Why do D.C. sports teams ignore the Washington Redskins?

The Redskins are hard to ignore.

Whether we agree on the direction, management, or leadership of the team, it’s impossible to ignore a sports franchise with so much history and legacy, regardless of the record and the self-inflicted death spiral they always seem to find themselves in.  Fans say they aren’t paying attention to the Washington Redskins, but listening to D.C. sports talk radio, nothing could be further from the truth.

The fans have opinions, nearly all of them negative, on the Redskins, and the seemingly endless number of coaches, quarterbacks, and other personnel changes the Redskins make in hopes of creating a winner.  And while the fans may say they couldn’t care less, their conversation belies otherwise.

Washington sports teams, though, seem to ignore the Redskins.  They most certainly don’t wish to be associated with them and I cannot recall the last time I saw a member of the Nationals or Capitals at a Washington Redskins game.  But turn on a Nationals or Capitals game and you most likely will see some of the brotherly interaction that occurs frequently between these two winners.

Some people point to the cultural dissimilarities between the Capitals and the Redskins, for example, but those cultural differences certainly exist between the hockey and baseball teams.  The similarity between the recent champions is the number of players developed outside the U.S. and the winning culture, but there could not be more substantive differences in Czech, Swedish and Russian players and the Dominican, Venezuelan, and Mexican players on their respective teams.

The games are different, and the people are different, but the similarity that draws these teams together is the attitude, the desire to win, the desire to excel and the desire to put team before oneself.  Washington’s football team is well outside this culture.  Look at the continual drama with the Redskins, the inability to find on and off-field leadership, questioning of the medical staff, the ownership, the player management, and most of all, winning on the field, rather than Bruce Allen’s “winning off the field” success criteria.

The fact is, once a team reaches its nadir like the Redskins, you find yourself steering clear of association.  Look at the stands of FedEx Field versus Capital One Arena or Nationals Park.  Fans don’t wish to associate with a losing culture nor do the teams which found and developed their own winning culture.  It would certainly behoove a Redskin owner, coach, or player to bridge that divide and find out why two major sports teams have a winning, symbiotic relationship that never seems to transcend to the Redskins.  The longer the Redskins stay mired in their losing culture, the more other teams will disassociate themselves.

It’s also becoming extremely apparent that Washington’s ownership and management are more than just a little jealous of the other teams’ success.   This points to the very petulant existence of the Redskins.  A brief tweet congratulating the Nats, no recognition that I can remember of the Caps Stanley Cup run or a congratulations after another winning season last year.  It’s all the same, year after year, as the Redskins have now sunk to irrelevance in the D.C. professional sports scene, as teams treat them as non-existent.  Because, in essence, they really are.