BREAKING: Dan Snyder has officially sold the Washington Commanders, per multiple reports. pic.twitter.com/zMQPX2W0wy— Stadium (@Stadium) May 12, 2023
Statement from Commanders Co-Owners Tanya and Dan Snyder: "We are very pleased to have reached an agreement for the sale of the Commanders franchise with Josh Harris, an area native, and his impressive group of partners. We look forward to the prompt completion of this...— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) May 12, 2023
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Now I can be proud to support the WFT again. Good riddance Danny Boy and your ill-gotten gains.
And football fans of all teams rejoice.
Frodoitsdone.gif
I could give a shit about the NFL, but
What a world class a-hole.
Edit: also it shouldn't be legal to own a DC and Philly franchise. Philly should kick Harris to the curb.
He also owns the New Jersey Devils. He wants all of I-95
could he buy the Flyers too...
Not if he still owns the devils
A real titan of the mid-atlantic
This.gif
These are world class comments
Was the peak of his tenure the south park episode he starred in?
I was 12 when I moved to NoVa from Houston, and immediately fell in love with the Redskins. It was amazing to be a fan of one of the best teams in all of sports. I was 15 when I experienced our first Super Bowl win, and 18 during the magical 1991 season.
I have a message for Dan Snyder: I'm 50 now, you fucking loser!
It's our superbowl! This is the most excited I've been about the Washington football team in a very long time.
Not a Washington fan but I hope the new owners do an immediate rebrand. Commanders is a crappy name and their logo/jerseys suck too. Go back to the proper burgundy and gold and call it whatever (Red Hogs, Red Wolves, Red Stallions, WFT, anything else). Just dump that Commanders shitfest.
I've been calling them the Comanches for the past year. Can use the same old logo and jerseys, honoring a Native American tribe that was probably the most feared of them all.
I think the colors and the main W logo are fine, but literally everything else about the franchise needs a rebrand. It such a stale, hollow, corporate branding right now that feels so incredibly forced in the grand scheme
Yes, they need to wash themselves of everything Dan. Fire everybody. New stadium. The old logo was great branding and would be smart for many of us fans who have left, if they call them the Comanches, which I'm sure they won't. The current W logo sucks in my opinion. The current name really sucks. Hogs or Comanches, that's my preferred name request.
I think the burgundy is fine but the yellow could afford to be darkened and made a little more red. Do that, and I think the colors are perfect
Haha alright. I'd just prefer they go back to the old jerseys and the original burgundy and gold but that minor detail won't make or break someone's fandom.
Also, I'm not the one throwing you DVs.
lol no worries, someone has been doing this for the better part of a year now.
that must be exhausting...talk about living rent free
The mob forced the Cleveland Indians to change their name. The mob will eventually get the Kansas City Chiefs and the Atlanta Braves too. Probrably relatively soon. They aren't naming the team anything close to the Comanches. lol. FSU will be the last sports name remotely related to Native Americans. That too will be changed in the next 30 years max. For anyone offended or triggered... the mob 100% is the reason Cleveland and Washington changed their team names.
why would the Mafia have a vested interest in getting franchises with Native American team names to change
You know what I mean my man
and i truly believe that way deep down, you know what i mean too
DC means the "liberal leftist mob" and GGC means "don't f*cking bring politics onto this board."
There, done and done.
I hated WFT at first, but now I kinda like it. Kinda like how soccer teams are just 'United' or 'FC'
I wish they had gone with Red Wolves - that would have been cool
I will become a lifelong fan and buy all the merchandise if they become the Hogs or Red Hogs
For your all's sake I hope this is like when Jeff Lurie bought the Eagles and suddenly they started acting like an actual football organization and not when David Tepper bought the Panthers and proved he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.
At least (hopefully) in this case the purchaser already has experience owning two professional franchises, whereas the Panthers were Tepper's first in any sport...hopefully that translates to not running the team even further into the ground than they already were!
And Redskins fans everywhere are rejoicing... I listened to a podcast the other day (can't remember which one) that talked about how Dan Snyder might be the worst sports franchise owner in the history of sports, not just in the history of the NFL.
And I agree!! Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya Danny boy.
If ever there was a time to let that door smack someone on the way out....
I figure there are about 6 billion rea$on$ why Snyder doesn't care about his legacy.
Such a slap to everyone's face when he claimed to be the world's biggest Skins fan (his words at the time like 10 years ago)...i've hated him with a passion ever since. And to think, they weren't a complete laughingstock back then like they are now. Fuck Dan Snyder.
I vowed not to give Dan Snyder a penny of my money when I was 15 and Danny traded for Deion Sanders. 23 years later and I held to my vow.
I wish this had happened when I cared.
Die Hard Skins fan growing up, a few years ago I gave away most of my memorabilia, albeit to a kid with cancer. I've still got a few pieces of it left. My uncle asked in 2016 if I wanted the family season tix, which we have had since my grandfather emigrated here in the 1960s. I said hell no.
