While they haven’t yet played a game under their new name, the Washington Commanders are already having an issue with part of their new identity.
Don’t get your hopes up if you don’t like the new name. That’s not changing. The team does want to change part of its crest and, as reported by Michael Phillips of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is in a dispute with the NFL over it.
At the bottom of the crest, Washington’s five championship years are listed. The first two — 1937 and 1942 — came well before the Super Bowl era. The final three years listed on the crest don’t look quite right. Washington has 1983, 1988 and 1992 listed. The champions in those seasons were the Los Angeles Raiders (as they were then known), the San Francisco 49ers, and the Dallas Cowboys. So, did the Commanders just make a huge mistake? Yes and no.
Every Super Bowl has been played in either January or February. The Super Bowls that were played in January of 1983, 1988 and 1992 were won by Washington. So from that respect, the Commanders are correct. But the generally-followed practice among NFL teams is to recognize the year of the season. In Washington’s case, those years are 1982, 1987 and 1991.
It makes sense. The 1982 strike forced the league to adjust its regular schedule. So, the final game of that regular season was played on January 2, 1983. But the entirety of the 1987 and 1991 regular seasons were played within those calendar years. In some seasons (though none of Washington’s championship years), every game through the conference championship was played before New Year’s Day.
The Commanders heard the criticism and are trying to tweak it. But that’s hit a snag.
“According to a source, the team tweaked the crest, changing the years to the Roman numerals of the game,” Phillips reported. “However, all changes to logos and team identities have to be presented to the NFL for league approval, and the NFL declined Washington’s request. That’s left Washington in limbo as it works on how best to present its new merchandise to fans.”
Given the issues facing the club (which could conceivably result in owner Dan Snyder being removed), is this really a big deal? There are bigger fish to fry. But this shows how poorly things are done in the Washington front office.
It was July of 2020 that Washington announced it was moving on from the Redskins name. In February of 2022, we officially learned what the new team name would be. After nearly two full years of build (and decades of controversy before it), the new name was always going to be underwhelming. But if there was one positive to come from such a long process, it seemed to be that Washington would have plenty of time to nail down issues like this.
People may not like the name. You can’t control someone’s taste. But can you at least control something simple like getting the correct years right? In that two-year window, did nobody in this organization think to look at how every other team in the league claims its championships? The new name was never going to be easy. This part of the process should have been.
And in the grand scheme of things, it’s not minor. It involves the merchandise your fans are buying. Now, months before the Commanders will play their first game under that new name, there’s already a potential issue with that merchandise. It doesn’t quite measure up to the other issues facing this franchise. But that doesn’t make this miss any easier to accept.
