Roger Goodell, you have a problem.
And that problem has a name:
The Kansas City Chiefs.
After browbeating the Washington Redskins into changing their "un-woke" name (no one says "politically incorrect" anymore — and "politically incorrect" had in turn replaced the sassy "pablum puke" favored by the late Morton Downey Jr.) to the "Washington Commanders," somehow the equally "un-woke" moniker of "Chiefs" has remained inviolate.
This is almost certainly due to the fact that the Hunt family, which owns the Chiefs, has a status resembling royalty among the owners; indeed, the Lamar Hunt Trophy is awarded to the AFC champion (just as the George Halas Trophy is awarded to the NFC champion).
But that is no excuse for blatant hypocrisy — irrespective of where one stands on the appropriateness of the use of team nicknames and/or mascots which have indigenous origins.
(This also became an issue north of the border, where the CFL's former Edmonton Eskimos decided to change their name to the Edmonton Elks two years ago.)
As for the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks, they can simply change their logo from an Indian head to a black hawk (duh!), similar to the Pac Man-like red hawk used by the NBA's Atlanta Hawks.
Then we can all move on to more important things — like expansion, realignment, and making the playoff formats fairer.
So it is time for Goodell to put his foot down and force the Chiefs to change their name and logo — and he can draw inspiration from something else along these lines that also happened in the CFL, which once had both a Saskatchewan Roughriders and an Ottawa Rough Riders. But in 2014, the latter re-emerged after an eight-year absence, this time around as the Ottawa Redblacks.
The Kansas City Redgolds? Why not? Or better yet, the Kansas City Monarchs, after the storied Negro Leagues baseball team. And not for nothing, but hasn't there been a Colorado Rockies in two different sports — first in the NHL, and now in baseball? (For that matter, there have also been two teams with not only with the same name, but they played in the same city concomitantly: the New York Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals).
For Washington's part, the history of that city's NFL franchise is the story of blatant favoritism in its own right: It was their partnership of Jack Kent Cooke and Edward Bennett Williams that forced the then-Baltimore Colts to compete in the Western Conference from 1953 through 1969 — and from 1967 through 1969 the Colts were marooned in something called the Coastal Division with the Falcons, Rams, and 49ers, saddling them with the most arduous travel itinerary in the entire NFL. It was only with the NFL-AFL merger in 1970 that the Colts were finally relieved of this grossly unfair burden, joining the Bills, Dolphins, Patriots and Jets in the new AFC East.
But when the Colts moved to Indianapolis in 1984, the team remained in the AFC East even though moving them to the AFC Central would have made far more sense; and then, when the original Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1996, the Ravens, which the Browns became, could have been moved back into the AFC East, with the Colts going over to the AFC Central.
So the NFL had two chances to get it right, and two times they failed — mainly because they didn't want to be seen as "rewarding" teams that moved (see also the Cardinals, who should have been moved to the NFC West when they moved from St. Louis to Arizona in 1988).
But back to the Chiefs.
On Wall Street, they have a saying: Bulls make money and bears make money — but hogs get slaughtered.
Similarly, in politics, conservatives get votes and liberals get votes — but no one likes a hypocrite.
Your move, Roger.
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