Daniel Snyder: Washington football team; $1 billion; Potomac, Md.

Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images.

In case you didn’t watch Washington’s Monday night bout with the San Francisco 49ers, consider yourself lucky—it was pretty ugly. But it wasn’t the game that caused quite the stir on Twitter last night. It was what happened during the halftime show.

The Washington football team paid tribute to four Native American World War II veterans during the halftime show in a video and honoring ceremony that was well-meaning, but ultimately came off as incredibly awkward and uncomfortable, given the controversy over the team’s racist name and mascot. The ceremony, which honored four Navajo Code Talkers—communications service men who used their Native American language to send messages that the Japanese code breakers could not solve—included a video of the men saying “Hail to the [Washington football team].” Yeah, that was really uncomfortable.

Earlier in the day, the Washington football team took them on a private guided tour of the National Museum of the Marine Corps, which was nice. But c’mon Snyder, last night’s PR stunt to win back critics of the team’s name was low.

Just change the name.

Update: This guy on Twitter met one of the Navajo Code Talkers last night and posted parts of their conversation.

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