The Washington Examiner‘s Joe Concha advocated the Washington Commanders returning to their original name, saying most people oppose the team’s “horrible” new name.
On Sunday, President Donald Trump threatened to block a stadium deal the Commanders have in Washington, D.C., if they don’t take back their original name: the Washington Redskins. The team dropped the Redskins name in 2020 after it was deemed derogatory to Native Americans.
Concha said he used to report on sports news, including a story on the pressure campaign to change the Redskins name. He said the team was called the Redskins “before the Great Depression,” and it is “utterly ridiculous” how people viewed the name as “suddenly” offensive.
“But I remember there was a poll showing that almost 90% of Washington Redskins season ticket holders didn’t want the name changed, and most importantly, Native Americans said, ‘Yeah, we got bigger fish to fry, we could care less,’ but that’s when the woke movement really took hold and they went to the Commanders,” Concha said Monday on Fox Business’s Varney & Company.
“It’s a horrible name, horrible uniforms. The Redskins absolutely should come back. And if you ask anybody in the Washington area, and I went to school down there, everybody will tell you they want the Redskins name, the uniforms, back because it is a classic, great franchise that had no business changing their name whatsoever,” Concha said.
Concha also said the possible return of the Redskins name is part of how “wokeness is seen as toxic” in the sports world. He recalled how some athletes, such as football star Tom Brady, were “shamed” for supporting Trump after the 2016 election, whereas after Trump’s victory in 2024, athletes partook in dances mimicking the president.
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Trump pressuring the Commanders to revert back to the Redskins comes after a petition advocating the name change garnered over 150,000 signatures. Mitchell Rales, one of the owners of the team, was not enthusiastic about this possibility, saying, “We’re not going to relitigate the past.”
Trump has also pushed for the Cleveland Guardians to rebrand to their original name, the Cleveland Indians, saying, “Times are different now.”