The Washington football franchise has a new name, and I'm having feels

The questions arrived via text and email last week. 

“So, what do you think?

“Can you believe it?”

“Damn, the world must be ending, right?”

The messages came after news broke that the Washington Redskins were considering changing their name after several major sponsors — including stadium namesake FedEx — threatened to end their partnerships with the franchise in the wake of America’s racial reckoning. This morning, when the team announced its intention to make the change, the messages came again. 

“OMG!”

“It’s happening.”

“What do you think?!?”

Why were my friends — some whom I hadn’t spoken to in years — asking me about this? Well, up until the last couple of years, my identity was firmly intertwined with the Washington NFL franchise. And to be honest, when the news came across the wire, I wasn’t sure what I thought. 

Young Love

When I was 8 or 9, my dad took us to our first game at RFK Stadium. This was after they’d won the Super Bowl in ’92, a frenzied few weeks when we had burgundy-and-gold spirit days in school and they taught us to play “Hail to the Redskins” on the recorder in music class. My mom joked that the best time to go to the grocery store in our neighborhood was a Sunday afternoon, when nearly everyone was at the Redskins game or glued to the TV watching it. Walking into the stadium that day long ago, into a crowd that was probably bigger than any I’d ever seen to that point, all clad in burgundy and gold and cheering in unison — I was hooked. Even though the home team lost to the visiting Phoenix Cardinals, I fell in love.

I set out to learn everything I could about the team and the game. I read the Washington Post sports section daily. I sat with my dad in front of the TV on Sundays, peppering him with questions. I religiously watched sports on the local news. Before long, I knew the roster and the depth chart better than any of my school subjects. For Christmas, I asked for a football and a Redskins jersey. 

Redskins fanhood was like a huge family, and almost all of our neighbors were part of it. One was a season ticket holder who’d sell my dad his tickets every now and again. My best friend’s dad was a huge fan, too, and they invited me to join them for games if they had an extra ticket. He loved introducing me to his friends, asking me about a particular player or game, and watching their eyes grow wide in shock that this little girl could provide such thoughtful analysis of the local football team. 

A Love-Hate Relationship

Knowing so much about football gave me confidence during a time I had little on hand. I was overweight, awkward, and had a hearty fear of anything other kids found “cool.” I didn’t party. I didn’t drink or smoke or experiment with any kind of drug. I spent most of my Friday and Saturday nights babysitting. Most of my friends were, like me, in band rather than varsity sports. I was far from anything that TV or movies led me to believe was “normal” for a teenager. 

My knowledge of sports in general, and the Redskins in particular, was both my armor and my ticket into the elite social circles of my high school. I grew in popularity each fall because my football IQ, ability to throw a tight spiral, and understanding of how to catch the ball while on the run made me a top pick for games requiring that a girl touch the ball at least once per play. On Mondays, the guys in my classes would ask me what I thought about the weekend’s Redskins game. Me. Not the pretty girl sitting at the next desk. Me.

My psyche linked itself to the team’s success which became a problem because, unbeknownst to me at the time, the franchise’s glory days were disappearing just as I became a fan. I lived and died with the wins and losses each Sunday, which, unfortunately, meant a lot of dying. My friend and neighbor, whom I gave a ride to school every day during our junior and senior years, had no interest in the NFL but knew exactly how the Redskins game turned out based on my Monday morning mood. Sometimes I didn’t speak a word. I just stewed, jaw clenched, hands squeezing the steering wheel so tightly I could barely feel them. 

I can’t remember how many times I ripped off a jersey in disgust, throwing it into a garbage can after a maddening loss. I can’t remember how many times I peeled a sticker off the back of my rear windshield in embarrassment after another crushing season finale securing an abysmal record. If I were paid a dollar each time I collected everything with a Redskins logo I owned into a box and shoved it into a basement, a closet, a car trunk, anywhere out of sight, swearing that this time it was finally over …. well, I’d have a lot of dollars. 

The High-Water Mark

Then came 2012. The most exciting, yet brief, era of my fandom dawned with the drafting of Robert Griffin III and intensified when I moved back to the DC area later that year. I’d spent the previous 10 years in North Carolina but got home just in time to ride the magic carpet of that incredible season. 

