Ex-Redskins become Washington Football Team for 2020 season; Red Wolves and Red Tails favoured for permanent name
- New chief marketing officer Terry Bateman calls the temporary design ‘a nice link between the history and the future’
- Red Wolves and Red Tails are bookmakers’ favourites to be next permanent name
Gone is the Indian head logo and the name Native American advocates have called a dictionary-defined racial slur. Here to stay are the burgundy and gold colours that are synonymous with the franchise’s storied history.
Executive vice-president and chief marketing officer Terry Bateman, hired Monday to oversee the name change and rebranding process, called the temporary design “a nice link between the history and the future.”
“This is an organic kind of move,” Bateman said in a phone interview on Thursday. “We wanted to think it through and really try to figure out what is the best approach for us, for the community, for the fans, for everybody, and came to the conclusion that what we wanted to do was to go slow with the renaming process and really be very thoughtful, very inclusive, respectful and all those things. That’s going to require some time to do it right.”
With training camp opening next week, the process begins on Friday of scrubbing the old name and logo from everything at the team’s headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia, to FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland. Bateman expects that process to be completed by the start of the season.
That’s when the real work begins to select a new name. More than 1,000 names have been submitted, and Red Wolves and Red Tails are among the betting favourites on online sportsbooks.