The Washington Football Team nonetheless may be going by its placeholder identify this time subsequent yr.
“There is a fairly good likelihood we would be the Washington Soccer Crew subsequent season,” crew president Jason Wright informed Washington TV station WJLA on Tuesday.
The crew retired the name it had used for 87 years on July 13, after launching an intensive evaluation 10 days earlier. The momentary identify was introduced July 23.
“I believe subsequent yr is quick due to how the model has to come back collectively by way of uniforms, by way of approval processes by way of the league,” Wright stated Tuesday.
“We may get there faster, it is really fairly exhausting to get there that shortly due to all of the steps that have to occur.”
For years, Washington proprietor Dan Snyder had resisted altering the identify; he informed USA At the moment in 2013 to “put it in all caps” that he would by no means make such a transfer. Some who labored for Snyder stated they believed then that he would fairly promote the crew than use a brand new identify.
The controversy surrounding the identify predated Snyder’s buy of the crew in Could 1999. When Washington performed in Tremendous Bowl XXVI following the 1991 season, there have been 2,000 protesters exterior the Metrodome in Minneapolis. Jack Kent Cooke, the crew proprietor on the time, stated of any attainable change: “There’s not a single, solitary jot, tittle, whit likelihood on the planet. I just like the identify, and it isn’t a derogatory identify.”
However Snyder and the franchise have been below extra stress after the protests following the demise of George Floyd in Could whereas he was in police custody in Minneapolis. Inside just a few weeks of Floyd’s demise, sources stated Snyder had been discussing the identify change with NFL officers for a number of weeks. The crew additionally felt monetary stress from buyers and a number of other sponsors to alter the identify.
Info from ESPN’s Adam Schefter and John Keim was used on this report.
