Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
This fan’s rebranding of the Redskins as the Washington Redtails is epic.
The rebranding of the Washington Redskins has been overdue for a long time now. Despite ongoing pleas from Native American and other advocacy groups for years, owner Dan Snyder has held out … until now, when sponsors like FedEx, Nike, PepsiCo and Bank of America started threatening to pull out and hit the NFL franchise in its wallet, where it would hurt most.
Snyder is finally, obstinately, retiring the offensive Redskins nickname and logo, which has given rise to the obvious followup question: What will Washington’s football team be called now?
One graphic designer known as “Spida” on Twitter gave a look at what a rebrand would look like if the team switched to one possible solution, the Washington Redtails.
As you can see, the design is crisp, smooth and pretty clean while still retaining Washington’s primary football colors of burgundy, gold and white. The “R” within the gold and crimson insignia is even reminiscent of the Redskins logo, only without the offensive depiction of an indigenous American in the middle.
Spida includes a few color variations of the logo, as well as uniform designs with a gray and burgundy set. For the redesigned helmets, shiny gray numbers with gold trim look pretty nice on one side of the burgundy helmets. The cursive “Washington” on the actual jerseys, flanked by the wings representing the Redtails is a tremendous, understated touch.
For those unfamiliar, the Washington Redtails (or Red Tails, as they were originally called) would be such a terrific replacement for the Redskins because the team would be switching from something offensive to something honoring the Tuskegee Airmen — the first Black aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps. The Red Tails served in World War II with an incredible battle record and were given their nickname after several of their pilots painted their plane tails crimson.
Knowing Dan Snyder, he probably won’t get this right. But thanks to this Twitter rendering, the evidence is pretty clear that a Washington Redtails rebrand would pay tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen, not offend anyone and also retain that sense of football culture and history Snyder keeps whining about by preserving elements of their old design and color scheme.