- 4 months ago
Is it time to finally put the Washington Commanders name change conversation to rest after the new uniform reveal? Kevin Sheehan gives his thoughts on the Commanders' current team branding and the fan response to the new uniforms sparking a bigger conversation for future changes to team branding.
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00:00So yesterday's unveiling of the team's new uniforms drove a level of conversation that was very typical for anything name
00:10or brand related for our football team.
00:14The number of views on the initial video that the team put out on social media on X is at
00:20two plus million and counting.
00:22Nothing they produce social media wise generates the response that name and brand and uniform content creates.
00:32I mean, nothing. I mean, not even Mondays after games or Sundays during games.
00:38I mean, it's in the millions of page views every single time they put out something like that.
00:43Um, that, that should always, by the way, end the conversation about whether or not this is the biggest issue,
00:51the biggest issue, the business side of the organization faces.
00:57Uh, but for whatever reason, it's still confounds some of you.
01:03And I love when it does because it produces great emails and tweets.
01:09I could sit here for the next three hours if I wanted to, and just read the tweets and emails
01:16that came in after yesterday's show.
01:18And by the way, well, I'll save the, by the way for in a moment, uh, I got this from
01:24Robert.
01:24This was the best of the still confounded by the name and brand and uniform conversation.
01:31And this is a good one, Robert.
01:33This is good.
01:34Robert writes, you just did your whole show on uniforms, three hours of uniform talk, exclamation point, exclamation point.
01:46Come on, man, get a grip.
01:49You're not a serious person, or at least you're not taking your job serious.
01:55You would have been yanked off the air in New York or Chicago.
01:59Chicago, this matters to you and a bunch of wacky 80 year olds.
02:05Bring the uniform talk to the home, the home.
02:11Yeah.
02:12As in senior home.
02:14Uh, that's a good one, Robert.
02:16I would hope he continues.
02:18I would hope your boss pulled you aside and said no more of this nonsense.
02:23I moved here and here's the tell on Robert.
02:27I moved here from LA five years ago and fell in love with your show, but days like today, meaning
02:33yesterday, you lose me.
02:35Hope you read this, but I doubt it.
02:39Um, well, Robert, I just read it.
02:41Actually, I can't believe that you've listened to this show for five years and you wouldn't know that this is,
02:47this is exactly the type of correspondence that I would read.
02:51Because I continue to be completely confounded myself by those of you who just ignore everything, all of the data
03:01and say, this is not a topic that matters.
03:05It's okay to say, this is a topic that does not interest me, of course, but to say that this
03:15topic doesn't matter, man, you've got to be detached.
03:20You have to be detached.
03:22And I think moving here five years ago, um, you just haven't kind of felt it.
03:27Um, the home, the home with the 80 year olds, let's have a show at the home, Max, and we
03:35can do three hours of uniform talk, uh, from there.
03:38Um, by the way, it was not all three hours of the show yesterday, right?
03:43Max, we had a guest on guy was really good.
03:45Bob Bender from sporting news.
03:47I had never had Bob on the show, really enjoyed it.
03:51Uh, and he and I texted back and forth afterwards.
03:53Um, it was not all on the draft.
03:56We talked about a number of things, including college basketball.
03:59He's a big college basketball fan, but, um, he was really good.
04:03And Robert, if you thought it was all three hours, you missed Bob Bender.
04:08So you can go back and listen to that.
04:11Now it is surrounded with two and a half hours of uniform talk.
04:15That's true.
04:16And there, there's no doubt that there's something that just feels absurd about saying that I sat here for two
04:23and a half hours and talked about new uniforms.
04:26Uh, but I promise you, Robert, that, uh, my program director and my boss and my bosses would not have
04:34encouraged me to do any less.
04:36In fact, they probably would have said, what are you doing with a guest on that isn't here to talk
04:42about the new uniforms?
04:45Um, yeah, uh, but Bender was good, Max.
04:48That was a good pool.
04:49We got to have him back on.
04:51Um, but Robert kind of outed himself as typically many of these people do again, big difference between it doesn't
04:58interest you, which is fine.
05:01No, no issue with that at all.
05:02Um, versus those that say, come on, man, you're talking to, you know, a wacky 80 year old in the
05:09home.
05:10Uh, and that's it, please move on.
05:13Nobody cares.
05:14Um, that's typical by the way of the, nobody cares about the name and uniforms crowd that they're newer to
05:22the market.
