LOVERRO: Harris needs more than winner’s edge to land a District stadium for Commanders

OPINION:

As Mary Poppins once said, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

In the case of the Washington football team, the medicine was to make your customers no longer despise the name of the product for which you paid $6 billion.

The sugar? A 12-5 season turnaround from last year’s bottom-feeding 4-13 record, a trip to the NFC championship game, and rookie quarterback sensation Jayden Daniels.

I think if owner Josh Harris had answered the question of the future of the Commanders name at his press conference Monday by saying, “We’re just going to call the team ’the Jayden Daniels,’” more fans would have welcomed that than the news that there were no plans to change the name from Commanders.

But again, with a stunning turnaround season and the hottest star in the NFL, people have learned to live with it — or “embrace” it, as Harris said.

“I think it’s now being embraced by our team, by our culture, by our coaching staff,” he said. “And so, we’re going with that.”

I am assuming by “culture” he means his customers. Really, who cares if the players or the coaches have embraced the name? Most of them have been here for five minutes. Five players — Tress Way, Jonathan Allen, Daron Payne, Terry McLaurin and Jamison Crowder — were here during the dark ages, two or three names ago. They didn’t have time enough to embrace either Redskins or Washington Football Team.

But the fan base that remains from the Redskins’ glory days has certainly been around long enough that some of them still refuse to pry their hands off the franchise name they fell in love with, the name of the team since before the team moved from Boston to Washington in 1937.

Embrace? You mean like the president and his first lady embrace? 

For those who wish a return to the name Redskins — abandoned by owner Dan Snyder in 2020 under pressure from corporate sponsors because of the perception of racial implications — Monday’s brief comment by Harris about the Commanders name was a ceremonial burial of sorts. For those who held out hope that these owners who, like you, had grown up falling in love with the Redskins and would bring back the name, this was the death knell.

Some of those diehards bailed on the team when the Redskins name was dropped. It was easy when the team was an NFL bottom-feeder. Others who were hopeful of the return of the name may now join them.

But I suspect that as more sugar-laced winning medicine is dispensed, the passion for the old name will be diminished by the fun everyone around them is having being a Washington Commanders fan.

Harris is hoping the elixir of winning may carry over to ownership’s biggest challenge — a new football stadium.

He addressed a new stadium and where it might wind up — the District or next to existing Northwest Stadium in Maryland — at length. He mentioned Virginia, perhaps for pity’s sake.

“Anytime that you win on the field, I mean we all now experienced what it was like here, right?” Harris said. “And it was the reawakening of Washington football here in the DMV and everywhere, right? Because there’s lots of people who grew up with the team that I grew up with. And so anytime that you get that reawakening, the population at large is supportive, right? And so, there’s no question that there’s some momentum and we would hope to capitalize on it.”

Jack Kent Cooke had three Super Bowls and nothing but winning in his pockets when he went shopping for a new stadium. Look where he wound up. This may be hard to believe, but not everyone is a football fan.

Harris once again made it clear that all things being equal, the team’s old RFK Stadium home location is the favorite (it’s certainly NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s favorite spot, giving it his endorsement at the Super Bowl Monday — “it could be a great thing”).

“I think that, obviously the DMV right, is three jurisdictions, and it turns out D.C.’s in the middle, plus, you know it’s the location maybe because of the history, it’s the location that when we do surveys, is the most acceptable,” Harris said. “But there’s a lot of things that go into this. And we play in Maryland right now, we have an amazing relationship with Maryland. And like I said, it’s not just our decision, like the decision is about the specific location, regions, and areas and states themselves and D.C. itself. So, we have a lot of dialogue going with everyone, and we’re going to keep pushing forward.”

But how much push back they get may derail the favorite.

If the new owners could turn the clock back to Feb. 1, 2022 — the day before former Washington chief blunder officer Jason Wright unveiled the new team name in a presentation befitting a convenience store opening — you can be sure the new name wouldn’t be Commanders. They aren’t thrilled with it, but changing the name for the third time in five years might be far more damaging than simply accepting Commanders moving forward and live with the taste and few disgruntled fans left behind.

It is the path of least resistance.

In the stadium quest, that path still leads back home to Landover.

• You can hear Thom Loverro on The Kevin Sheehan Show podcast.