Washington Football Team is now the Washington Commanders

coremiller

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Jul 14, 2005
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Dan Snyder can announce a new five year plan to win a playoff game.

Goal line dive plays from the one can be called in as "Great Leap Forward! Great Leap Forward!"
Every time they hire a new coach, they can announce a Cultural Revolution.

They should print the playbook in mini size with a red cover and call it the Little Red Book.
 

BusRaker

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Aug 11, 2006
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The non-mainstream press will definitely get some miles out of "Going Commando" when they have a lack-luster game
 

bosockboy

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Jul 15, 2005
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Agree, although with the Nationals and Capitals, D.C. area people can and have embraced easy nicknames that work much better on a marketing level (Caps, Nats -- and obviously 'Skins was loved). The Wizards is still just really bad. And I don't see anything you could do with Commanders that works on that same nickname marketing level.
You could call their media and social media interaction Comms. It’s all I got.
 

Beomoose

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Every time they hire a new coach, they can announce a Cultural Revolution.

They should print the playbook in mini size with a red cover and call it the Little Red Book.
The Long March to the postseason starts this September.
 

8slim

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Wizards is terrible, but at least understandable given the context. It was the 90s, and the trend was to capitalize on pop culture-inspired names (e.g. Raptors).

This is a nod to the history and culture of the home city (good), with a name that's clunky and generic (bad).
 

cromulence

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Aug 25, 2009
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Wizards is terrible, but at least understandable given the context. It was the 90s, and the trend was to capitalize on pop culture-inspired names (e.g. Raptors).
Not sure what you're referring to here - how was "Wizards" inspired by pop culture? This was before Harry Potter. I recall there being a fan vote about what the new name should be, with Wizards as one of the choices. (Found it: https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/wizards/ever-wonder-why-name-change-bullets-wizards)
 

SumnerH

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Jul 18, 2005
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Wizards is terrible, but at least understandable given the context. It was the 90s, and the trend was to capitalize on pop culture-inspired names (e.g. Raptors).
But wizards didn't really become a pop-culture phenom until the 2000s, with the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies. When the Washington team picked the name, the biggest popular reaction was an only half-joking “did you just seriously pick a name that's a rank in the KKK?”
 

loshjott

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Dec 30, 2004
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Not sure what you're referring to here - how was "Wizards" inspired by pop culture? This was before Harry Potter. I recall there being a fan vote about what the new name should be, with Wizards as one of the choices. (Found it: https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/wizards/ever-wonder-why-name-change-bullets-wizards)
At the time a friend of mine submitted an entry with a logo of a bucking horse with smoke coming out of its nostrils, and called the Washington, DC, team the "Snortin' Mares." Needless to say, it was not chosen.
 

Ale Xander

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Oct 31, 2013
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At the time a friend of mine submitted an entry with a logo of a bucking horse with smoke coming out of its nostrils, and called the Washington, DC, team the "Snortin' Mares." Needless to say, it was not chosen.
Mares short for Marion(s), right?
 

Sandwich Pick

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"Washington Commanders" is one of the longest names in professional sports and has no obvious nickname like "Bucs" or "T-Wolves." It's clumsy and doesn't roll off the tongue.

Well done, team.
Using those guidelines, Washington Representatives would have been the perfect choice.

D.C. would be home to the Nats, Caps and Reps.
 

8slim

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Not sure what you're referring to here - how was "Wizards" inspired by pop culture? This was before Harry Potter. I recall there being a fan vote about what the new name should be, with Wizards as one of the choices. (Found it: https://www.nbcsports.com/washington/wizards/ever-wonder-why-name-change-bullets-wizards)
But wizards didn't really become a pop-culture phenom until the 2000s, with the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies. When the Washington team picked the name, the biggest popular reaction was an only half-joking “did you just seriously pick a name that's a rank in the KKK?”
When *aren't* wizards relevant in pop culture? Not any time in my lifetime. Lord of the Rings was widely read in the 80s/90s, among other wizardy novels. Half the Disney movies have some kind of wizard character.
 

DanoooME

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They'd have been better off buying the rights to the Washington Sentinels from Warner Brothers.

And they had a golden opportunity to sell a metric fuck-ton of merch and instead created garbage no one will want to wear, even the diehards.

Unless this is all Snyder's master plan to re-brand everything in 5 years to sell more shit. But I don't think he's that shrewd.
 

worm0082

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Sep 19, 2002
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Should have just stayed Washington Football Team & kept the classic Redskins uniforms and slapped the new crest logo on the helmet. These are some of the worst uniforms I’ve ever seen.
 

Obscure Name

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Wizards is terrible, but at least understandable given the context. It was the 90s, and the trend was to capitalize on pop culture-inspired names (e.g. Raptors).
I'm not sure wizards had much pop culture influence in the mid-90s. They announced the name change in 96, Harry Potter came out in 97, and only nerds cared about LotR. I think it was just a silly name choice.
 

Zupcic

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Jul 19, 2005
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It is hard to do worse than no name or logo, yet they did. My favorite comment from the team fan site was that maybe this is the rock bottom for the franchise we in DC have been looking for the last several years.
 

americantrotter

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There was an easy choice. Remake the old helmet crest to George Washington. Keep the scheme otherwise minus the feathers for revolutionary tattered flags.
 

