‘That ship has sailed’: Washington Commanders owner moving on from Redskins
Asher Notheis
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The new owners of the Washington Commanders football team have thrown cold water on changing the team’s name back to its original title of the Redskins, despite mounting pressure from others asking them to.
The football team opting not to revert back to its former name comes as an online petition asking to rebrand the team back to the Washington Redskins has reached over 130,000 signatures. The team dropped its original name in 2020 and eventually settled on its new name, the Washington Commanders, in 2022.
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“That ship has sailed,” said Mitchell Rales, the top partner in Josh Harris’s ownership group, on Wednesday. “We’re not going to re-litigate the past. We’re about the future. We’re about building the future and not having a divisive culture that we’re engaged in. We’re going to look at everything come the end of the year and think about a lot of different things and do a lot of testing and see what people think.”
The shutdown of changing the team’s name back to the Redskins comes after Harris purchased the Washington Commanders for over $6 billion earlier this year. In July, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, one of the Commanders’ co-owners, hinted that the team could change its name again, with the new name coming as soon as next year.
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The Washington Commanders have been threatened with a boycott from a group called the Native American Guardians Association, who have asked the team to revert back to its original name. The group’s threat of a boycott comes after Anheuser-Busch, the owner of Bud Light and several other beer brands, reported a nearly $400 million loss in the second quarter of this year.
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In its letter to the Washington Commanders, signed by Eunice Davidson, the group’s founder and president, the group points to a poll that found that 90% of Native Americans did not find the Redskins name offensive. The group also pointed to how other sports teams, including the Kansas City Chiefs and the Chicago Blackhawks, have kept their Native American-inspired names while recognizing that the names carry “an obligation of honor and respect.”
The group’s petition started on June 21, and as of Thursday morning, it has reached 130,741 signatures. Once the petition reaches 150,000 signatures, it will become one of the most-signed petitions on Change.org.