The Washington Warbonnets.
I don’t give a shit about football. I’d convert all the football stadiums into soccer ones or better yet, Australian Rules Football if I could. Football is boring, commercial driven and so very static (but has a good draft system, I’ll give it that).
However, in this era of let’s call it political overcorrectingness, people are offended by everything and the Washington Redskins fell to the offended mob recently. They are working on a new name. I get it, at first blush it certainly seems offensive– but then you see interviews with Indians that don’t mind the name at all and especially the logo and branding, which is frankly REALLY fucking cool. Indians interviewed like the representation of native Americans in professional sports. I think they should have it, just like the Celts, Vikings, Saxons, Trojans, Spartans, on and on.
So in coming up with the name, I thought at first it was imperative to follow what has worked in the past really well: pick a TRIBE name like the ‘Noles or Fighting Illini. We all know the Comanches, the Iroquois, the Apache and the Araucanian (look them up, geez), among many others, have become LEGENDARY in their ferocity as warrior cultures and would fit perfectly as team names. We yell GERONIMO! when jumping off stuff. This is homage to great warriors and a term of endearment and great respect. Every time a kid asks “why you yelling that” and you explain it to them, it retains in our cultural memory the history of these great and terrifying people and their story and struggles against the early forces of globalization.
But which tribe do you pick? The Blackfeet were involved in the original logos, but what about all the tribes in the DC area? The Pohantan empire was there when the first settlers arrived, there’s the Mohicans, Delaware, Sioux, Cree, on and on and on. I think for this team, it’s too tough to choose just one and we need a logo and name that is more general, but also isn’t perceived as racist in our current ULTRA sensitive climate.
And aside from all that, we want a cool name and a cool logo. I found it when driving up north last week. I saw a road called Warbonnet road and there it is, simple, effective, iconic.
WASHINGTON WARBONNETS.
Problem Solved.