dream. The NFL is and remains a fairly woke organization, and it still views that name as forbidden. Even if ownership was for some reason inclined to return to “Redskins”, the NFL would never allow it. If you’re rooting for a general change to something less dumb than “Commanders”, that’s probably not in the cards either. In addition to the marketing issues, changing team nicknames is a very expensive, time-consuming process, and there are rules in the NFL’s governing documents about exactly when and how often team owners can do it.
Josh Harris could navigate that process if he wanted to; but the simple truth is that he doesn’t have much incentive to take on the various associated challenges. As I said, he doubtlessly thinks that enough fans will eventually accept it if the team becomes a winning franchise again. A third nickname change realistically isn’t in the cards, unfortunately, as much as I’d like it to happen.
All of this brings me neatly along to the famous old logo, which is a drawing of Chief John Two Guns White Calf from the Blackfeet Tribe. The history of this logo is well known, but, in summary form, the idea to use his likeness was brought to the Redskins in 1971 by Chief Walter “Blackie” Wetzel in 1971. The team originally trademarked the logo in 1974 and it was used until 2020. There are records of 5 active trademarks registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office that use this logo, all held by Pro Football Inc., which is the entity controlled by Josh Harris that owns the team. These trademarks were filed in 1974, 1978, 1994, and 2004.
The recent news started a couple of weeks ago when Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) made public statements indicating his desire for the team to start using the logo again and to also recognize Chief Wetzel, at the urging of the Wetzel family more than three years ago[1]. Senator Daines’ effort was carefully timed, as the bill passed by the House of Representatives to ground lease the RFK Stadium site to the District of Columbia, along with authorization to develop the property, is currently pending in the Senate. Now, progress has apparently been made, as A.J. Perez from Front Office Sports reported that the team has indicated its intent to use the logo in some legacy-related items[2].
The biggest issue apparently was that neither the Wetzel family nor the Blackfeet Tribe had ever been compensated[3]. There’s a difference between the owners of the Washington franchise filing a trademark and having a proper licensing agreement with the creator of the artwork and possibly the Tribe that provides compensation to the artist in exchange for usage by the team. Apparently, those negotiations are now at least solidly in the works, because Senator Daines’ latest statements indicate that the representative members of the Wetzel family “are satisfied with the ongoing negotiations with the team and feel optimistic about the direction that they are heading.”[4]
Apparently, we’ll see the logo reappear on Redskins alumni shirts to be sold by the team. I can’t adequately express how happy this makes me. It’s one level of bad to dump the Redskins name and logo, particularly in favor of a terrible new name. It’s another thing entirely to flat-out ignore the old name and essentially pretend that it never existed, which is precisely what Josh Harris and his team have been doing since they purchased the franchise. In my view, asking legacy players and Hall of Famers to wear the current franchise jersey with their name on it is a slap in the face to the player and an insult to all of the fans who loved this franchise for decades. The team can certainly offer those jerseys for sale if it wants to do so, but I can’t imagine that even one fan exists out there who wants to buy, say, a Joe Theismann “Commanders” jersey.
This development, due in no small part to the efforts of Senator Daines, will go a long way towards repairing any fractures in the team’s relationship with older fans. Not everyone will come around – I’m simply not going to ever get behind the name “Commanders”, under any circumstances – but many will if the team starts acting like the Redskins were a real team and not a figment of our imaginations. Congrats to the team on that.
On a related note, everyone needs to understand that passage of the bill regarding the RFK Stadium site currently pending in the Senate does not necessarily mean that the future new stadium is going to be built at that location. Congress doesn’t really care about the team’s stadium. They just know that the federal government needs to do something with the property. As I’ve said on The Hog Sty Podcast, it is going to be much more difficult for the District to finance such a project than either the state of Maryland or the state of Virginia. The bill itself expressly forbids federal funds to be used for development, which means that the District would need to come up with their own financing. Typically, stadium projects are funded with some combination of excise taxes, usually attached to things like hotel room and car rentals, and public bond proceeds. The District could do those things, but a new stadium, even a fairly limited development, which is all that would fit on the RFK Stadium property, is going to be at least $1B. Quite possibly significantly more. Can the District get that much funding out of taxes and bonds? I haven’t done research into District finances, but I suspect that it would be a stretch. After all, the District had to take a $350M traditional construction loan in order to build Nats Park, which is an unusual thing for a public entity to do. I have my doubts that the District would commit to borrower two or three times that much.
More likely, either Maryland, Virginia, or both will be able to come up with far more attractive financing offers. States simply have more options than one City, particularly one that is midsized by national standards. Both states also have much better and larger properties than does the District. It isn’t impossible, of course, but if I had to rank order the three areas from most to least likely, the District would be last. Fan desire to build on the RFK site is mostly nostalgia; after all, it’s the home base of the golden era of Washington football. I understand, but on the other hand, as I pointed out above, the Redskins are dead and gone. This new franchise – which I view as more of an expansion team than I do the team of old – has a chance to build its own legacy, and they’d be wise to do so in a new location.
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comment section below.
[1] https://www.charkoosta.com/news/daines-hails-commanders-commitment-to-honor-wetzel-legacy-and-never-again-censor-iconic-logo/article_91201500-b28b-11ef-9e74-6385968d15c3.html
[2] Id.
[3] https://frontofficesports.com/old-commanders-logo-is-returning-limited-use/
[4] https://www.charkoosta.com/news/daines-hails-commanders-commitment-to-honor-wetzel-legacy-and-never-again-censor-iconic-logo/article_91201500-b28b-11ef-9e74-6385968d15c3.html