Washington Football Team to announce new name

The Washington Football Team (WFT) will announce its new name next week. The team will also reveal its new burgundy-and-gold uniforms and helmets.

Last fall, the team’s co-chief-executive-officer, Tanya Snyder, indicated that there were eight finalists for the new name. Last month, however, the team president, Jason Wright, said the team had ruled out the names RedWolves or Wolves because of legal problems surrounding those names.

That’s too bad, because I liked the name RedWolves.

It appears that seven possible names are still in the running: Armada, Brigade, Commanders, Defenders, Presidents, RedHogs and the team’s current name, the Washington Football Team.

My favorite football team names are the ones that tell you something about the team’s city and its history. For example, the New England team is called the Patriots because the people in the Boston area were active during the American Revolution (1776 to 1783). The Pittsburgh team is called the Steelers because Pittsburgh has been the home of many steel mills.

Four of the possible names — Armada, Brigade, Commanders and Defenders — are military terms. Lots of people who serve in the military live in the Washington area. The Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Defense Department, is in Northern Virginia.

An armada is a fleet of warships. But Washington is more than 100 miles from the ocean. A brigade is a group of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers. A National Football League team has only 53 players on its roster and only 46 suit up for a game. That doesn’t sound like a brigade to me.

Frankly, I’m not in love with any of the military names. I guess if I had to choose one, I would choose Defenders. Sometimes we need service members to defend our country.

I know people think of the president when they think of Washington, but is Presidents a good name for a football team? Lots of football team names sound tough and almost scary: Giants, Bears, Panthers, Vikings, Buccaneers, Raiders. When I think of our recent presidents, I don’t think of folks playing rock’em, sock’em football. President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump are grandfathers. Even Gerald Ford — who played on the University of Michigan national championship football teams in the 1930s — was well past his playing years when he became president in 1974.

That leaves RedHogs and the Washington Football Team. There’s no way the Washington Football Team has gone to all this trouble and expense just to keep the name. Anyway, that name sounds more like a European soccer team than an American football team.

RedHogs? No NFL team is named after a pig. Birds, big animals, people, yes. But pigs? Sorry, no way.

My guess is that the new name will be the Washington Commanders. I’m not in love with it, but the name sounds like one for a winning team and it’s certainly better than the old one.

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