The Kevin Sheehan Show - Washington Warriors?

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

Kevin and Thom on the all of the breaking news regarding the Redskins name. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Sports Fix in on a Friday today for obvious reasons. The Redskins name change situation. conversation is moving at warp speed. Tommy's with me by phone. We're going to do a half hour, 45 minutes on this, and then you'll have that. But let us tell you that by the time you listen to it, there could already be another five or six stories that change what we say on this. But it's about 2.30 here on a Friday, and we're doing, I guess what we would call an emergency podcast, right, Tommy? Is that what they call them when you come in here and do a podcast that isn't scheduled, an emergency pod? I think they would.

I think they would call this a July 3rd fireworks display that's gotten out of control, and we're here to put the fire out. Somebody held the cherry bomb in their hand a bit too long? Yes. Do you remember those cherry bombs? I remember holding some firecrackers in my hands too long ones. I was that I was about to throw into a store in Brooklyn, New York. Of course you were.

Of course. I hope it wasn't the Chinese laundromat. No, no, it wasn't. It was actually a store where I used to deliver groceries for. Really? Gristides? Was it Gristides? Oh, no, no.

It was Al's Delicatessen. Al's Deli. Old Al, you delivered groceries for Al, and then you were throwing firecrackers into his store. What happened? You held on to it too long? I didn't get one out in time and it flew up in my hand and it didn't hurt my hand, but it didn't cause any damage. Do you remember, and I do, we're going to get to the news of the day here, but this is, we're doing our show, which sometimes includes conversation that may bore a lot of you out there. Do you remember just the fear of God that people would put into your mind about firecrackers and how people were losing.

fingers and losing hands all the time. I don't think I ever met one person that lost a finger or lost a hand because they held onto a firecracker too long. I have. Really? Yes. Who? I can't say.

Why? Well, because it's a personal thing. I can't say. I mean, I mean, it's so. Was it a friend from when you were a kid? No, no, no, no, no, no. Somebody I met years later. Oh.

Well, we do know Jason Pierre-Paul had that happened to him, right? Yeah, yes. And then they released his emergency room records somehow. Was it Schefter? Somebody got a shot of what happened to Jason Pierre-Paul. And I can't even remember it was a Fourth of July incident or what. I just remember he lost a digit, I'm pretty sure, right? Wasn't that what it was? Yeah, at least.

At least he did. At least one. At least one digit. Is that what it was? Yeah. Okay. Do we have the right guy? I think we got the right guy.

Yeah, no, we do. That was the right guy. I think Dan Snyder, under normal circumstances, would like to use one of his digits to tell everybody what they could do with the name change. But I don't think he's going to be able to do that. So let's get everybody up to speed as to where we are here at 2.30 on Friday. And then I'm going to share with you what I have learned about the situation over the last two hours or so. We were going to try to start this podcast at 12.31 o'clock.

I've had a couple of interesting conversations with multiple people that shed a little bit of light on where we are right now. When we left you yesterday, we knew about the Liz Clark story in the post that you couldn't, the Redskins weren't going to be able to play in D.C. without changing their name. We knew about the Ad Week story where Nike FedEx and PepsiCo were being pressured by investment groups and shareholders to basically disassociate

themselves with the Redskins. And then last night, we got a bombshell of a statement from Federal Express. The statement read, quote, we have communicated to the team in Washington our request that they change the team name, closed quote. Then Nike took all of their Redskins product off of the Nike website. So that got us through last night and certainly things were coming rapid fire. And then this morning the Redskins put

out a statement, which was really remarkable, the statement that the Redskins put out. The Redskins statement read as follows, in light of recent events around our country and feedback from our community. The Washington Redskins are announcing the team will undergo a thorough review of the team's name. The review formalizes the initial discussions the team has been having with the league in recent weeks. Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, stated, quote, this process allows the team to take into account not only the proud tradition and history of the franchise, but also input from our alumni, the organization, sponsors, the National Football League, and the local community it is proud to represent on and off the field. Ron Rivera, head coach of the Redskins,

