For years the opportunity to be on the right side of history was there for Washington’s owner. His reign will not be remembered kindly
Daniel Snyder’s incompetence in the two decades since he bought the team he grew up rooting for has done nothing to compromise his bottom line. Since paying $800m for the franchise back in 1999, Washington’s NFL team has become a national punchline with five times as many head coaches (10) as playoff wins (two) in 21 years, yet Forbes valued the team at $3.4bn in September, which is surely more a testament to the NFL’s bulletproof business model than Snyder’s gridiron acumen.
It’s enough to make one wonder if the team’s wholesale lack of success and once-unthinkable slip-slide into irrelevance under Snyder has contributed to his intractability when it’s come to Washington’s racist nickname: the Redskins. The team has been hemorrhaging fans for years on merit and maybe you’re not in a hurry to leave the past behind you when any positive associations with your brand are derived from things that took place decades ago.
Related: FedEx asks ‘the team in Washington’ to dump racist nickname as Nike pulls gear
There are literally only 5 sentences in this entire press release and “Redskins” appears 10 times pic.twitter.com/RfTNkAh9vg
