The key to keeping things as they are is to avoid negative attention whenever possible. This is especially true in the world of sports, where owners and executives have to listen to millions of people who are entitled to have their opinions on the state of a team or organization. In the same way that the customer is always right in retail, the fan is always right in sports, unless, apparently, the man making the decisions disagrees. I am not here to discuss the racial implications of the term Redskins as a team moniker, but only to question whether the recent media attention regarding the name means that Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, will have no choice but to change the name of his team.
At the end of the day no one has the power to make Snyder change the name of his team. However, if the organization’s public reputation declines enough that the fans decide that they will stop supporting the Redskins financially, Snyder will have no choice. The real problem is that Snyder has no incentive to change the name and he seems to feel that the term isn’t offensive, or he just doesn’t care. At the end of the day, Snyder paid $800 million for the right to do what he wants with the team, and he paid for a team with a lot of tradition behind its name. If he wants to keep the name, he has the right to do so.
Recently the Daily News ran a cartoonist’s impression of the Redskins logo juxtaposed with a swastika and Confederate flag. Those symbols both represent a lot of hatred and have terrible histories behind them, but the fact that there has been no public outcry over the comparison is very telling. If someone placed the Patriots logo in such a position it would have been seen as an affront to America, Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick all rolled into one.
Last week on Sunday Night Football, NBC anchor Bob Costas used the halftime platform to discuss his take on the Washington team’s nickname. Costas attempted to take a middle-of-the-road approach, acknowledging that the desire for political (over)correctness can be problematic with names like Chiefs, Braves or Warriors, which show respect. He also discussed how actual tribe names like Seminoles, Blackhawks and Chippewas come under criticism, but, as they have ensured that these tribes have worked to maintain a positive and healthy image of the tribes, they shouldn’t be faulted or forced to change their names. This seems to indicate that the problem with the Redskins moniker is not that it refers to Native Americans, but that it does so in a derogatory manner.
If the media and fans are paying this much attention to the name of a team, when does it start to detract from the product on the field? It will be interesting to see if the team can turn its season around. They are currently 2-4 and third in their division. They say that winning is the best Band-Aid in sports, and I expect this to be no exception. No one seemed to mind too much last season when the Redskins made a playoff run. It has only become an issue now that they are losing.
