years in the making<\/a>. Protests occasionally popped up around Washington Redskins games in the 1990s and early part of the 21st century, but there was no evidence of a groundswell to change the name.\n <\/p>\n\n In 2013, the National Congress of American Indians, representing 1.2 million people in its member tribes, announced that it opposed the moniker.\n <\/p>\n
\n The team consistently replied by saying it was honoring the achievements of Native Americans by keeping the name. As evidence, then-team president Bruce Allen said that three high schools with a majority Native American student body used the name. The team and its supporters mentioned a 2004 poll by the Annenberg Public Policy Center that found that a majority of Native Americans were not offended by the name.\n <\/p>\n
\n Then again, the use of public polling methods to measure a small, diverse population also came into question and was criticized by experts.\n <\/p>\n
\n More than a decade ago, Sports Illustrated\u2019s Peter King led the way, as did a few other sports journalists, including myself, publicly stating that we would no longer use the name \u2013 a name that each of us had said thousands of times in our careers covering the NFL.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cTry explaining and defending the nickname to a child,\u201d I wrote in 2013. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Back then, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was still defending the team\u2019s name, but he said in radio interviews that he wanted to \u201clisten\u201d on the issue.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019ll always listen, and we\u2019ll always be open,\u201d he said on ESPN Radio August 1, 2013, when asked to compare his defense of the Washington team name with his comments on Philadelphia Eagle Riley Cooper\u2019s racist slur at the time, which were anything but a defense: \u201cObviously wrong \u2026 insensitive and unacceptable,\u201d Goodell said of Cooper\u2019s language.\n <\/p>\n
\n Goodell went farther a month later while speaking to a Washington radio station: \u201cUltimately it is Dan (Snyder\u2019s) decision, but it is something I want all of us to go out and make sure we are listening to our fans, listening to people that have a different view, and making sure we continue to do what is right. We want to make sure the team represents the strong tradition and history that it has for so many years. \u2026 If we are offending one person we need to be listening and making sure we are doing the right things to address that.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n As the battle reached a crescendo, a federal judge in Northern Virginia ordered the cancellation of the team\u2019s federal trademark registrations in 2015 because the team\u2019s name was viewed as \u201cdisparaging\u201d to Native Americans. It was the team\u2019s biggest legal and public relations loss to that point.\n <\/p>\n
\n That decision came two years after then-owner Dan Snyder told USA Today sports reporter Erik Brady that he would \u201cNEVER\u201d change the Redskins\u2019 name.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019ll never change the name. It\u2019s that simple. NEVER \u2014 you can use caps.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Seven years later, the name was gone.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington CNN \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 When President Donald Trump reopened a long-closed conversation about the name of the Washington NFL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-30205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}