also quoted in this press release from the team, quote, this issue is of personal importance to me, and I look forward to working closely with Dan Snyder to make sure we continue the mission of honoring and supporting Native Americans and our military, closed quote. And then the statement ends with a one-liner. We believe this review can and will be conducted with the best interest of all. in mind. That came from the team. That was certainly a bombshell statement. We've never, not once, seen Tommy any hint that the team was considering anything related to the team's name. The team was really in the clear after the 2016 Washington Post poll that indicated nine out of 10 Native Americans didn't really have any issue. with the team name. The team had spent several years visiting close to a hundred Indian reservations

going directly to those places to find out what they thought of the team name. And to help out, by the way, in significant ways with contributions and donations and funding to help some of those tribals and some of those reservations out. The issue had all but died down, but clearly in the climate that we're in, it is once again top of mind, so much so that the League even weighed in with a statement. The League sang earlier this morning in response to the Redskins statement, quote, in the last few weeks we've had ongoing discussions with Dan, and we are supportive of this important step, closed, quote.

That was from Roger Goodell, the Commissioner. Since that statement from the League, we have had multiple, multiple reports from Mark Maskey at the Washington Post, Mike Jones from USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, Ian Rappaport, Adam Schaefter, and others. But really, I would put Maskey and Jones in the journal in Rappaport into the category of they are reporting that the team will change its name by the beginning of the 2020 season. So we've had a lot go on here in the last 24 to 48 hours. Things have been moving fast on all fronts in this country over the last month. I mean, I don't know that we've ever seen things move more radically and quickly on a lot of fronts. And the name, you know, certainly we've been talking about it for a couple of weeks now,

that the name was going to be under fire again and it was. but this time, I believe now, this time it's going to happen. I've had multiple conversations with people today that the team name, they feel, you know, they're close enough to the situation. Dan, by the way, is out of the country on his yacht, but it has been in communication with the league, obviously. But people with, you know, close enough to the situation believe very strongly that the name's going to change and that it actually may be imminent, you know, as in before the season begins or before

the season is scheduled to begin because we don't know that the season's going to actually begin, you know, in September. And there are a couple of reasons now why Dan's in this position. First of all, I don't think Snyder wants to change the name. I don't think he believes that Native Americans, the tribes, the Indians, whatever is the appropriate name now to be used to describe that culture. I don't believe he thinks they want this. And certainly we've seen every indication in recent years that it is not even close to a majority of them that do. By the way, just real quickly, one of the people that I spoke to today said, the only poll in recent years that was done in a professional,

polling manner was the Washington Post poll. Yes, absolutely. And that the post was absolutely floored by the results. Of course, they were hoping for the opposite. I think everybody understands that. But that that was a legit poll. I've heard the methodology that poll attacked. I was just told, in terms of pollsters in the ability to conduct a first-rate

professional poll. That was one of them. And that came in 2016, which is four years ago now. It is four years ago. And we have a completely different world that we're living in now. So who knows what the poll would reflect today. But this person did make the point that, you know, Dan had every right. Snyder has every right to believe that he was upholding something that the Native American community actually wanted upheld in significant majority. With that said, here's the issue. The issue is, first of all, the league itself, okay, Goodell, several owners in the league have had it. They have tired of this issue, even though the issue died down for several years, you know, a few years anyway, there was always a sense that something would

bring it back. And now that it is back, they are just done with it, Tommy. They don't, they want it changed. They don't, most of, Dan does not have great. relationships with the league. He's not a well, he's not on the list of well-liked owners. So there's not a lot of support there for him to begin with. Goodell is tired of him and the name issue. And several owners, including Jerry Jones, have tired of this issue. And we know that Dan actually looks up to Jerry Jones. So you have that bucket of people that have put, you know, recent heavy pressure on Dan to just, hey, we got to do this now. And then you have, you know, the brass tax reality of Federal Express. Fred Smith is a 10% owner in the franchise. He's a

minority owner owns 10% of the team. And Fred Smith has told Dan change the name. You've got PepsiCo. You've got Nike. You have Bank of America, a huge partner and corporate sponsor for the Redskins. you've got Innova, you've got others that are all now, you know, bowing to the pressure of shareholders, investors, and customers. More importantly, customers in this climate. And Dan's looking at, you know, a real potential loss in, you know, some of that other revenue that isn't TV revenue, and God knows he needs it. Because he's not getting it with tickets.

