I'm going to do yet another Redskins OP (warning, sports geekery below)

Sorry. I started this as a response in LBN (it's still there) but I figured what the hell; it's 2 am where most of you are, so I can rant.

Let me try as best I can to describe how we got a football team named the Washington Redskins that, despite finishing the last season 3 and 13, is one of the more lucrative franchises in the NFL.

As a quick background, let me explain what the NFL is and how it works. The NFL is a sports league that, roughly, is responsible for maintaining the rules of American gridiron football. It is a non-profit 501(c)(6) organization, and it deserves to be. The problem is not the league; it's the teams. Though another problem is a by-law prohibiting any further teams from organizing themselves along the lines Green Bay did. The NFL was formed in 1970 by a merger of the National Football League and the American Football League (this is where the NFC and AFC conferences come from). The teams are "member organizations" who (grudgingly) pay dues that essentially cover the NFL's costs. What the league does is maintain the rules and standards of the sport itself. The league has a lot of problems (ignoring brain injury being a huge one), but it's not a fundamentally bad thing.

Anyways, let's jump back to the early days of the league, when Boston first got a football team. Yes, Boston. Washington is not the Redskins' first home.

The defunct Newark Tornadoes were sold to several investors in 1930 to start a football franchise in Boston. The Boston (baseball) Braves (now the Atlanta Braves) were at the time the oldest professional sports team in the country and the football team was leasing stadium use from them (that stadium is now the amphitheater in Boston University's west campus and hosts its soccer and field hockey teams -- BU hasn't fielded a football team in over a decade because of one of the most petty and vindictive attempts to escape the spirit of Title IX in collegiate athletic history). To aid with marketing tie-ins, the football team called themselves the Boston (football) Braves (a similar thing happened with the New York Giants and the San Francisco (né New York) Giants).

After a few years, the (baseball) Braves wanted more money, and the football team didn't want to pay. So they joined up with an upstart new baseball team in Boston known as the "Red Stockings" (actually I think they were officially "Sox" by then; I'm just making a point) and agreed to play in their state-of-the-art new stadium, "Fenway Park". Obviously at this point the name "Braves" wouldn't be a good marketing tie-in, so they chose "Redskins". Red Sox, Redskins. And they could keep their logo. There were complaints even at the time.

Before anybody says anything along these lines: William Henry "Lone Star" Dietz, while one of the greatest football coaches in US history and justly a recent inductee into the Football Hall of Fame, was not Native American. The question of "who is and isn't Indian" is thorny, but the National Congress of American Indians, who at least in principle actually gets to adjudicate this question (on advisement from the various national councils), has ruled the answer is definitively "no".

The name "Redskins" was chosen as an ad-hoc marketing gimmick for a particular commercial relationship between the Redskins and the Red Sox that hasn't been operative for almost 80 years now. The rivalry with the Dallas Cowboys postdates the naming by three decades. (Ironically, then-Redskins-owner George Preston Marshall was the most vocal opponent of the NFL expansion that led to the creation of the Cowboys, although that rivalry wound up being the most lucrative in American sports history.) It was not an attempt to honor Native Americans. It wasn't even an intentional attempt to slur them. It was just an attempt to tie in marketing efforts with their landlords.

The name was changed for marketing reasons once; it should be again. However, it will not be as long as it remains profitable to its sociopathic owner, Dan Snyder. I find it incredibly troubling that between Marshall and Snyder, I honestly can't decide which one is a worse person. And Marshall left money in his will with the stipulation that it can't ever be used for any racially-integrated charity.

I am a die-hard fan of Washington DC football, and I don't use my own team's name. I love football. I think (properly managed, particularly along the lines of Green Bay) it's an economic boon, as well as a great chance to see athletic excellence. It was also a key way a lot of my friends could pay for college (I grew up in the SEC). I'm going to leave the head injury issue aside for a second, (though that needs to be addressed, yesterday) because that's somewhat tangential here. I just feel the need to keep making this point:

The name "Redskins" was chosen because of a commercial relationship with the "Red Sox", in a time when sensitivity about racial slurs was scandalously less than it is now. That is what it is. But the past does not excuse the present. I love this team and cheer for this team, and wish they had a name I could use when they cheer for them. The name is younger than the team. The name is older than the lucrative rivalry (and the alluringly appropriate "Bandits", as in "Beltway Bandits", works just as well against "Cowboys", as does "Rustlers", and for that matter as does "Federals" or "Marshals&quot . But I also have trouble believing that if we changed the name even to something unrelated that the rivalry would disappear, since we're still both in the NFC East and the Eagles-Giants rivalry is almost as longstanding (and frankly probably more athletically realistic).

But let's even say that a renaming would destroy the rivalry. Guess what? Dallas was 8-8 this season. Washington was 3-13. That's no longer a rivalry. Washington's football team has been too comfortable for too long, and hasn't had to produce the kind of results a professional sports organization in any sane system would be called upon to produce.

Yes, obviously in any league there will be winners and losers, but when a team with one of the largest revenue streams in the league can't at least consistently deliver a winning season, something is broken. 5 of Washington's last 22 seasons have been winning. Think about that.

Hell, for that matter, don't rename the team: dissolve it. Have the rest of the League pay Snyder out, ban him from ever owning a football team again, and reconstitute a team in either DC or the Virginia or MD suburbs (I prefer DC; and for that matter I prefer "The DC Federals" or "The DC Bullets", which I think our basketball team should go back to).

So what's the real answer? Honestly, I think English "football" (soccer) has it right: send the two worst teams down to the minor leagues and promote the two best minor league teams. Unfortunately there are essentially no gridiron football minor leagues. (Side note: there is an active and amazing women's gridiron football league that is not an exploitative "chicks in lingerie" thing, the Women's Football Alliance, home of the exceptional DC Divas.) But we need some way to cycle out teams that are not competitive and cycle in teams who are. And we also need a way to engage smaller markets. Green Bay proves pretty decisively this can work (they are statistically the best team over the history of the NFL).

Anyways, the larger fact is that the mid-Atlantic and the deep south need more football teams, and the NFL should adjust from its mid-20th-century viewpoint to accommodate this. Hell, Hampton Roads/VA Beach probably should have a team, as does Birmingham.

I believe in cheering for one's team (this, incidentally, is apparently a psychological signification of "conservatism", which may reinforce several people's opinions of me here). But sports teams should not have names that cause people pain. My last American Legion post in the states (and, my God, living abroad, I miss the legion posts...) was in DC, and our adjutant was from the Creek nation and simply told us there would be no "Redskins" paraphernalia in the post under his watch. We could still cheer for the team, but he would not countenance racism like that at his post (the adjutant is basically the officer who fixes things that go wrong, whatever they are, so his opinion carries beaucoup weight).

Anyways, sorry, just had to get that sports geekery off my chest, because there's so much simply factually wrong crap being spread out there by Snyder apologists.