What’s in a name?
That’s what owner Dan Snyder and the Washington Football Team brain trust have been trying to figure out for the past 19 months while looking for a permanent name for the franchise.
In announcing the process of conducting a “thorough review" of the football team's name, it was head coach Ron Rivera, on the job for just a few weeks in July 2020, who was the first to mention a possible military-tie in for the team’s new name: “This issue is of personal importance to me and I look forward to working closely with Dan Snyder to make sure we continue the mission of honoring and supporting Native Americans and our Military.”
If the team switches to the Commanders – which was announced as the team’s new name – which is a name with an obvious head-nod to the U.S. military, what does that mean to people who have served in the U.S. military?
“I’ve been calling long enough, so you know I’ve been in the military. Been in for 16 years, served and went to Iraq, all that, still serving. I, as a 16-year vet, can not rally behind the Commanders, I’m sorry,” AP in Greenbelt told The Team 980’s Reese Waters.
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“I’ve had good commanders, and I’ve had bad ones. And I’m just like, look, I do not need to be reminded about the military when I’ve been reminded about it for 16 years of my life,” AP continued. “Like one break I get from the military is watching sports, is being at home, sitting on my couch with a beer, or some Crown Royal or whatever, and watching sports. That’s where I get my release. That’s where I get my break, that’s where I’m not reminded about my service to this country.
“Not to say, I’m not a proud soldier, because I am, that’s why I’m still in. But I don’t want to be reminded about it with my sports team.”
AP added he loves the football team and will still “cheer for the team regardless of the name.”
David Harrison, an Army veteran of 20 years, says when he hears the word Commanders as a potential football team name, it doesn’t resonate with him.
“A commander is someone who sends other people to do the dirty work, the fighting, whatever it is that you want to call it,” Harrison said this week on The Team 980. “Not because of any negative characteristic, just because that’s the job.
“So when I look at, ‘the Washington Commanders take the field,’ I’m basically looking at a bunch of people who are going to now make somebody else do the fighting and the winning and that’s not what a football team is. [A football team is] the team in the trenches throwing the bombs, etc. etc. So it just doesn’t resonate with me as a military person.”
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Harrison explains commanders are more management, than common soldier.
“You’re gonna find commanders in an office, and that’s just their role,” Harrison told Waters. “And commanders in the military have a very valuable position, they're critical to the infrastructure of everything that happens. And I've served with some really amazing commanders that I would go to war with every single day.
“But the bottom line is when you go to war with a commander, that commander is typically going to be sitting in an office where they have command and control of the entire mission and everything that’s going on, they have total oversight. They’re a manager, that’s what their role is.”
When asked if he could veto one name, Harrison was quick to answer: “It’s Commanders.”
But when asked what names they liked, both AP and Harrison, pointed to Red Tails as the name they liked.
Follow @BenKrimmel and @Team980 for the latest.
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