He's not getting it with concessions in recent years. He's not getting it with parking in recent years. So all of this, you know, has come together into a moment in which he's probably, you know, days, weeks, maybe a couple of months away from officially changing the name. And that's the conversations that the owner and the league have had. I also have it on pretty good authority that the leading contender for the replacement name is the Warriors. I don't think that's a reveal by any stretch. I think people do know that the Redskins have marked Washington Warriors just in case, you know,

and that this has been the way. And I think the statement from Ron Rivera, where he included the military, you know, we want to continue the mission of honoring and supporting Native Americans and our military that Warriors seems like it sort of fits into that part of the press statement. So I would bet big money on the Warriors being the new name for the football team. I'm looking through my notes to see if I have forgotten anything else to mention to you. You know, it's been the last several years, Tommy, the league's just gotten tired of Dan, Bruce, the organization being an embarrassment. The organization wants being a beacon for the league, being a marquee brand for the league

in the nation's capital. And it's just gotten to the point where, you know, many of the owners, Roger Goodell, they have just, they don't want this to continue. They want this franchise turned around. and they don't want it to continue to be a source of embarrassment for the league. And a big part of that, or a part of that certainly right now in the last couple of weeks and days, is the name again. So they are ready once and for all to move on from it.

And I think that Dan, especially when you consider and you factor in the financial pressure of some of those big companies putting pressure on him as well, that he is very likely to succumb finally to, to, this pressure and change the name. And Tommy, real quickly, and then I'll let you have at it. This is the timing of this, and I've mentioned this to you the last couple of times we've had this conversation in the last few weeks on the podcast. The timing of it with respect to the risk is the best it's ever been. The risk of changing the name financially is the lowest it's ever been because the truth of the matter is they don't have a significant, you know, a loyal

passionate fan base anymore. They've lost most of that. You know, the people that are still so die-hard, hardcore, they're not going away if they change the name. If they had been successful in recent years and hadn't lost, you know, a significant portion of their fan base, which we've seen through attendance and television ratings, et cetera, a lot of those fans may have had a major issue with this, but they've already checked out. They've already checked. They've already out. So the risk of impairing or really hurting the brand, an 83-year-old brand, is at its lowest point. So if it were ever going to happen or be forced or were to be forced into doing this, now's the most opportune time probably for him to do it. You know, I want you to picture that conversation for a moment.

imagine you're advising Dan Snyder on the name change. And you say to him, look, Dan, I know you're worried, you know, about the impact or financial impact to your franchise and the brand. But really, you've driven the brand into the ground so deep that the impact would be minimal. imagine that conversation. In other words,

I mean, what you just presented is part of a logical premise for changing the name. But no one, no one is going to say that to Snyder. Okay, he's going to have to be strong-armed

into changing the name. And he is being strong-armed. No one's going to make the case to him that this is the right to. time to do this. He's never, no one's ever going to say that to his face. Let me just tell you something that was

said to his face recently. This is before the hiring of Ron Rivera and before the firing of Bruce Allen. This came from another conversation that I've had in the last 24 hours actually. There was a poll commissioned on

the popularity of the owner and the team president. And the favorable percentage for both of them, much less than 10%. I'm not able to give you the actual figure, but it's much lower than 10%. Now, I would have guessed it would have been in the 5% or less anyway. But these have been a couple of the events here in recent months, if not year, year and a half or so, that has been jarring in an eye-opener for the franchise, the television ratings, the attendance,

the embarrassment of being in a stadium with 15,000 people, and two-thirds of those people rooting for the opponent in a meaningless December game. You know, internal polling that indicates that the owner is probably, in terms of his own market, the least popular owner in all of sports. It's possible. I don't know who would be less popular. Maybe Dolan in New York as the Knicks owner. And the team president, his approval rating super low,

comparable with the owners. I'm not even sure the owner really knew how much Bruce had hurt the organization. But that's taking him off the hook. It's taking the owner off the hook because he should have. but yeah, that conversation, I think there have been a bunch of those conversations in the last year. No, I think there have been conversations like,

okay, Dan, you know, that poll you asked for, here are the results, okay? I think that's the extent of those conversations. I don't think anyone had sat down and said to Dan, Dan, the franchise is not going to get hurt that bad because you've heard it so bad with your ownership, there's not much more damage to be done, which is really part of the logic of doing it now,

but no one would ever. I mean, he doesn't surround himself with anyone. No. Who tells him what he needs to hear. And even when they have, those people have lasted, as you said, about La Famina, don't buy rent. And he made the mistake of telling Dan what was actually going on too often.