After the shocking season-opening win over the Saints, the possibilities seemed endless. I felt like all those years enduring the likes of Heath Shuler, Gus Frerotte, Jeff George, Deion Sanders, Albert Haynesworth, and Steve Spurrier were penance for what we’d get to enjoy over the next four months, maybe more. Every headbutt of an end zone wall, overpriced free agent bust, and saying-spewing failure of a coach would be worth all the pain, all the shame. 

I spent Sunday afternoons at Carpool, a now-extinct bar in Arlington, Va., celebrating beside good friends and hugging dozens of strangers as RGIII thrilled us with every touch of the ball. The late-December, season-ending, division-clinching win against the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football felt like our Super Bowl. RGIII was electrifying, and he was ours, and he was young, and it all felt like the start of something. It felt like the sands were shifting. Finally, it was our time. 

That feeling lasted exactly one week. In the first round of the playoffs the following Sunday, RGIII’s already battered knee finally collapsed in a mess of mangled ligaments. He’d never be the same, and the franchise slipped further into ignominy.

The Breakup

For the nearly two decades Daniel Snyder has owned the team, there have been coaching firings and hirings like clockwork, all with the same dreadful results. The organization has sued down-on-their-luck season ticket holders for money. They’ve asked cheerleaders to dance topless for sponsors and big-dollar ticketholders. They’ve admitted that the decades-long season ticket waiting list they touted for years was now nothing more than a sham to help drum up dwindling demand. They’ve removed of thousands of seats from FedEx Field that they couldn’t sell. Game after game, the remaining seats have filled with fans of opposing teams to the point that it’s been years since the Redskins have actually played a home game, anywhere. And then there was the character assassination of Scot McCloughan, who pissed off Snyder and his No. 2, Bruce Allen, so badly that they fired him, then spread rumors that the former alcoholic was drunk on the job, because they feared backlash from the fans. 

Destroying a man’s reputation to save face was the end of the line for me. For the last time, I collected my shirts and hats and scarves and tchotchkes and put them into a box. Except for a handful of items that had sentimental value, I gave them all away. 

I’d like to say it was well before this point that I had serious reservations about the name “Redskins,” but I didn’t. I read about the arguments against the name and I remember seeing a few protests outside the stadium during the handful of games I attended in 2011 and 2012. Yet I had a T-shirt with the face of a superfan wearing a headdress that read “Chief Zee Is My Homeboy” and when presented with the chance to have a photo with Chief, I did it with glee. After all, there was a survey that said most Native Americans didn’t care about the name and some even felt it was an honor, right? And, according to the team’s official history, the name was intended to honor a Native American — William Henry Dietz, an early coach of the franchise — right? 

But I learned more about the history surrounding both the team’s name and its checkered record on race. And it isn’t hard to find information about how derogatory depictions — even those as seemingly innocuous as sports mascots — can severely impact oppressed people. I asked myself how I’d feel if I were a Native American and saw Chief Zee wearing a headdress and face paint and mimicking native dances. I considered how I’d feel if I saw a billion-dollar organization trading on my heritage without doing anything, really, to help those who built that heritage. I didn’t think I’d feel real good. In a world where a team’s identity can beanything, why does one have to be a word considered by many people — and many dictionaries — to be a racial slur? And if that name must remain, is that something I’d want to be associated with? 

The answer was “no.” For the past several years, for a multitude of reasons, I’ve distanced myself from my near-lifelong association with the team. (In fairness, the team’s on-field performance hasn’t made that a tough task.) There have been no Redskins stickers on my car or ornaments on my Christmas tree. Their games aren’t on in my house. My one-year-old doesn’t have a single piece of team gear. I’ve unfollowed the team’s social media properties and all but one of its beat writers. 

The Hope

Still, each summer, as training camps rumble to life, I feel a bit of a void. I miss the excitement that comes with each dribble of news from camp — who showed up in great shape, who showed up late, who’s moving up the depth chart, who’s dropping. I miss debating with friends over who should stay on the roster and grieving over who gets cut. But mostly, I miss the clean slate that each new season brings — the chance for something good to happen, even if history strongly suggests it’s highly unlikely. 

For now, I’m thinking of this name change as the start of a new season. It’s a clean slate, a chance for something good to happen — even if Snyder does still own the team. And maybe, just maybe, it’s a path back to a franchise that meant so much to me for so long.