The NFL team put in a placeholder while they searched for a new nickname. But it turns out WFT has its upsides
So much rides on the Washington Football Team’s rebranding “journey” that Jason Wright, the president of the NFL franchise, announced last week that 15,000 suggestions that the club has received from 60 countries and all 50 US states were not quite enough. The only decision the WFT has settled on, apparently, is that the team colors will remain the same.
“Seeing the results from our analytics,” Wright wrote in a letter on the team’s website, “we know that the burgundy and gold are deeply important to folks, so I can confidently say the color scheme will remain the same.
“Cue the cheers/sighs of relief,” Wright added, without the slightest hint of sarcasm.
So if you think you have a better name than Washington Football Team, you’d best hurry up and get it to washingtonjourney.com by 5 April. As Wright wrote to the fans: “We do not take this task lightly. Before we get to the stage of narrowing down names, we understand the insights of what matters to you in a name.”
Nothing, Wright wrote, has been ruled out – including the existing name itself. Washington Football Team is the generic name the club came up with when it announced last July that it was “retiring” its nickname and logo, widely considered to be offensive to Native Americans, after 87 years.
The WFT went on to win the NFC East in their first season with the name. Washington played in a wretched division, lost more games (nine) than they won (seven) and were dispatched in the first round of the playoffs – admittedly by the eventual champions, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – but a division title is a division title. Ron Rivera, hired a year ago as coach, has a building block, if not a star quarterback.
Related: Snyder took an age to drop Washington's racist nickname. And he'll still profit
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