This will probably make me just a tad bit more of a fan of the team again. A new name rebrand to Comanches or Hogs would really help. Still wouldn't pay to go to a game again though
Me too...I had to find a new team just for something to do on Sunday so I split between the Steelers (my brother is a fan as well as some of my friends) and Patriots (a large chunk of my family is from Boston). Well...I'm back, baby!
I like the Hogs team name-a nod to the glory days.
Isn't it not official until the other owners vote on it?
Edit: Not trying to rain on the parade here, just quibbling with the wording of "...has officially sold...". Shoddy journalism, IM(ns)HO.
They voted yesterday- unanimous
fyi you are replying to a comment that is two months old
They will now have to get a new name because the commandos trademark was just rejected by the court.
it is such a bland name. It was somehow more generic than Washington Football Team.
... rejected by the USPTO. They can overcome the rejection via arguments and/or adjustments to the class of merchandise in a response sent back to the USPTO. If that doesn't succeed, they can keep trying to respond to the USPTO until they find a winning rebuttal or they have an opportunity to overturn the rejection in court.
This rejection is par for the course when pursuing a trademark. There is a duty of the USPTO to ensure that the grant of a trademark is valid and fair, so they typically reject any marks that have any minor "likelihood of confusion." Based on the marks that are cited as similar, it seems very likely that they would be able to overcome the rejection with a simple response.
This rejection so typical that it should not have made the news. But with the hype surrounding the rebranding and unfamiliarity with the trademark granting process, the various media outlets and social media picked up on it and made a story out of nothing.
And how many times did they lose trademark protection on "Redskins" and never had to change?
The only difference here is that I would prefer to move on from Commanders.
If Josh wants to change it this is the opportunity.
What are odds we see name change with this? Erase the entire Snyder era?
But man was this still a solid investment for Snyder likely getting around 4.5 billion after paying NFL penalty, paying off debt and loans etc.
If I were betting, I wouldn't put money on another name change in the short term. There's too many other pressing issues, like a new stadium.
It all boils down to money, though, and if the NFL thinks that a new name will increase their revenue, then they'll go for it. We're never going back to Redskins, but there's still plenty of names better than Commanders.
Was it a good investment? Sure, he made some money. But he could have put that money in the S&P and gotten a decent return.
Instead, he took the football equivalent of a beautiful old car speeding down the road, trying to hit every darn pothole. Then he crashed, turning it into nothing but a shell of its former self, and then walked away with the insurance payment.
Yeah, he got some money in the end, but the Synder name will always be hated in the DC area.
As they say, he knew the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
"But he could have put that money in the S&P and gotten a decent return." - Can I pay you to re-invest my 401K? :)
I'm not sure you understand how much money a billion dollars is if you think 4 billion return is "some" money and that a 20 year ROI in the S&P is equivalent.
Though in fairness a billion dollars is beyond comprehension for most of us, I would think.
I have read that his profit from the sale is in the $4B range, when factoring in his fine, debts, minority owners stakes etc.
If he'd invested the $800M he bought the team for in 1999 and got a 7% return rate, he'd have $4.06B, and wouldn't have ruined the only thing on the planet that he cares about.
I'm not happy that he's walking away with a ton of money but I'm pretty sure it's going to eat at him for the rest of his life that he ruined the franchise and is one of the most hated people in the DC area. Let him lose sleep on that forever, and may the orcas sink his yacht.
Mark Davis... Hi Roger, can I borrow 200 million dollars to help build a stadium in oakland? Fuck you mark. fuck off. Hi Roger, Mark again...Can I share the Rams stadium with Kroenke? Fuck you mark, fuck off. Hi Roger, Mark again.... I found mostly private funding for a top notch domed stadium on the vegas strip. Can I move? Fuck you again Mark, and you can move, sure.. you pay the rest of us 700 million in relocation fees. - Us- not the city of Oakland. You see, we use that to cheat taxes. yet these NFL teams have billions and billions of equity. Its a fucking joke. And watch Harris force the tax payers to build him his new dome.
He has a point the Raiders have gotten screwed over by the NFL at every opportunity the NFL can. Locations (repeatedly), leaked emails from the NFL that only incriminate the Raiders?
Money Talks. Harris won't want to pay the millions it will cost to pursue copyrights, buy the old gear back from Nike, etc etc. Even billionaires don't like spending money. Doubt the name will change for years and years if at all.
Magic Johnson has said in an interview that pretty much anything is on the table, including a name change and rebranding. Also said it wouldn't be until after this season though.
Of course it's on the table, but it's not in a vacuum. I think the most likely chance of getting a new name would be if the timing lines up with a new stadium and/or the Nike contract.
And also how much they think they can get from the fanbase. It's been an interesting couple of years for merchandizing. I haven't wanted to buy anything related to the team since before Redskins got dropped for a variety of reasons -- I didn't want any of the temporary "Football Team" nonsense, then I didn't want any money going to Dan Snyder. Now that he's gone, I'm willing to spend. Now only do I not have any Commanders gear, but some of my Redskins gear is either starting to wear out or needs to be retired anyway.
