Red
It is logical to begin here. The Washington DC football team wears burgundy and gold, which looks like red and yellow unless you have a really sweet TV. Preserving this clear, definitive adjective ("red") would go far to appease the fans. It will feel right to scream, "Hail to the Red-[tbd]," and the uniform colors will still make sense.
Hail to the Red-
shirts, pants, cloaks, backs, necks (oops)
hawks, tails, birds, beasts, dogs, wolves
storm, dawn, wind, stripes, lights, weddings
It seems as if the answer ought to be there, or at least in these neighborhoods. Yet none fit properly. Disappointingly, "red" is at once prosaic as well as too particular.
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Keeping the name "Redskins," but transferring the meaning to potatoes is the absolute purest distillation of idiocy. Not only will nobody know how to spell "potatoes" (the e isn't necessary, but common) and Sam Johnson only knows where that apostrophe might land, but most essentially, rooting for a potato is impossible. It looks like a turd, it can't impose its will, and the fight song becomes forbearingly fatuous.
Dropping the old name entirely, Washington could grasp for the ephemeral: a horrid neologism (the Spoiler Alerts), glib meme (the Dougies) or alliteration (see: Washington Wizards).
This is the great eschatological and existential danger to fans of the Washington DC professional football team. Is a future rooting for the Washington Wookies (Disney + Dan Snyder = fusion power) pulchritudinous? No: butter face.
May I present, for your consideration ...
Hail to DC Skins, hail victory, Skins on the attack, fight for old DC!
"DC Skins" preserves the suffix, the uniforms remain untouched, and the rhythm of the fight song doesn't change. Yes, the meaning is a little obtuse. And yet, what exactly is a laker, or a met, or a brown?
"The Skins" are what we call our team already. Officially drop "Red" and make sure every last racist iconograph is removed. This is the most painless answer to this intractable situation.
Or we can wait until some jackass politician grandstands on this issue and we're left rooting for the Washington Boehners.
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