NFL fan poll: Should Washington Redskins change their name?

In a poll conducted last weekend by SI through Marketing & Research Resources, just 25 percent of fans said the Washington Redskins should change their team name.

Author:
SI Staff
Publish date:
Sep 23, 2014

In a poll conducted last weekend by SI through Marketing & Research Resources, just 25 percent of fans said the Washington Redskins should change their team name.

The responses -- collected from more than 500 NFL fans, with a margin of error of plus/minus 4.33 percentage points -- reflect a mild indifference toward the controversial nickname.

Seventy-nine percent of people polled said they did not consider Redskins to be an offensive name, and only 10 people of people said they considered the name to be "very offensive."

In May 2013, Redskins owner Dan Snyder said he would never change the team name. Since then, there has been increasing pressure for him to do so.

Last October, President Barack Obama said if he owned the team, he would "think about changing" the name.

A year later, 50 United States senators signed a letter urging NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to take action and force the team to change their name.

In June 2014, the U.S. Patent Office canceled the Redskins' federal trademark registration.

Snyder has continued to defend his stance on the team's name. In August he said that people criticizing the Redskins name should instead focus on issues that Native American tribes face while living on reservations, including unemployment, a lack of clean water and a lack of healthcare.

Others have spoken out about the Redskins name as well. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the name should be changed, as did CBS NFL host James Brown. In a court case involving the team, a federal judge decided not to use the name in court documents. In July, an Indian tribe rejected a donation from Snyder's Original Americans Foundation.

Find all the poll results below.