THE SIDELINES : Redskins Asked to Change Name
If the National Football League really is serious about civil rights and racial issues, it should force the Washington Redskins to pick a new team name, the president of a Phoenix Bible college says.
“If the NFL were really motivated by ethnic concerns, why would they have a team called the Redskins?” asks Dave Moore, president of the American Indian Bible College. “What if some other team came into the league and decided to call themselves the Blackskins or the Yellowskins?”
Moore wrote to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, asking the league to find a new name for the Redskins in light of the NFL’s threat to pull the 1993 Super Bowl out of Arizona because voters rejected a paid Martin Luther King holiday.
Both NFL and Redskins officials brushed off the suggestion, saying they have no intention of changing the name because it is “a tradition.”
“Team nicknames often are a celebration of American folklore,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said.
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