Dan Snyder Meets With NFL Commissioner About Redskins Name

Dan Snyder met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell today to discuss the controversy over the name of Snyder’s football team, and agreed to agree: the point of the meeting at NFL headquarters in New York was not to push Snyder on a name change but to help the league “gather information on the team’s plans for dealing with the issues involved,” according to unnamed sources in the Washington Post.

Snyder reportedly told Goodell what he said earlier this month in an open letter to Washington fans, saying that while he hears the complaints that the team’s name is a racial slur against Native Americans, he doesn’t want to move on from a name that has lasted 81 years.

Goodell, who has said he doesn’t want to change it either, has deferred to Snyder on whether Washington’s football team should ever change its name, but he now says the league needs to consider the concerns of people who say they are offended.

The NFL gets that opportunity tomorrow, when leaders of the Oneida Indian Nation, which has mounted a season-long campaign urging Snyder to change his team’s name, meet with league officials. Whether Goodell is among those officials is unknown; Oneida spokesman Brett Stagnitti tells Washingtonian the NFL has not said who it will send to the meeting.

Benjamin Freed

Staff Writer

Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.