05:22They're newer to the fan base.
05:24It's not everybody, you know, there are people that are longtime fans that actually believe that they are in the
05:32majority of the nobody cares crowd, but you know, every single data point obviously proves, uh, otherwise, as we continue
05:39to point out, uh, every single time this comes up.
05:41I, I will say that the uniform talks specifically is not my favorite.
05:48I loved how the conversation morphed into a lot about the name, which we've had those conversations hundreds of times
05:55over the years.
05:57Um, I'm just not a uniform guy.
06:00I know what I want them to look like in general.
06:05And I think they nailed it.
06:06Now, my guy, Kevin in Arlington, who did Kevin call in yesterday?
06:10I forget.
06:11We did take calls for two of those two and a half hours.
06:15Um, he wrote, uh, I want Harris and his team to speak on why the F they insist on having
06:25the block dub, the block W on the helmet.
06:29Don't they get that most of the fans don't like or hate it and that it still has Snyder's stench
06:36all over it.
06:38That is an area in which I disagree when it comes to what happened in February of 2022, when they
06:46announced the new name and the new uniforms and all of that.
06:50I personally don't attach it to the last vestiges of Snyder.
06:54I know many of you do.
06:56And I, and I, and that's fine.
06:57I don't because I have a pretty good sense of what was going on at that point.
07:03And he was checked out.
07:05He was checked out and they were beginning that process of how do I extricate myself from a, all of
07:14these issues, investigations, et cetera, which he was totally focused on.
07:19Um, by the way, very angry with a lot of what had happened during that time.
07:24Um, especially with that, you know, Indian based company that they set up to create all of these Epstein rumors
07:32and, you know, sex parties and, you know, the stuff that was, went wild on the internet about Snyder.
07:39That wasn't true.
07:40You know, most of the stuff was true.
07:43Um, but a lot of that stuff was not true.
07:46Um, but I think that the wheels were already in motion and he turned that over to Jason Wright and
07:52Jason Wright's team.
07:54They're the ones that butchered it.
07:56Now he was still the owner.
07:58So I'm okay.
07:59If you say, well, he signed off on it.
08:02He was there for that two, two 22 day.
08:05God, do you remember?
08:06He looked completely disheveled on that stage.
08:09It was so uncomfortable to watch.
08:11I mean, the today show reveal was bad enough, but when they got to the stadium later in the day
08:17and they had the state stage and, and Joe was up there, theisman and Doug and Snyder is like in
08:23a pair of sweatpants and I don't know.
08:26I don't know.
08:27It was, it was just bad.
08:28It was bad.
08:29Um, but I, I thought they did a good job yesterday netting it out.
08:35I think I said it yesterday, multiple times I should have since we did two and a half of the
08:40three hours on uniforms, but I, I kind of like what they did.
08:45I think that it's a big step to at least reattaching some to the team.
08:52Um, that's their challenge is to take those who felt detached emotionally from the team because of name and brand
09:03and a lot of other things.
09:04You know, Ian likes to point out and he's not wrong that the, you know, deterioration of the fan base
09:11started long before the loss of the name.
09:14The name though was very much for many of those who had checked out and would have checked right back
09:20in with Snyder, not owning the team anymore.
09:23Um, that was a bit of a, of a death knell.
09:26Um, and, and it prevented many from jumping back in, um, because you were jumping back into an expansion team
09:33or something that felt like an expansion team.
09:36They could have so easily back in 2022, just kept the look and the feel of everything, you know, even
09:45though they butchered the name seven ways to Sunday, it, it felt worse because they were wearing uniforms that didn't
09:55resemble anything that they used to wear.
09:57And it looked like a totally new franchise.
10:01And so they, they could have just kept the uniforms, um, and moved from the, you know, the Blackie Wetzel
10:11logo.
10:11We, I, we hate that they moved from that understood, but if they needed to move from that and then
10:16move to whatever they were going to put on the helmet, the W, the actual Jersey numbers, which were, I
10:22think the helmets in 2020.
10:24When they won the division at seven and nine with Alex Smith, with chase young, being the defensive rookie of
10:32the year.
10:33God, that was exciting there for a brief moment.
10:36Not really.
10:37Um, but yeah, this is Robert.
10:41Sorry.
10:42People like you, and I appreciate it, but if I were to take the advice from people like you, literally,
10:49I would get yanked off the air.
10:50It's terrible advice.
