Plenty of people agree that the Washington ‘Skins have a patently awful and racist team name. We do—we call them simply the ‘Skins. The City Paper let its readers vote, and they opted for the Pigskins. Early last year. NBC4’s Jim Vance dedicated an entire segment to breaking down just how offensive the team name really was.

Add Mayor Vince Gray to that bandwagon. The Post reports that Gray came out today in favor of the team changing its name to something less terrible, and even offered to help them out:

“I think that if they get serious with the team coming back to Washington, there’s no doubt there’s going to have to be a discussion about that,” he said after a news conference, “and of course the team is going to have to work with us around that issue.”

Gray noted that many sports team — including the Washington Bullets — have discarded offensive names and/or mascots.

“I think it has become a lightning rod, and I would be love to be able to sit down with the team … and see if a change should be made,” he said. “There’s a precedent for this, and I think there needs to be a dispassionate discussion about this, and do the right thing.”

You’d think that team owner Dan Snyder would recognize and want to rid himself of such an awful moniker; the ‘Skins were basically forced to integrate back in the early 1960s, after all, and who would want an already racist name to be linked to a racist past?

Of course, Gray should insist that the team’s name be changed whether or not the ‘Skins try to come back to Washington, which seems to be just about the only thing local elected officials consistently aspire to.