The football team from Washington will finally be called something more original than the Washington Football Team.
It will be the Washington Commanders, an appropriate nod to the commander in chief of the United States, who lives nearby.
“As an organization, we are excited to rally and rise together as one under our new identity while paying homage to our local roots and what it means to represent the nation’s capital,” owner Dan Snyder said.
The team made the announcement on the “Today” show Wednesday morning but it was not as much of a surprise as it could have been.
Following a slip of the tongue by franchise legend Joe Theismann during a radio interview on Monday, an NBC Washington Chopper 4 news camera zoomed in on a banner hanging inside of FedEx Field on Tuesday that clearly showed the word “Commanders” emblazoned in gold letters over a maroon background, consistent with the team’s longtime color scheme.
And the colors aren’t changing.
“We continue to honor and represent the Burgundy and Gold while forging a pathway to a new era in Washington,” Snyder said.
The NFC East rivals of the New York Giants have been going by the name Washington Football Team for the past two seasons, after the club dropped its previous racially insensitive name in July 2020.
On Monday, Theismann, who quarterbacked Washington to a Super Bowl XVII win over the Miami Dolphins in 1983, was being interviewed on CBS Sports Radio when he apparently fumbled the big secret.
“I think the Commanders is a name that is hopefully gonna be one that people will talk about going forward,” he said before going onto explain the apparent origin of the new team nickname. “Commanders is basically Washington, D.C. A lot of Commanders in Washington, D.C., the Pentagon and a lot of different branches of the service. So to me that’s certainly the way I’m looking at it, as positions of leadership when it comes to the new name.”
In a 2003 interview with USA Today, Snyder famously insisted that, “We will never change the name of the team.”
“We’ll never change the name,” he said after being pressed. “It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.”
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