This Thursday the Washington Redskins will draft RGIII, probably the most exciting thing to happen to the team since Sean Taylor inverted an opposing punter. In urban planning circles, a much more pressing issue is that the Mayor and some Councilmembers want to spend public money to entice the team to build a practice facility on Reservation 13, a master-planned new neighborhood near RFK, in hopes that the team might someday relocate back to the District from Landover. For the politically correct, it's hard to have any conversation about the 'Skins without noting the obvious: the team name is kinda racist.
Of the 32 teams in the NFL, 14 (44%) are named after animals (5 birds, 4 cats, and 2 horses, plus the Rams, Bears, and Dolphins) and one is named after an inanimate object (Jets). The remaining 17 are named after some form of Homosapien:
The Redskins are unique in that they are the only team named after a non-mythical race of people. In some enlightened, hypothetical future universe our city's team would succumb to a grassroots movement and choose a superior moniker, but for now, public disapproval is quenched by a chuckle-inducing opportunity to brainstorm alternate team names.
While RGIII will have to show me some results before I consider transferring my allegiance to his new team, I will without hesitation jump on this renaming bandwagon and toss out my own geographically-appropriate proposal: Hail to the Prince George's Pinkskins!
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