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Washington Redskins Name Change Makes Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs And Others Look Clueless

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Fifty, 24 or even a year from now, historians will shake their heads while wondering why the Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs, Florida State Seminoles and Cleveland Spiders (you know, the name of that Major League Baseball team after it went back to the future) took so long to do the obvious.

The obvious in 2020?

Stop doing offensive stuff.

Specifically, historians will wonder why the Braves, Chiefs, Florida State and Indians (before their name changed to the Spiders) were so clueless.

So tone deaf.

So oblivious in 2020 to the rise of social consciousness, ranging from the Black Lives Matter movement soaring after the George Floyd murder to people tossing statues of divisive figures into bodies of water to NASCAR banning Confederate flags from its racing events.

Historians will remember Monday, July 13, 2020, when the Washington Redskins decided to help their bottom line on Forbes’ list as the NFL’s seventh most valuable franchise at $3.4 billion by leaving the 19th century.

Historians will note the Redskins officials announced back then they were getting rid of “Redskins,” which was their name since the mid-1930s. They were proclaimed such a thing by George Preston Marshall, a noted segregationist, who owned the franchise for 38 years until his death in 1969.

The Redskins were the last NFL team to integrate when they acquired Bobby Mitchell in 1962, and it wasn’t because Marshall began humming “We shall overcome” in his sleep.

The year before Mitchell arrived in Washington, Marshall was ordered by Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall to hire a Black player or get evicted from D.C. Stadium, (later named RFK Stadium), which was on federal land.

Money often tops racism.

Ask Daniel Snyder, who became the Redskins’ owner 30 years after Marshall and embarrassed himself during a USA Today interview in 2013 by saying, "We'll never change the name. It's that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.”

Historians will notice how NEVER arrived for Snyder that summer day in 2020 after news outlets, including ESPN.com, reported “a letter signed by 87 investors and shareholders (of the Redskins) with a total worth of $620 billion was sent to sponsors FedEx FDX , PepsiCo PEP and Nike NKE , asking them to stop doing business with the team unless the name was changed.”

The worst for the Redskins was FedEx, which completed a 27-year deal worth $205 million in 1998 to have naming rights for the team’s current stadium. The company, whose owner and CEO, Fred Smith, has been a minority shareholder of the franchise since 2003, announced it wanted a name change.

So Snyder had to make a change.

It was obvious.

Just like historians will say it was obvious back on July 13, 2020 . . .

  • Braves officials needed to declare they would stop encouraging thousands of Caucasians at home games to paint their faces like they were auditioning for Native American roles in a John Wayne Western from the 1930s.
  • Braves officials also needed to mention they would quit having their ballpark organist combine with somebody beating the huge drum (OK, tom-tom) in the outfield to spur those aforementioned folks into chopping and chanting like the Calvary was coming or something as they responded with foam rubber tomahawks provided by the franchise.
  • The bosses for the Chiefs and Florida State University had to join those running the Braves by ordering fans at their sporting facilities to stop chopping and chanting, period.
  • The Braves, the Seminoles and the Chicago Blackhawks were making themselves look silly trying to explain why their names actually honored Native Americans, but they bought a little time (very little). As for the Indians, not so much. Thus the Indians’ change to Spiders, the name of Cleveland’s professional baseball team from 1887 to 1899 before it became the Indians.

Mostly, historians will try to control their giggles over how the Braves, the Chiefs, Florida State, the Indians (before their name change) and others on July 13, 2020 kept talking about surveying their fans for feedback and huddling with Native American groups and doing other things to delay the inevitable.

Then, after all of that, historians will notice how Florida State and those pro teams moved away from their obsession with Native American stereotypes after they realized something else.

It wasn’t worth it . . .

For their reputation or their bank account.

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