By Akiva Greengart
The Washington Football Team has been going through a lot this past last year and a half. Their coach battled cancer, they won their division with a losing record, and, most notably, they changed their name from the Washington Redskins to the Washington football team.
This change happened because the name “Redskins” was deemed racist - an insult to Native Americans. Over the last fifty years, people have been debating whether the team should change its name.
The reason this change took so long is because the Washington Football Team’s owner, Dan Snyder, was strongly against it.
Back in 2013, Synder said, “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.” You can imagine that it would take a very good reason to get someone that adamant to change his mind.
Well…a good reason came.
On July 3rd of last year, FedEx, the sponsor of the team’s stadium, said it would drop its sponsorship if the change did not occur. With all of the protests going on in the world after George Floyd’s death, people became more mindful about how important it was to respect other people’s races and cultures. But would Snyder agree?
The crisis was severe. If Snyder did not give in, the team would no longer have a stadium and then would no longer be able to play in the NFL.
However, Snyder quickly concluded that his refusal would mark him as one of the most infamous owners in sports history. So, on July 13th, the Washington Redskins officially changed its name to the Washington Football Team.
The team chose this name as a placeholder. With the NFL season opener only two months away, team management decided that it would be too difficult to completely rebrand the team’s name and logo so quickly.
This switch addressed one issue, only to create another: many football fans refused to accept this name and thought of it as a joke.
I interviewed a number of people at TABC to gauge what students here thought about the controversy.
A 9th-grade student told me, “I call them the Redskins because I’ve always been calling them that because it used to be their name.” He went on to add, “My only nickname for them is ‘the football team.’ I just like to say it as a joke sometimes.”
A teacher at TABC commented, "I think they should officially change their name back to Redskins."
One Junior also saw no need for the change. He observed that he had recently read an article that said the majority of Native Americans were not offended by the old name. This led him to ask the question, "If they’re not complaining, then why should they change it?"
The poll he cited was conducted by The Washington Post in 2016. Its results showed that nine out of ten Native Americans said they were not offended by the name.
However, a more recent study conducted by The University of Michigan said that 49 percent of Native Americans did find the name offensive. 38 percent of respondents took no offense, while the remaining 13 percent were indifferent.
Dr. Prager, a history teacher at TABC, took an opposing view. “A name that blatantly labels the people like the Native Americans by calling them Redskins doesn’t belong as the name of any sports team,” said Prager. “It would be like calling them the Washington Jews.”
Whatever fans may feel about this issue, The Washington Football Team has already decided that it will never return to the name “Redskins.” So what’s next?
According to sports reporter Adam Schefter, the team’s management has narrowed down the new name to eight possibilities: Defenders, Armada, Presidents, Brigade, Commanders, Redwolves, Redhawks, and WFT.
I decided to poll TABC students to see which name was the most popular. Among the 12 people who responded, the most highly ranked were Redwolves, Presidents and Senators.
One 9th-grade student came out in favor of Senators “because it sounds cool and they play in the capital of the United States.”
There is a good amount of symbolism in the name Washington Senators, as well as Washington Presidents, so these two may very well be top contenders.
Another 16.7% of respondents to my poll said they wanted the name to change back to Redskins. 8.3% wanted to keep the name as The Washington Football Team.
While everybody has opinions on this issue, the Washington Football Team will definitely change its name after this season, and that should end all controversy. But, until then, enjoy this article.