After two years of anticipation and excitement, the National Football League’s Washington Football Team announced its new name as the Commanders on NBC’s Today.
The announcement had been teased on various media platforms, including radio, television and social media, for quite a while. However, the news was made official when Washington Commanders President Jason Wright broke the news this morning by saying, “We are the Commanders.”
This revelation, though, was hardly a surprise to those who had been following the name change over the last few months. There were people who saw the domain name “Commanders.com” had been purchased, former quarterback Joe Theismann went on CBS Sports Radio Tuesday and spoke as if the name was definitive, and a video from an NBC 4 chopper Tuesday night zoomed in on the team store at FedEx Field to reveal the new Washington Commanders wordmark on the front window, which has been viewed over three million times.
On Wednesday morning, The Sports Junkies on 106.7 The Fan in Washington, D.C. reacted to the name’s public dissemination prior to its formal announcement, and their thoughts on a scenario that would have made it the greatest name reveal in history.
“For a lot of people out there, Chopper Brad zoomed in on the team store at FedEx Field, and there was a banner saying ‘Washington Commanders,’” explained John-Paul Flaim, co-host of the morning drive program. “And then there were more leaks later on in the evening of the gear.”
Indeed, the new name was leaked early. However, some of the morning radio hosts were holding onto hope that the “Commanders” was an intentional means of deception to avoid the actual name being leaked early.
“I was thinking it would be the greatest misdirection in history if Jason Wright was thinking, ‘We’re just going to leak the name to our players and former players knowing that [it] would get out somehow,” said co-host Jason Bishop. “It would have been so creative, but obviously it wasn’t. They’re transparent. They’ve been transparent for 20 years.”
Washington Commanders beat reporter and co-host of 106.7 The Fan’s BMitch & Finlay J.P. Finlay said a few months prior that all signs were pointing to “Commanders” being the new name of the football team. Yet WFAN’s Boomer Esiason reported on the air last month that the new name would be the “Washington Admirals,” just after the Feb. 2 reveal had been announced by the team.
“I know… I started leaning towards [Commanders] because [J.P. Finlay is] over there every day,” said co-host Eric Bickel. “Boomer was my outlier. Turns out Boomer knows nothing.”
On a day when the Washington Football Team was seeking to make headlines with the announcement of their new team name, Auville felt bad for Jason Wright and company in that the announcement was clearly going to be overshadowed by the football news over the last 24 hours, in particular the formal announcement of Tom Brady’s retirement and former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores suing the NFL and various organizations for racial discrimination.
“Of course, Tom Brady retires and the Brian Flores bombshell hits,” said Auville. “The name change is the biggest thing here [in Washington, D.C.]. They’re looking for that pop around the country [and] I just feel bad for Jason Wright. He’s thinking, ‘I’m going to dominate the news cycle. I’m going to own this day.’”
