Raphael Stevens

The N.F.L. team in Washington announced Monday that it would drop its logo and “Redskins” from its name, yielding to sponsors and Native American activists who have long criticized it as a racist slur.The team, one of the oldest in the N.F.L., did not announce a new name on Monday as it continues a review to evaluate possibilities.“Today, we are announcing we will be retiring the Redskins name and logo upon completion of this review,’’ the statement said.The decision to abandon the name after nearly 90 years came just 10 days after the team said it would reconsider the name. The team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, had stridently defended the name for years.Snyder said the new name, when it was chosen, would “take into account not only the proud tradition and history of the franchise but also input from our alumni, the organization, sponsors, the National Football League and the local community it is proud to represent on and off the field.”The decision to change the name by one of the country’s most valuable professional sports franchises comes after hundreds of universities and schools have abandoned team names and mascots with Native American symbols. Professional teams like the Kansas City Chiefs of the N.F.L. and the Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball have resisted changing their names and logos, though the Indians dropped the mascot Chief Wahoo last year and recently said they would review the team name.Washington, though, has been in the spotlight, in part because of its long and checkered history. The team’s founder, George Preston Marshall, named the team the Redskins, which he considered a nod to bravery. Marshall was the last owner in the N.F.L. to sign a Black player, and only under pressure from the federal government.Last month, Washington removed Marshall’s name from inside its stadium and at its training facility. The city of Washington also removed a tribute to him that was in front of the team’s old home, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium.Snyder’s shift from total resistance to grudging acceptance in just a few weeks has been remarkably swift in a league that often moves forward deliberately, if at all. But after the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody in late May, businesses of all kinds have come under pressure to increase diversity and change policies to emphasize antiracism.At the end of June, some of the team’s biggest sponsors, including FedEx, Nike and Pepsi, received letters from investors who called on the companies to cut their ties with the team. On July 2, FedEx, which pays about $8 million a year to have its name on the team’s stadium in Landover, Md., told the Redskins in a letter that if the team did not change its name it would ask that its name be taken off the stadium at the end of the coming season.The next day, July 3, the team said a change was likely to be forthcoming, when it began a “thorough review of the team’s name,” after weeks of discussions with the N.F.L. Nike stopped selling the team’s gear, and Walmart, Target and Amazon — some of the country’s largest retailers — said they would stop selling Washington’s merchandise on their websites.The boycott came after decades of pressure on the team to change the name, which many people (and some dictionaries) consider to be offensive. In 1992, Native American activists began a campaign to compel the United States Patent and Trademark Office to cancel the team’s “redskin” trademark, a legal battle that the Supreme Court ended in 2017, finding that even potentially disparaging trademarks are protected by the First Amendment.In 2014, 50 U.S. senators sent a letter to the N.F.L. urging the league to step in. And across the country, waves of universities and schools abandoned mascots and sports team names with Native American symbols.But more than 2,200 high schools still use Native American imagery in their names or mascots, according to a database of mascot names.All the while, Snyder, who purchased the Washington team in 1999, remained steadfast. “We will never change the name of the team,” he said in 2013, a stance he maintained even in the face of pushback from activists, politicians and some fans.What finally changed was, seemingly, wider American society around the team. After the death of Floyd, there has been a widespread reconsideration of statues, flags, symbols and mascots considered to be racist or celebrating racist history.Now that the team has let go of its current name, it will have to find a replacement, a process that requires navigating trademarks and the league’s many licensing deals with partners and can often take years. Teams also want to use the name, logo and even new colors to forge a new identity, a process that can include speaking with sponsors, fans and other constituents.Ed O’Hara, who has designed team names and logos for more than 30 years, said that dropping the existing name first will buy time for Snyder to find a replacement. The team’s existing colors are unique and powerful, he said. A good name, though, should have an easy connection to a mascot, be easy to say and be connected to the market where the team plays.“The name is always the hardest part,” he said. “You get one chance to make this right for the next 80 years.” More

