Jerry Jones May Unknowingly Be Tied to the Redskins Name Change

Jerry Jones has built a monster with the Dallas Cowboys. He spent $140 million on the team in 1989 and has turned it into a franchise worth more than $5 billion. The Washington Football Team is a once-proud organization that has been moving in the other direction in the last few months. Team owner Daniel Snyder has been pressured into changing the name ‘Redskins’ and he’s having a tough go at finding a new one. Jones may have been the lightning rod that sparked the Washington name change.

Chaos in Washington

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It’s been an ugly couple of months for Dan Snyder and his team now known as the Washington Football Team. The team is now without an actual identity. Years after Snyder promised to never change the name of his team, he’s caved in to pressure and removed the ‘Redskins’ name. It’s been all downhill since then.

After announcing the team was dropping the nickname, Daniel Snyder and the Washington Football Team ran into a trademarking issue. After Snyder said he’ll never change the name, FedEx, the company that holds the naming rights for the stadium, threatened to pull out. Other companies, such as Nike and PepsiCo., also threatened financial repercussions. While Snyder was dragging his feet, a Virginia man named Phillip Martin McCaulay outsmarted Daniel Snyder and trademarked many of the potential names that would suit the Redskins.

Then came the dreaded story that appeared in The Washington Post. The article stated that 15 female employees of the Redskins alleged sexual harassment while on the job. The accusation continued the embarrassing stretch for the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins. It forced the team to make, yet another statement. “The Washington Redskins football team takes issues of employee conduct seriously. … While we do not speak to specific employee situations publicly when new allegations of conduct are brought forward that are contrary to these policies, we address them promptly,” the statement read in part.

Daniel Snyder’s obsession with Jerry Jones

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is everything Daniel Snyder wants to be. The problem is, according to The Washington Post, that Snyder isn’t highly thought of among those in high-ranking NFL positions. John Kent Cooke, the son of former Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, said Snyder has turned the once-proud franchise into a has been.

“What’s happened over the 20-year period is that he has taken a franchise that has been universally respected in sports, not just the NFL, and proceeded to drag it down to mediocrity,” Cooke said to The Washington Post. “It’s no longer one of the premier sports franchises in the United States.”

A former Redskins executive has said that Snyder is trying very hard to hold himself into Jones. He recalled Jones’ stance on being harsh on NFL players kneeling for the anthem and agreed with him, simply because he was Jerry Jones. “Dan would repeat what Jerry was yelling,” the former executive said. “Literally, he’d sit there yelling, ‘Yeah, that’s right!’ “Dan would repeat what Jerry was yelling,” the former executive said. “Literally, he’d sit there yelling, ‘Yeah, that’s right!’ … He wants to be Jerry when he grows up.

“I think he looks at the swashbuckling Jerry Jones in Dallas and says, ‘Hey, I can do that, too.’ He watches what Jerry does and mimics it in a way that just doesn’t fit.”

Snyder may have another agenda for the name change

Daniel Snyder was under immense pressure to change Washington’s nickname and he gave in. Many believe it was because of the financial implications he would have suffered as several sponsors and advertisers were threatening to pull out. Former Washington GM Vinny Cerrato believes there just might be another reason for his change of heart.

Cerrato said Snyder has always had an obsession with building a bigger and better stadium than the one Jerry Jones has for the Dallas Cowboys. He believed Snyder is using the name change as a ‘chip’ to purchase the land to build his new home for the Washington Football Team. “Ever since Jerry (Jones) built his stadium…we’re playing the Cowboys, and we flew down and had dinner in Jerry’s box,” Cerrato said, according to NBC Sports. “Jerry gave us a tour of the stadium, he’s pushing the button opening and closing the roof. Ever since then, (Snyder said) ‘I’m going to have one bigger and better.'”

Cerrtao believes Snyder will accomplish his goal. In order for him to purchase the land (where the old RFK Stadium was), he needed to make the name change. “Trust me when I tell you this, Dan will have one bigger and better,” Cerrato said. “He’ll use it as a chip to get that land where RFK was, to change the name. I would bet that it’s somewhere involved in there. The name change is also probably helping him get the property he really wants.”