With a sale of the Commanders becoming more and more inevitable, there are plenty of questions as to what the organization will look like under new management.
One big question becomes whether the organization will once again rebrand.
After ditching a nickname that, through the evolution of society and language, had become a dictionary-defined slur, the football operation spent two years as the “Washington Football Team,” mainly because owner Daniel Snyder didn’t have a Plan B ready to go, from a copyright and trademark standpoint. Eventually came the name “Commanders,” adopted in 2022 and used for last season and the next one.
And maybe more. Maybe new ownership will choose to keep it. But it’s also easy to envision the possibility of the next owner choosing to sever any and all ties back to Snyder, starting with the name of the team.
Recently, team president Jason Wright expressed a belief that a new owner won’t rebrand the team, because none of the groups with whom he has met have mentioned the possibility. The fact that prospective owners haven’t shared such plans with Wright doesn’t mean much. After all, he could be one of the first employees to go once a new owner takes over.
If it’s ever going to happen, it makes sense to do it before the new name takes full root. And the new owner will get no complaints at all from a fan base that will be so euphoric, at least in the first decade or so, to be done with Snyder that they’ll accept any and all changes that could be made, up to and including playing the games at a middle-school field and changing the name of the team to the Washington Atomic Wedgies.
