Within the NFL, there has been little to no pressure from owners or the league to bring about a name change for the Washington Redskins, according to one owner who now believes it will take a back seat.
“There hasn’t been a lot of discussion about it, at least to my knowledge,” one owner who requested anonymity due to the controversial nature of the topic told The Post’s Mark Maske after a news story A Washington Post poll found that nine in 10 Native Americans do not find the name offensive.“I feel like this problem is slowly disappearing.”
The owners, who will meet May 23-25 in Charlotte, have long treated the issue as an issue between Daniel Snyder and the NFL, choosing not to get involved unless there were economic implications for the league as a whole.
“I think the survey will affect the attitude of some owners,” the owner told Maske.
Changing the nickname would be significant for one of football’s most valuable franchises because there is a revenue-sharing agreement among the 32 teams, which account for a large portion of the more than $9 billion the league generates each year.
“The unique dynamic of professional sports is that teams actually assign some of their name and trademark rights to the league as part of the joint venture,” Gabriel Feldman, director of the sports law program at Tulane University, told Maske in February 2013. “While a team owner makes business decisions that primarily affect the team in question, there are also decisions made by the league and other owners that tend to affect the league as a whole.”
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