10:54Um, and certainly on a day like yesterday, if you don't feel the passion in the fan base past and
11:06present, if you don't feel that listening to sports talk radio in our city or listening to podcasts or just
11:13following the social media.
11:15I mean, nothing they do, nothing they do generates the attention that name, uniform branding, social media output generates.
11:29Now I think the most significant part of yesterday, and it's not surprising, but skip was the one that pointed
11:38it out.
11:39Our longtime caller skip who said, you know, commanders isn't on anything and it's not.
11:45And as I said on the show yesterday, if you thought for a moment that because they're sticking with commanders,
11:54they think it's the best name or they like the name personally, they don't.
12:00And they'd love to come up with something that was an absolute, you know, uh, home run answer and solution
12:09to replacing it.
12:11But they can't because the only home run answer isn't doable Redskins.
12:18And, you know, I have, you know, felt, and I've said this many, many times, you know, going back to,
12:25you know, when the name was put out, but really when Josh Harris bought the team and, you know, they
12:30addressed it early on and, you know, we're going to do, and we're going to listen to the fans and,
12:35you know, all of that stuff.
12:36I always felt like doing something was better than doing nothing and doing something would have been for me, the
12:43Washington football team.
12:45We call them the skins and give us these uniforms back with the Blackie Wetzel logo, but, um, they have
12:52more information on that than I do.
12:55You know, they, they understand that maybe they're, you know, I'm sure they've looked into everything, every possibility, every possibility.
13:05But what they did yesterday by not putting that name anywhere on any uniform that they will wear in 2026
13:14is they told you how big of a problem it is for them and how they don't personally like it
13:22that much either.
13:23I thought they did a great job.
13:25I really do.
13:26I think what they were able to do is what they were, are able to do.
13:31And I think that for me, they did it well, I would have preferred the spear to have been through
13:38the W on the primaries, not just the alt, but that's my only knit to pick.
13:44Now I'm not a big, you know, stripes down this shoulder pad or, you know, numbers here guy, but that
13:51uniform, the primaries, both burgundy tops and white tops look like my team again.
13:59So I liked that.
14:00And I thought they did a good job.
14:02I really do.
14:03This is not easy for them.
14:05None of this is easy for them.
14:07I'm not asking you to have, you know, a lot of sympathy, uh, for that.
14:13They bought a team for 6 billion.
14:14That's probably worth 8 billion today.
14:16I mean, literally we're coming up on three years since the purchase and they probably increased the value and it
14:24has nothing to do with anything they've done necessarily.
14:28Although the new stadium will have something to do with that, you know, no doubt.
14:32And getting that new stadium done.
14:34I mean, it's not done yet, but getting it to the point where they could build a stadium in DC,
14:39that's huge.
14:40And that does play into valuation.
14:42It does, but it's just the other sales of North American sports teams, like the 10 billion paid for the
14:50Lakers or the $10 billion valuation of the Lakers.
14:53So, you know, whatever the next team to sell is in the NFL, it'll probably be Seattle.
14:58You know, that'll be more than 6 billion in a smaller market, by the way.
15:03Yeah.
15:04The, the value of the team is greater than what they paid for it three years ago.
15:10So yeah, I'm not asking you to have sympathy for that part of it.
15:14Just the part recognizing that this name uniform brand issue is a major business issue for them.
15:25It's a major customer, uh, emotional attachment issue for them and trying to come up with, you know, answers for
15:35all of it.
15:35When the only answer that would work for the masses isn't available is a challenge.
15:42So I think they did a good job with this uniform thing.
15:45You know, they, it's going to look like our team next year.
15:49And I like the black alts.
15:51I do.
15:52The 80 year olds in the home, Robert, they don't like the black alts.
15:56That's what they've relayed to me.
15:58Maybe I can convince them in our next get together on uniform talk at the home.
16:04Um, they're very nice people though.
16:07Max, every time we go there, they're super sweet and, and sharp, really sharp.
16:12It's always fun.
16:14Food's good too.
16:15All right.
16:16We've got some draft talk, uh, coming up on the show.
16:19Um, there is a bunch as it relates to trade ideas involving Washington at number seven.
16:28We'll explore some of those and tell you what we think next.
16:32I'll get to the hoops from last night.
16:34Cause I know some of you were like, how'd your boy Kawhi do?
16:38Uh, not as well as Steph Curry did would be the answer.
16:41Kevin Sheehan showed the team 980 and the team 980.com.
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