Mayor Vince Gray still very much wants the ‘Skins to one day return to the city for which they are named, but he appears to be seeing things a bit more realistically than the far-fetched idea floated last week that D.C. could “trade” for the ‘Skins return by allowing the FBI to relocate to Prince George’s County.

The Washington Post reports that while the feds-for-football deal is still an aspiration, it’s not nearly as concrete as NBC4’s original “exclusive” report that D.C. would gladly let the FBI leave its horrifically ugly J. Edgar Hoover Building if the ‘Skins were to simply break their lease at FedEx Field and come home. “We’ve had no serious discussions at this point,” Gray tells the Post.

Instead, keeping the FBI in the District might be a lot more realistic than snagging a football team. The Post also reports that the former campus of Walter Reed Army Medical Center could be pitched as a possible new home for the bureau, though any decisions about where it will move to will be left to the General Services Administration.

Gray yesterday announced a series of grants to merchants willing to move to the vicinity of the abandoned hospital; the area’s already limited commerce has declined even further since the relocation of Walter Reed to Bethesda. And encouraging businesses to move to a part of town that D.C. officials are trying to redevelop seems like a better, let alone achievable, use of public resources than vainly enticing an NFL franchise to move into the city with the promise of a brand-new stadium that could very well cost $1.5 billion to construct. (The two newest NFL stadiums, Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas and MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., cost $1.3 billion and $1.6 billion to build, respectively.)

In the mean time though, yes, trading the FBI for the ‘Skins remains a totally silly idea that no one should take seriously.