NFL owner finally succumbs to political correctness

[Ken Gargett]

For Ken:

Daniel Snyder, owner of the NFL's Redskins franchise, has announced that the team is dropping the word "Washington" from the team name and it will henceforth be simply known as "The Redskins".

It was reported that he finds the word 'Washington' imparts a negative image of poor leadership, mismanagement, corruption, cheating, and lying, and is not a fitting role model for young fans of football.

Cheers

may i, at the risk of returning the thread to its original intent, just say i appreciated the original joke and thank you for it.

even if it will probably be years before you try another on this forum!

[wabashcr]

from articles i have seen (obviously i can't claim to have done the sums), the costs are massive. everything has to be changed - the logo and name are all over everything. so the headquarters need to be re-done. every jersey, helmet, pen, piece of letterhead, stationary, cup, mug, car, etc etc. these are massive businesses so this would be a huge undertaking.

but long term, you'd think he would recover at least a good chunk from new merchandising.

as for the league paying, i suspect synder has pissed far too many of the other owners off too many times.

It's funny. Snyder may not be a popular personality with his fellow owners, but they sure do like the revenue he brings to the table. Washington has to be at least a top 5 franchise in revenue and overall value. Since they pool all their revenue and split it among the 32 teams, he's putting in a lot more than he's getting back. The other owners already took a huge risk with those preposterous fines and cap penalties they imposed on Washington and Dallas for overspending in the uncapped year (one of the most absurd things I've ever seen, and blatant collusion). Jones and Snyder voiced their discontent, but ultimately fell in line. That saved the league tens of millions of dollars and quite a bit of embarrassment. Snyder probably has more goodwill banked with the other owners than it may seem on the surface.

[Ken Gargett]

It's funny. Snyder may not be a popular personality with his fellow owners, but they sure do like the revenue he brings to the table. Washington has to be at least a top 5 franchise in revenue and overall value. Since they pool all their revenue and split it among the 32 teams, he's putting in a lot more than he's getting back. The other owners already took a huge risk with those preposterous fines and cap penalties they imposed on Washington and Dallas for overspending in the uncapped year (one of the most absurd things I've ever seen, and blatant collusion). Jones and Snyder voiced their discontent, but ultimately fell in line. That saved the league tens of millions of dollars and quite a bit of embarrassment. Snyder probably has more goodwill banked with the other owners than it may seem on the surface.

agree re those fines. i've often wondered if synder gave up the fight for some under the table agreement that the skins will host the superbowl when the new stadium is built. i gather synder is very keen to do that.

[ElJefeDeNada]

may i, at the risk of returning the thread to its original intent, just say i appreciated the original joke and thank you for it.

even if it will probably be years before you try another on this forum!

Yeah, I thought Washington essentially being the punchline wouldn't offend anyone regardless of political affiliation – liberal, conservative, Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party, communist, libertarian, etc. Certainly didn't set out to stir the debate, just take a humorous jab at D.C.'s disfunction.

So did you hear the one about Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the flatulent rabbi?

Well, you won't here!

[wabashcr]

agree re those fines. i've often wondered if synder gave up the fight for some under the table agreement that the skins will host the superbowl when the new stadium is built. i gather synder is very keen to do that.

The rule seems to be if you can bilk your city out of enough public funding to build a stadium, you get to host the Super Bowl. We had one here a few years ago. Hardly makes the $700M in public money worth it, but that's how it works now. They played a cold weather outdoor SB in the new Meadowlands stadium, so I think it's a fait accompli Washington will get one once the new stadium is built.

I think Snyder and Jones were careful not to upset the apple cart. The NFL makes so much money, especially those two, that they don't need lawsuits between owners, accusations of collusion, etc. There was also the risk of the NFLPA suing the league for collusion during the uncapped year, which probably would have been much easier to prove if Snyder and Jones had put up any real resistance to the rest of the owners.

I still don't know how the league got away with that. Either the players couldn't prove collusion in court, or they cashed it in during the ensuing CBA negotiations. Unbelievable to me that the owners could effectively enact a league-wide cap in a year in which everyone knew there was no collectively bargained cap. And then they had the gall to publicize it by penalizing Dallas and Washington. Baffling.

[Sophistic]

Even if its not an insulting term (what it obviously is), to name a sports team after an ethnic group is just crazy. What if the owner of the knicks would change the teams name to new york persians, new york jews, new york basques, new york caucasians...just stupid.

[Ken Gargett]

The rule seems to be if you can bilk your city out of enough public funding to build a stadium, you get to host the Super Bowl. We had one here a few years ago. Hardly makes the $700M in public money worth it, but that's how it works now. They played a cold weather outdoor SB in the new Meadowlands stadium, so I think it's a fait accompli Washington will get one once the new stadium is built.

I think Snyder and Jones were careful not to upset the apple cart. The NFL makes so much money, especially those two, that they don't need lawsuits between owners, accusations of collusion, etc. There was also the risk of the NFLPA suing the league for collusion during the uncapped year, which probably would have been much easier to prove if Snyder and Jones had put up any real resistance to the rest of the owners.

I still don't know how the league got away with that. Either the players couldn't prove collusion in court, or they cashed it in during the ensuing CBA negotiations. Unbelievable to me that the owners could effectively enact a league-wide cap in a year in which everyone knew there was no collectively bargained cap. And then they had the gall to publicize it by penalizing Dallas and Washington. Baffling.

one would like to blame all the skins woes on that and i think it contributed but sadly, the franchise of perpetual dysfunction has no trouble finding new ways to be dire.

[QwizatzHaderach]

To Ken's point, the original humor of the post is good... I think it was easy to miss that and we all went off on another hot topic. At least we can all agree that the NFL, and Washington, are confusing at best!

[Hoepssa]

We can't let the discrimination yesterday becomes the discrimination today - Warren Beatty in a movie whaterver.

The way try to "regulate" with political purpose is always dangerous. Gov-School already taught us many things, to digest or to act, is our human right.

They Said smoke kills, but we still waiting 24:24 update when time is near and we are connected...

[earthson]

Screw it - let's give EVERY team a racist name.