[SmootSmack]

The losing tenure piece is irrelevant to the story so I dropped that from the title

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to post this.

Here are my two cents

1. When I worked in the local media back in the day, my tv station was not allowed for a while to use Redskins in our weekly football show. (though I later found out, it was fueled by a competing station who-felt they paid a significant amount of money to be an official partner). This was before Snyder bought the team. So protecting the Redskins name has been around long before Snyder. This, incidentally, is what people who sue to change the team name are really suing about. They want to remove the football's rights to trademark and protect the name Redskins, thus diluting its value

2. Now that I work in the national media, and see many contracts-I can tell you that they are not the only team that does this. That many teams and leagues are extremely protective of their brand. All the major leagues are, perhaps no one more so than the NFL itself. The NFL is very, very, very protective and selective in regards to how often the term NFL can be used and where. So it wouldn't entirely surprise me if part of this was a mandate from above (Though I'm sure another part was to screw with the WaPo).