Yeah, and so he's being strong-armed into this. And if you're a Dan Snyder hater, it's got to be a juicy moment for you. I don't care about Dan Snyder one way or the other. But the owner is basically being dragged into this. Yeah, there's no doubt. Well, you know, Tommy, this is, and I've mentioned to you on the podcast here recently, I'm not as passionate about this issue as I once was, primarily because I'm not as passionate about the team.

Think about me. You've known me for how long? 15 years? Yes. Would you have ever thought before maybe a couple of years ago that I would ever have lost the the spark the passion for this team? No, like I said the other day, we only used to have these arguments where they'd win a couple of games, and you'd say, boy, they're good, and I always used to say, no, they're playing good.

They're not good. Yeah, right. Oh, yes, but you were gung-ho, full speed ahead, baby. Always. And even when I was, you know, it didn't stop me in my role with you or with Cooley or with Doc or Rigo, anybody else that I ever worked with from being critical. But when I was critical, it was because I was passionate, you know, and I wanted it to change. I have joined the group, a large group of people who've just become a bit apathetic. I don't know that I have checked out. I definitely haven't checked out. I have a lot of friends who have completely checked out. I don't know if they'll ever check back in. I think they will if Rivera were to get it going. If Snyder were to allow, you know, somebody to actually build a winner here. But I'm not, and I think some of my friends who claim they've completely checked out and haven't watched a game in two years that if the team were good, they would check back in. I'm not at that level, but I'm definitely where I've lost. a lot of the edge I've had. This name change thing, which I was always open to a change, if it were proven to me with actual real data,

that there was a culture that was being offended in mass, which we still, even if the name gets changed here in the next couple of weeks, we still don't have that data. But it really doesn't matter anymore. But I'm just not, like, the thought of the why, Washington Warriors. I'm not like, I'm not off put by it. Okay, whatever. You know why there's fatigue on, it's the apathy about the team and there's fatigue on this issue too. There is. Yes, there is. Yes, there is. I remember when the issue was hot for a while,

when the Indian casino guy was behind the movement. Oh, night of the movement. Yeah. Yeah. And it had, it had gained some momentum. And I remember saying to you, people are going to be showing up at family functions with bags on their head because they're embarrassed to be Redskins fans. And that was an exaggeration. And ultimately, it didn't prove to be the case because of the post-pull. But it did illustrate a certain level of fatigue of defending what you love. I mean, you shouldn't have to defend and, you know, the basic decency of your football team. I mean, you might want to defend their quarterback. You might want to defend their coach.

But you don't want to basically have to sit there and defend the humanity of something you care about so much. Yeah, the irony is that the decency that you've had to be protective of has gone much beyond the name issue. I mean, there's an indecent quality to this. franchise that has nothing to do with the name for several years. Yeah. Yeah, and that all led to it.

Let me keep on the Snyder bandwagon here, because this is the best part of all this. It's watching him and him and him and him because Snyder's a bully, okay, and he's a rich bully, and he's a powerful bully who you can get what he wants. Somebody's going to pay for this. he's going to be angry. When this is all said and done, somebody's going to pay for this. I don't know how.

I don't know who. It could be Rivera. It could be your new head coach where Snyder's sitting there saying, well, okay, I changed the name. I want back in all the way, big time. He is not just going to float around the world on his yacht with his tail between his legs after this is over.

Somebody's going to pay. How about this when it comes to literally somebody paying? You could make the case right now with the pandemic, with the potential of, you know, socially distanced crowds for years to come, with, you know, a potential changing of the economic. structure in some of these sports that now, wouldn't be now, would have been six months ago, previous to now, but that maybe he considers selling the team.

