By Jerry Wilson
August 5, 2021
-Red State
The Washington Football Team has decided to ban fans from wearing Native American garb, facepaint, and the like from home games this upcoming season. The move comes as part of the WFT’s ongoing rebranding effort which presumably will come to fruition next year when the team announces its new name, currently rumored to be Washington-Anything-We-Call-Ourselves-Has-Got-To-Be-Better-Than-What-Cleveland’s-Baseball-Team-Came-Up-With.
The move is viewed in certain circles as being rather redundant, as the way the team has performed in recent years has pretty much prohibited fans from attending games out of sheer embarrassment at possibly being associated with the franchise. However, the WFT did win the NFC East last season with a sparking 7-9 record, this leading to the present frenzy of ticket sales as the team rolls out this year’s marketing slogan “.500 or bust.”
WFT’s stated goal in prohibiting any in-stadium visual references to what it used to be called is not unlike when, in 2020, NASCAR banned the Confederate flag from being flown or displayed by fans at races. The idea presumably is to avoid offending people at the expense of offending people who are being told to not do certain things so as to avoid offending people. It doesn’t matter if you offend people by prohibiting them from doing something that might offend people, because there’s no offense in that offense. Just like the WFT having no offense. Which is offensive to WFT fans. But I digress.
The thing most WFT fans (yes, the team still has some) find actually offensive is how the rebranding effort is now in its second year. The team has already announced it won’t be changing its color scheme. So why is it taking so long to announce a new name and logo? There is no way Daniel Snyder and company haven’t long decided what things will look like. Why have they chosen to drag it out? Waiting for a mad rush on WFT beanies? Although given how the team is exploring locations for a new stadium including inside D.C. itself, should this option be chosen, maybe Kevlar vests in team colors would be a better bet at the souvenir stands. (Sorry, digressing again.)
The whole matter reeks of wokey woke overkill. Don’t want anyone to remember what your team name was for decades? Fine. Why stop at prohibiting headdresses and such? Ban people from wearing anything with the old name and/or logo. If you’re serious about not offending anyone, go whole hog. Just like the crazies in the endzone at FedEx Field who wear hog masks, although it probably won’t be long until those are banned as well so as to not offend people whose religion prohibits eating pork.
