Change is tough for everybody, especially when you are suddenly changing a team’s nickname after decades of protests and pleas from people insisting your football team’s logo and nickname was offensive to an entire group of people. For many, Washington’s NFL team losing its racist nickname is a long overdue decision that was made despite the wishes of the man who actually owns the team. Which is why any sort of struggles the franchise has in making that happen is some very satisfying schadenfreude.
The latest example of that is a failed attempt to find a new Twitter hashtag for the team’s upcoming season. On Sunday morning, the Washington Football Team’s official Twitter account tried to announce a new hashtag but quickly deleted the tweet because, well, it wasn’t a hashtag. The team is leaning hard into a traditionalist angle for the upcoming season, with the Established in 1932 aspect of the franchise a major marketing point. Which is why they wanted to change the team’s official Twitter hashtag from #HTTR — hail to the team’s former offensive nickname — to the less offensive #1932. One problem, pointed out by many when the tweet went up, is that the hashtag didn’t work because it doesn’t have any letters in it.
The Washington Football Team announced its new hashtag was #1932 but didn’t realize that you can’t hashtag numbers. pic.twitter.com/LWMayqxnqO
— Michael David Smith (@MichaelDavSmith) August 9, 2020
That tweet was quickly deleted, and the team sent out another referencing the mistake and asking fans what they think the team should use.
ok so no new hashtag yet
give us your options of what you want!
— Washington Football Team (@WashingtonNFL) August 9, 2020
Even noted Washington NFL franchise fan Dale Earnhardt Jr. had an idea, though like #1932 it didn’t really stand out for a football team.
#WFT till a final decision is made on the name.
(might be best left for the fanbase to create over the course of the season)
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) August 9, 2020
Most team hashtags are silly and not very clever anyway, so they’ll figure something out eventually. But it is interesting to see a team search for an identity on the fly, especially knowing that if they had changed the name more organically by listening to critics years ago, all of this could have gone a whole lot smoother than it has.