I mean, how much fun could he be having owning this team anyway? Seriously, the owners don't really like him. His fan base hates him. He's done nothing but ruined something, not that he recognizes that over 20 years. But I wonder if he's considering, you know what? now that this is changing, I'm done. I'm going to sell this thing for $3 billion and move on. Do you think that that could possibly be in play?

I haven't heard that it's in play, and I would doubt that it's in play. But we've had this conversation before. How much fun could he have owning this football team? Where's the fun in it on his yacht with a bunch of celebrities to say I'm an NFL owner? I don't think Dad has fun for very long doing anything. I just think he's basically a miserable guy who likes seeing other people miserable. Why do you say that? Do you know that?

I don't know that. Well, I know that from people who have worked for him. Yes. That he's ridiculed and basically, you know, basically driven into the ground. That's true. Emotionally. Yeah. You know?

And somebody who usually does that is usually miserable, who wants to make sure everyone around them is miserable. Okay? So, but on Sundays, and I'm there on Sundays at the stadium. And I'm smoking my cigar on the deck that, not far from Snyder's box. And I watch him as he walks down to the locker room with his entourage and the killers that protect him. and I watch him walk back from there, and I see him go to his box. In that box on Sunday or Monday nights or whatever,

before at least the game starts, he's a happy guy. He's got all these rich, powerful people around him, all bowing at his feet, all there because of him, and he likes that. Cook loved it. Cook loved his body. on Sunday that RFK for crying out loud

Snyder loves that he likes being plugged in to the most powerful people in Washington, D.C. It's not like Hollywood, Hollywood's like high school. You know, I mean, this is Washington, D.C. This is the varsity.

And Snyder likes to be part of it. So I don't think he's going to sell the team. I think that he gets a kick. I think he's insulated by all the hatred as much as possible. I think he's surrounded by people who don't tell him that stuff, and I think he enjoys the perks that come with being the Redskins owner in the capital of the United States,

even as diminished as that may be now. And let's face it, you think Matthew McConaughey is going to return Dan Snyder's calls if he doesn't own the Redskins. Yeah, well, I think that's the thing that he probably enjoys. You know, a Malfi Coast, south of France, wherever he is over in Europe on that yacht, and there are a bunch of celebrities parking their yacht next to his, and they're having a great time together. And, you know, he's with Matt McConaughey.

Matthew, excuse me, is the way he apparently likes to be referred to. Matthew McConaughey. And all of these people are there with him, and he's the owner. of an, he's one of 32 in the world, you know, and he's got this prize possession. But, you know, at this point, I, you know, I've mentioned this many times that the combination of, you know, arrogance and not, you know, brilliant when it comes to running a football team is just a terrible combination because he just never has been in a position to admit that he was wrong. I don't think he's going to admit that he's wrong in this case. I will say this. I will tell you, though, Tommy, that I think

it's in the league's best benefit, the league's best interest, to let him win on this, to let him be the person responsible for making the decision, even though he's getting pressured into it by corporate sponsors and, you know, league partners and other owners and the commissioner. This is something that I think it would benefit everybody if he appears to be going into this, not kicking and screaming. Yes, even though he will be behind the scenes. He might be behind the scenes, but it doesn't do him any good, and it doesn't do the league any good if it looks like there was a gun to his head to make this happen.

Absolutely. It needs to be his idea, and after his research and his compassion. you know one of the things I pointed out before the Redskins statement that came out this morning I pointed this out last night there well and it probably won't happen now but there was a whole wave of a different kind of pressure coming for Snyder and that was when training camp opened and reporters started talking the players and players were having to answer questions about the team names much more than ever before, under very different circumstances than they ever have before, with tremendous spotlight and tremendous scrutiny on those answers coming forward.

You really risk the possibility of having players on your own team publicly saying they're embarrassed by the name. That would have been a very untenable. It's really interesting, though, that over the last couple of weeks, we haven't heard anything from players on Jack Del Rio or the name. No, but, you know, because there's no one there to ask them. No, but they don't need to be asked. Social media is the currency. I mean, that's really, it's, think about this time, it really is.

