Use of ‘Redskins’ name down 27 percent on NFL broadcasts

Last offseason, there was a vigorous push by some advocacy groups to persuade the Washington Redskins to change their name. NFL broadcasts this season reflected that effort.

According to a report, the use of the word “Redskins” was down 27 percent by NFL announcers during broadcasts of Washington Redskins games this season over 2013.

Deadspin’s Timothy Burke found that “Redskins” was used 472 fewer times during the 2014 regular season than it was in 2013.

Burke accumulated his data from closed captioning, remarking the actual number for both years is likely a bit higher.

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That statement makes me realize the deep commitment to the story—or if it was an assignment, a deep commitment to keeping one’s job—to go through the closed captioning of 32 NFL games played over a two-season period.

In Washington’s final game of the regular season, FOX’s broadcast team of Kevin Burkhardt and John Lynch used the word “Redskins” just 13 times.

It was that team’s only broadcast of a Washington game this season; last season, Burkhardt and Lynch averaged 115 “Redskins” mentions a game in three broadcasts.

Meanwhile, “Washington” mentions increased by 10—1,380 in 2013 to 1,390 in 2014. If the use of “Washington” didn’t go up in a corresponding fashion to how the use of “Redskins” went down, it begs the question: What was used as an alternative if not “Washington?” “Those guys?” “That thar team thar?” “The bad team in the maroon helmets?” “The RG3s?”

Kenny Albert and Daryl Johnston—also of FOX—used “Redskins” a season-high 147 times during a Week 13 broadcast.

In 2013, that 147 figure was exceeded three times—155 by Dick Stockton and Ronde Barber of FOX in Week 4, 166 by Albert and Johnston in Week 7 and 185 by Stockton and Barber in Week 3.

The lowest number of mentions in 2013 was 60 by NBC’s Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth in a Week 6 Sunday night broadcast.

I understand where the pushback against the name is coming from and I also get why there is such reticence on the part of owner Daniel Snyder to make the change.

Ultimately, it will come down to the bottom line—when the name becomes a drag on the team’s profits, the smaller bottom line will get Snyder’s attention.

That has always been the only real impetus for change among the rich and privileged—the threat of taking away riches that buy privileges. It’s one of those cases where the only true currency is, in fact, true currency.

The team wasn’t always the “Redskins,” despite arguments to the contrary. When founded in 1932, the team was called the Boston Braves, but after a season’s worth of confusion with the baseball team of the same name, owner George Marshall changed the name.

A July 6, 1933, piece in the Boston Globe reported the change, as well as the social mores of the times (via FootballPerspective.com):

"It will be the Boston Redskins, and not the Boston Braves when the National Football League season gets under way next Fall. When Pres George Marshall entered an eleven from Boston in the professional football league last year the team was naturally christened the Boston Braves, but yesterday, just before starting for Chicago to attend the League’s annual meeting, he announced the change in name.This new name is rather appropriate in more than one sense. The head and since the close of the 1932 season Pres Marshall and Coach Dietz have signed up a number of Indian players. Not only that, but the Boston National League ball park has long been called the Wigwam."

It’s hard to undo 80 years of history.

But if it were another racial minority being slandered, the name would have been changed long ago—if used at all.

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