So the team could see an increase in merchandise sales starting now. And of course, they can get us to all buy the stuff again if they give the team a good name.
If I considered buying "Washington Football Team " gear for a second - which I never seriously did, that consideration was 1000% gone when I found out Nike used a font and size of the WFT logos on official gear that was 60% the size of all of the other logos. The minimum that the human eye could see. Such petty bastards. Like it was a secret. I -think- the commanders logos are the same size as the giants, etc on coaches shirts, sideline gear etc- I think.
Of course, right as I type all that up, this article hits the internet:
https://commanderswire.usatoday.com/2023/07/21/washington-commanders-nam...
Summing it up, it might be worth it to Harris and Co. to spend the money on a rebrand to distance themselves as far away from Snyder as possible.
Such a great day yesterday. I thought it couldn't get any better after the sale was approved, but then seeing Snyder get fined 60 million for sexual harassment was really the cherry on top.
What makes you think he is actually going to pay? The NFL has no hold on him anymore.
It comes out before he gets the money from the sale.
I just remember the coaches and owners laughing at Gruden when he paid his fine. Turns out he was the only coach to actually pay his fines. Most ignore them.
Gruden has sgruples.
I sat at my desk yesterday and cried a little as the news hit the radio.
24 years is a *long* time to spend being embarrassed of your favorite team.
Thank you Josh Harris, I hope you know how much this means to this region.
What a great day for DC sports. It still hasn't set in for me yet, and maybe that's because I broke up with the Skins several years ago. It would be great to see them come back to a winning tradition.
Change the name to the Hogs, or the Comanches. Hail to the Cheese!
Red wolves can keep the "R" as part of new logo.
Hogs would be good, but I want them to pay to use the rights for War Pigs. It's got alliteration and an awesome built-in pump up song.
The Comanche Nation is from the southern plains states (OK, TX, NM). Why would a team from the Mid-Atlantic region use that name? Just because the tribe name shares the "Com" is with "Commanders"?
I do think it would be cool to partner with local indigenous groups on a regionally appropriate name. It won't happen because I don't think that the ownership group would want to share any revenue with them to license a name, wants to avoid any potential issues, and would want to distance themselves the last regime.
You could go with the...
- Washington Chickahominy
- Washington Monacans
- Washington Nansemonds
- Washington Pamunkey
- Washington Rappahannocks
- Washington Mattaponi
And that's just from Virginia!
https://www.epa.gov/tribal/federally-recognized-tribes-epas-mid-atlantic...
It's a joke mostly that I came up with because it sounds "offensive" since some people were offended by Redskins, it starts with Com and sounds better than Commanders and it would be fun to say go "cheese." On the serious side, the old Redskins logo could still be used and the Comanches were the most feared Native American group. It honors them, doesn't degrade them. See Seminoles, Florida State.
To counter your point, why are the Titans named the the Titans? There are no Titans in Tennessee. I don't see any Giants in New York. Certainly no Lions in Detroit. Comanches would be a great name, in my opinion. But again, I'll take Redskins or Hogs as well, and that's about it. I'll probably never be the same fan I once was.
But you're more likely to see a Titan in Tennessee than an Oiler.
Sure, but my point is a perfect counter to his. What is a Titan? There aren't any of them.
They could have renamed the Oilers the Tennessee Tattoos, which is perfect, since when in TN you see so many outline tattoos of the state on rednecks there.
I don't get it
It's a Nissan Titan
Ahh, I thought it had something to do with all of the flags. I'm a Chevy guy myself
And to make it officially official, no take-backs . . .
Right on queue...
Comer Introduces Bill That Could Let DC Turn RFK Into Commander's Home
FTFY.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/cue-vs-queue-what-is-the-d...
goes back to corner, muttering to himself... "I knew it was cue."
For what it's worth: I met a young lady that works for or with the Washington football team. She said that a petition had been sign by over ten thousand native Americans asking that the team name to changed to an native American name.
The trouble is that I bet you could have another petition signed by another ten thousand native Americans asking that the team name NOT be changed to a native American name. Native Americans are not a monolith and it shouldn't be assumed that if some are offended then all of them are and that if some aren't that all of them aren't.
I think no matter what you do, someone is going to be unhappy. And there will always be evidence to support both sides of the argument. It's a fool's errand to try making the "right" decision. In reality, there is no "right" or "wrong" choice. Any choice is going to be viewed as "right" by some and "wrong" by others. It's all a matter of perspective
Best case is something like FSU where you partner with a nation and use their name. Washington could donate money (or pay) to the nation for use of the name, maybe have a small museum at the stadium showing the history. This way you atleast are working with 1 nation and their leadership. And yes some won't like it even within the nation but this way it was a business deal that all sides agreed too.