It really is. It's very interesting that we haven't gotten one player, I don't think we have, or coach in the organization, to be critical of Del Rio in his tweet barrage a few weeks ago. a week and a half ago or anything regarding the name in the last 48 hours. I mean, something may be out there now that we're missing, but I didn't get it. You know, there's another conversation just to be had that I personally don't think is a big deal. I mean, maybe you'll help me with this. Maybe you will agree. I'm not sure.

I've had a lot of people reach out to me today and even last night and say, well, what does that mean? Are we not able to talk about the great teams of the past? You know, how is NFL films going to change the Super Bowl? You know, Super Bowl 17 stuff? Are they going to re-narrate it to call it the Washington football team or the Washington Warriors? No, they're not going to do that. They're not going to go back and rewrite history. I mean, there's not a statue to be ripped down here.

You can't go back. right and take and what eliminate redskins from pictures or from captions and newspapers or you know people have photographs of the Riggins run reds you know Riggins runs Redskins runs Redskins to the title by the way whatever they do I'm always going to have those memories it's always going to be growing up with the Washington Redskins and in watching them you know, with George Allen and Joe Gibbs and the heyday of this franchise, you can't take memories away.

You can't take Dexter and Art Monk and Daryl Green and Doug Williams and Rigo and Thysman. You can't take, take, you know, go back and like a football life special and take every mention of the Redskins out of the Dexter Manly football life special. Come on. They're not going to do that, right? No, I don't see that happening. You know, hey, I wrote two books about the team.

What am I supposed to do? change go back and change all those you might have to are you kidding me I'm not doing that so no I don't I just think you know

those those situations will come up and people just have to live with them but no I don't think you're going to see NFL films or anybody scrub clean the name Redskins go on you know go on all their films and

and change all that I mean look at all it's a moving forward situation, not looking back. You know, there was an opportunity, I think, and I'm going to beat the same dead horse I've been beating for five, six years on this. I think there was an opportunity from a public relations standpoint. The owner would have had to be the frontman for this, and he's not capable of really being a front man.

I think we all know that. But, you know, this is, this. is a football team name, you know, that's been ingrained in popular culture. I've mentioned this many times. Ask almost anybody from anywhere to describe a Redskin and they'll tell you it's a football player who plays for the NFL team in Washington. Tell any sports fan that two Redskins are sitting at the bar and they'll ask you, well, is one of them Dwayne Haskins? I mean, that's common sense application. If common sense had been applied, you know, it would have have, you know, it would have hopefully forced an open-minded debate, which would include a lot of

facts, not narratives, a lot of facts, not, you know, the R-word equals the N-word. And you could have had a discussion about petitioning a dictionary for a second non-derogatory definition. It can't be done anymore. It's too late for that. But, you know, if that process had been started in a reasonable setting with people who claim to be tolerant and open-minded, but haven't been on this issue really. It's been a mic-drop moment every chance they've had all along, despite what the data suggested, despite the fact that 49 high schools in the country still use Redskins as their school sports teams nickname, and several of those high schools are majority Native American. None of that's ever mattered, but I think if you had started,

that conversation and tried to create that path towards something reasonable and commonsensical in terms of language-wise what the word really has meant for, you know, a century or so, that maybe you could have gotten there, you know, and you could have gotten there with the help of some of the Native American reservations and Native American high schools. And, and, but, but that, that ship has sailed. It's a strange time that we're living in that sometimes the actual people who are most impacted by the conversation that so many are having are so excluded from the conversation. But anyway. Okay, let me ask you that. Yeah.

Do you think that the president tweets about it? Oh. I'm sorry that Trump tweets about the Redskins name. Even money. I'd say at least 70%, that he pleads about it. So you're even higher. Particularly if they change it, at the moment they change it, then he'll be all over. Yeah.

He'll be all over it then. This is make no mistake, you know, as we sit here on Friday, July 3rd, you know, 3 o'clock in the afternoon right around there. this is not something that the owner wants. It's not something that many of you fans want. I understand that. And I know that the decrease in passion that I have on this issue has annoyed some of you in the last few weeks and maybe even the last year.