Two former N.F.L. players have sued the league, the players’ union and the medical board those institutions jointly control for agreeing to reduce the disability payments they received for life by tens of thousands of dollars a year.The complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Friday, stems from a provision in the 10-year collective bargaining agreement that the league and union ratified in March. In the deal, both sides agreed to cut disability payments to 400 or so former players whose doctors have determined they are unable to work.The players now receive up to $138,000 a year. That amount will be reduced by the value of their Social Security disability benefits, which amounts to $2,000 or more per month, starting in January.The decision to cut payments to some of the league’s most vulnerable former players has elicited outrage. Wives caring for former players on disability have criticized the N.F.L. on social media. Some members of the union’s executive committee said they did not fully recognize the implications of what they agreed to in the new labor deal. Active players have spoken up, too, most notably Eric Reid, a free-agent safety who said the union turned its back on the former players, a decision he called “disgraceful.”In May, the N.F.L. Players Association said it planned to review the provisions in the new collective bargaining agreement that pertain to the reduction in benefits to permanently disabled former players.Cleveland Browns center J.C. Tretter, the N.F.L.P.A. president, who was elected in March, said in his monthly newsletter that the union’s 11-member executive committee and leaders from among retired players would re-examine changes to the Total and Permanent Disability benefit “to fulfill our obligation to all of our members.” He also said the group had “a responsibility to review issues where we have fallen short.”Two months later, the union has not announced any results from that review.Tretter and other members of the executive committee will also reconsider a provision of the new labor agreement that allows only N.F.L. disability plan doctors to determine if a former player qualifies for benefits. For now, if a player is approved to receive Social Security disability benefits by an outside doctor, N.F.L. plan administrators will accept that diagnosis and release monthly benefits. This provision, which will be phased out under the agreement, could affect hundreds of additional players in the future.The union, the league and their disability review board will now have to consider the federal lawsuit brought by Aveion Cason, a running back who played for eight seasons, mostly in Detroit and St. Louis, and Donald Vincent Majkowski, a quarterback who spent 10 years with the Packers, Colts and Lions.In their suit, they note that Commissioner Roger Goodell told Congress in 2007 that if a player was approved for Social Security disability payments, then the N.F.L. would honor that diagnosis. The new labor deal reverses that promise.Cason and Majkowski also contend that language in the labor agreement was altered after it was signed, to the detriment of the former players who rely on disability payments. They say that the disability benefits that retired players receive were “for life.”“It is elemental in sports that you do not change the rules of the game in the middle of the game,” Paul Secunda, a lawyer for the players, said in a statement. “Yet that is exactly what the N.F.L. and N.F.L.P.A. did to its most vulnerable members.”The league did not respond to requests for comment, and the union said it would not comment at the moment. More

The star wide receiver DeSean Jackson apologized Tuesday for sharing an anti-Semitic quotation attributed to Hitler, after that and other social media posts were widely condemned, including by his team. In the series of posts, made on Instagram over the weekend, Jackson also praised Louis Farrakhan, a minister notorious for his history of anti-Semitic comments. […] More

Colin Kaepernick and the Walt Disney Company announced a production deal Monday that will see the activist quarterback produce “scripted and unscripted stories that explore race, social injustice and the quest for equity” for the media giant’s various platforms, including ESPN. Work has already begun on a documentary series that will explore the last five […] More

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes, one of the N.F.L.’s biggest stars, has signed a 10-year contract extension with the Kansas City Chiefs, according to a person familiar with the terms of the deal who was not authorized to speak for the team. The big payday, worth up to half a billion dollars, for Mahomes, who at 24 […] More

The battle over the name of the Washington, D.C., N.F.L. team deepened on Monday as President Trump defended it even as more retailers said they would pull the team’s gear off their shelves. “They name teams out of STRENGTH, not weakness, but now the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, two fabled sports franchises, look like […] More