Football

Activists have spent decades pressuring professional sports leagues, college programs and high schools to abandon Native American names and imagery for their teams.The first domino fell in 1970, when the University of Oklahoma retired its mascot, a Native American named “Little Red.” Over the ensuing years, Division I schools like Stanford, Dartmouth and Syracuse — and thousands of high schools — dropped their mascots or changed their names.But the biggest lightning rod was always Washington’s N.F.L. team, the “Redskins.” Its owner has been recalcitrant about changing the name of one of football’s oldest and most valuable franchises, and its name does not just appropriate Native American imagery, as do the N.F.L.’s Kansas City Chiefs or N.H.L.’s Chicago Blackhawks, but is considered by many to be a slur itself.On Monday, those at the forefront of the fight finally won. The Washington team announced that it would soon drop its 87-year-old name and its logo, for a yet-to-be revealed new name, becoming the oldest N.F.L. team name to ever be retired.“This is part of a much larger movement going on that Indigenous peoples are situated in, and it is a long time coming,” said Carla Fredericks, the director of First Peoples Worldwide and a longtime advocate against Native American mascots. “I think that for anyone that is associated with the movement for racial justice this is a significant gain, and this is a significant moment.”That movement for racial justice is, in part, propelled by the Black Lives Matter movement, and the widespread re-examination of systemic racism — not to mention statues, flags, symbols and mascots that celebrate racist history — that was prompted by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. On Monday the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights advocacy group, said in a statement that it “welcomed the decision of the Washington, D.C., football team to drop the racist ‘Redskins’ name.”But despite the collective power of formerly disparate movements, not to mention the half-century of activist pressure, what finally triggered the name change was not an acknowledgment of Native people’s concerns or a rumination on the name’s offense. Instead, Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington N.F.L. team for more than 20 years, was seemingly driven by a simpler motivation: money.In a letter sent to the Washington team dated July 2, FedEx, which pays about $8 million a year for the naming rights to the team’s stadium in Landover, Md., said if the name wasn’t changed, it would back out of the deal. The threat carried extra weight, considering that Frederick Smith, the chairman of FedEx, owns a minority stake in the team, which he had been quietly attempting to sell for many months.FedEx was among several corporate heavyweights to take action to convince Snyder to act on the name. Bank of America, Pepsi, Nike and other N.F.L. sponsors issued statements asking the team for a name change, and retailers like Walmart, Amazon and Target stopped selling the team’s merchandise on their websites and in their stores.Donald Dell, who represented Snyder in brokering the $205 million, 27-year stadium naming rights deal in 1999, said: “He saw, if Fred turned on it and didn’t want to stay involved in the stadium and the name, that was a really big point to him, and others would follow. And they did.”Suzan Shown Harjo, who was formerly the executive director of the National Congress of American Indians and is the most well-known activist against Native American team names, was cleareyed about the order of concerns for Snyder.“He had to satisfy first, his FedEx and other managerial and promotion partners,” she said. “Second his merch partners. Third, the franchise’s 40 percent owners.” But ultimately the credit belongs to “the longevity and persistence of our no-mascot movement,” Harjo said.Now that their biggest target has budged, activists have pushed for much work to ensue in Washington.Earlier this month, a letter, signed by nearly every national American Indian group and representatives from over 150 federally recognized tribes, was sent to N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell. The letter made several demands, including that he “require the Washington team to immediately cease the use of racialized Native American branding,” which seems on the verge of happening.But it isn’t yet clear if one of the letter’s asks, that the team’s burgundy and gold color scheme be changed, will be acceded to.“One thing we have seen where there have been shifts like this in the past is there can be a faction of fans that refuse to retreat from stereotypical names and logos, and not changing the colors would allow for that behavior,” Fredericks said. Changing the name and logo doesn’t mean as much if tens of thousands of fans stream into FedEx Field wearing their old team gear.Fans have long worn headdresses, war paint and other stereotypical imagery to Washington games, and sung along to the team’s fight song, “Hail to the Redskins,” which contains references to “braves on the warpath” and is played after touchdowns at home games. The team may get to delay making those decisions if fans are not allowed to attend games this season because of the coronavirus.Fredericks referred to the campaign to change the name of the University of North Dakota athletic teams, the Fighting Sioux. In 2015, the nickname was changed to the Fighting Hawks, but the green color scheme endured. “There is still an opportunity for some further leadership here by the team.”Fifty years is a long time to be fighting for one issue, to get so far but also to have so far to go. The Chiefs, Blackhawks, and Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves still exist, and more than 2,200 high schools still use some form of Native American imagery. Those that have been in this fight made it clear that it was always about the future, never the present or past.“A lot of the work that she did was the attempt to create an environment that was better than the one I grew up in,” said Duke Ray Harjo II, who grew up in the Washington area, about his mother Suzan.For Fredericks, the goal goes beyond the next generation. “A lot of us have a philosophy that the work we do is not only for the current moment, but for seven generations in the future. A lot of decision making is taken with that value in place.“We are not going to give up ensuring that our humanity and dignity be respected.” More

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

By the time they take the field this fall — that’s assuming there is a season given the coronavirus pandemic — the National Football League team in Washington D.C. might have a new nickname. “In light of recent events around our country and feedback from our community, the Washington Redskins are announcing the team will […] More