And I'm sorry about that. It's the way I feel. I felt much more passionately about this in 2014. in 2015 when Tommy and I would sit there when something would come up and we would have a conversation about it. It's fatigue. It's the way I feel about the team. But I know and I recognize how many of you feel. You're angry today.

You don't want the name to change. You know, you don't believe that Native Americans want the name to change or that they don't have an issue with the name. That some do, but most don't. you don't want this owner to, you know, bow to the mob. But unfortunately, the situation is not even a moral decision that they're coming to. It is a league and a group of owners who have just said, oh my God, not this again. Just change it already. And oh, by the way, now in this climate, we actually are.

going to lose some sponsors. You know, back when it was just a few columnists, you know, barking that it was the N-word, you know, our big corporate partners ignored that and understood what that was. Now, in this climate, they really are going to, you know, back out. Bank of America, Pepsi, FedEx, you know, these guys are telling us, we're dropping out unless this team changes its name because we can't take it anymore. So, unfortunately, that's a... where I think we are today. I was going to tell you, you know, at about noon or 1230 had we done this

podcast at that time. I was going to tell you that I still thought there was a chance the owner was going to be digging his heels in and that the statement from the team was more or less a, you know, let's push this off and buy some time strategy. But I think that the, you know, based on some of the conversations I've had over the last hour and a half. This is really about Gidell and the owners and the big companies that are really putting the screws to the Redskins into Dan Snyder right now. So I expect it to happen. I do. It's going to be weird. It will be weird. It will be very, do you think that there will be protests, public, visible protests from Redskins fans? And do you think that?

be Native Americans. I mean, if the Redskins, if there's Native Americans like the Redskins say who likes to name, will there be Native Americans who protested the law? You're going to get some of that, obviously. But, you know, the world's changed in the last month, Tommy. The last five months, four and a half months. You know, people have become indifferent to a lot of things that they weren't indifferent to, you know, four and a half months ago.

So I don't have the answer to that. I don't have the answer to that. I mean, remember when we were told about the big protests that are coming, you know, in Ashburn, and there would be, you know, again, the name changer protests and there would be like 15 people, you know, out in front of the park? I don't know, Tommy, this is a different time. And keep in mind, you know, a lot of the, you know, polling also indicated that in addition, to them not feeling that the name was insensitive, there were also a lot of people that said, look, this is so far down the list of things that we are concerned about as a culture.

We have many more serious issues that affect us, like, you know, poverty and alcoholism and drug abuse and lots of bad things that have been happening. in that culture for a long time. Well, now, all the name changers with the name out of the way can concentrate their efforts on helping the Native American community. And how many do you think will do that? And donate their money to helping the Native American community can put all those interests high on their list of things to do, all the people that are so concerned

about the Native Americans. absolutely now they've got time right and you and I know you expect that they will do that that this is the next crusade absolutely um I know uh well I mean look it's not everybody there are there are people that I know out there that I've had conversations with healthy conversations with that have been very very much um in the camp of changing the name and also very much in the camp of helping you know that culture and And, you know, one of the things that I've learned over the course of the years here and whenever this conversation's come up is just, it's incredibly fragmented the Indian culture. 500 plus reservations, 400 or 500 plus, you know, tribes, 400 plus reservations.

And, you know, everybody's got a different view of a lot of different things. And there, you know, as somebody said to me recently, you don't, you have no idea how much. you know, sort of confrontation and conflict there is within that culture about a lot of things. So anyway, I think this is going to change. And I think the next time we see a Washington professional football team suit up, it will be as the Washington Warriors. That's my guess. Wow.

You did get it right. You just were four years late. Tommy and I had a bet. I don't even know what the bet was for. It would have been in like 2014 or 2013, and you said the name will be changed by 2016. And I said, again, you know, I thought with the new money behind the movement, it would be enough to create corporate pressure on the name. And I was wrong. And again, the post-poll really put the end to that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, anything else? That's it. Happy Fourth of July. Happy Fourth of July, everybody. Thanks for jumping on with me. I'll talk to you over the weekend.

All right, boss. All right, thanks, everybody. We'll be back, you know, as events warrant next week. But I was planning on taking next week off. We'll see what happens here over the next couple of days. Have a good weekend.