8slim

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I kinda liked Football Team... with its no-nonsense, gray sweats, blue collar vibe. Commanders is fine. But boring.
It's kind of incredible that they managed to selected a new nickname that is *more* boring than not having one at all.
 

jose melendez

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Applegate, who alleged she was harassed on a daily basis by the team's former chief marketing officer, explained that she was "told not to speak to Dan Snyder or to even look at Dan Snyder" amid her concerns about misconduct. Baker, who spent two years on the team's video production staff, alleged that he and others were "told to edit together lewd footage" from the cheerleaders' "Beauties on the Beach" calendar shoot documentary "at the request of Daniel Snyder" -- footage in which the cheerleaders' "breasts and pubic areas were exposed".

Coburn corroborated Baker's allegation. She said the video was "secretly made" as "essentially a soft-porn video, soundtracked to Dan Snyder's favorite bands." Coburn also alleged, soon after starting her marketing role, she was invited to sleep at Snyder's home in Aspen, Colorado, after a drunken "awards trip" dinner -- except she was asked to stay in the basement "because the men had invited prostitutes back"
These are the same cheerleaders, presumably, that he tried to traffic in the DR (or was it Costa Rica?) This is potentially criminal behavior, and should be investigated as such
 

pedro1918

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So, that independent investigation...

Washington Post: Daniel Snyder could block release of probe details under deal with NFL, document shows

Washington Post said:
Under an agreement signed shortly after the NFL took over the investigation into its Washington team’s workplace, the league and team vowed that neither side would disclose information about the probe without the approval of the other, a document released by House Democrats on Friday shows.

The document, known as a “Common Interest Agreement,” spells out that the NFL and team ”share common legal interests" in the wake of dozens of women detailing to The Washington Post experiences of being sexually harassed, demeaned and degraded by team officials.
The existence of the document, which was obtained by a congressional committee investigating the NFL’s handling of the team’s toxic culture and released Friday morning, undermines claims that the NFL’s probe was impartial, the Democrats who released the documents said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/02/04/congress-nfl-wilkinson-report/
 

dcdrew10

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Dec 8, 2005
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Florio breaks it down even more and, well, I can't even really express in words how fucked up it is.

The Common Interest Agreement shows that the investigation was not an independent exercise aimed at smoking out and putting a stop to wrongdoing, no matter the consequences. It was purely a legal maneuver, aimed at allowing the team and the league to create the impression that Wilkinson was turning over rocks and chasing leads while at all times securing full control over how she handled what she found, in the name of managing potential liability.

By its own terms, the Common Interest Agreement provides that Wilkinson would “conduct an independent investigation into allegations lodged against [the Commanders] of hostile workplace culture, including but not limited to, allegations of sexual harassment and bullying . . . and to provide legal advice and guidance in connection with the Investigation.” (Emphasis added.) Thus, Wilkinson was never hired to investigate the situation with the goal of creating a report that would be disseminated publicly, like Ted Wells’s Deflategate opus. She was hired to gauge the extent of the mess and to help the league and the team clean it up. Indeed, the Common Interest Agreement expressly refers to the fact that the league and the team has a “common legal interest in . . . the defense of reasonably anticipated litigation.”

The engagement letter sent by Wilkinson’s firm to the Commanders makes even more clear the fact that the firm wasn’t being hired to get to the bottom of a problem and solve it. Instead, the goal was to best position the team to defend itself against any and all litigation. The engagement letter expressly explains that “all material prepared and communications made by [the team] and its representatives in the course of the review are in anticipation of litigation and are privileged work product.”
Then came an alleged shell game. A magic trick. A subterfuge. The league, according to the February 4 letter to Goodell, withdrew from the Common Interest Agreement after Congress began its investigation in October 2021. Per the league, its withdrawal from the agreement has resulted in both the league and the team claiming that they can’t access or release documents to the Committee without the consent of the other party.
I'm not optimistic that Goodell or Snyder will burn in this lifetime for this, but they certainly will feel the heat in hell for it. Fuck. Everyone. Involved. In. This. Coverup.
 

Marciano490

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Nov 4, 2007
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This is so fucked. Are there lawsuits pending?

I’ll say though, that the quotes above about the legal stuff, it’s shitty, but it’s incredibly standard.
 

pedro1918

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Here’s a headline you don’t want to see:

Jonathan Allen apologizes for saying he wanted to dine with Hitler

Early Wednesday morning, Allen invited his more than 67,000 Twitter followers to ask him anything. Allen, 27, is a key player for Washington who grew up near the team’s facility in Ashburn, Va., was a first-round pick in 2017, signed a big extension last offseason and became a Pro Bowler. The organization made Allen one of its most prominent public faces during the rebrand process.

When one Twitter user asked him to name three people, dead or alive, with whom to have dinner, Allen picked his grandfather, Michael Jackson and Hitler.…

“He’s a military genius and I love military tactics,” Allen wrote. “But honestly I would want to pick his brain as to why he did what he did. I’m also assuming that the people I’ve chosen have to answer all my questions honestly.”
Later, when Allen faced scrutiny, he initially defended his choice, saying he wasn’t giving Hitler “props” but that “I was giving my reason as to why I think it would be interesting to have a [conversation] with him.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/02/09/jonathan-allen-hitler-apology/