Is the Price Too Steep for D.C. to Bring Back the Commanders?

[justaprogressive]

For ten years, Mayor Muriel Bowser has worked on her passion project: bringing the Washington Commanders “back home” to the District of Columbia to a new stadium that would rise up phoenix-like from the old one due east of the U.S. Capitol.

Long-suffering Commanders fans have wandered in the wilderness for decades, waiting for someone, anyone, to turn around the fortunes of a franchise that once won three Super Bowls but then turned into a national embarrassment. Losing seasons piled up courtesy of a team owner scarred by sexual harassment accusations, financial improprieties, and a clueless attachment to the team’s insulting former name.

So deep was fans’ disgust with owner Dan Snyder, a wealthy Marylander, that fans rarely speak his name out loud unless it’s accompanied by a short expletive of Germanic origin. Forced out of the National Football League, he paid a multimillion-dollar fine for his numerous transgressions, and fled to Britain.

Bowser, a native Washingtonian, understands all of this in her bones. First elected in 2015 and now in her third term, she knows that bringing the team back from Maryland will appeal to her constituents’ civic pride and stoke public support for a new stadium in the nation’s capital. What owner would want to stay in the team’s suburban outpost when he could demolish the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium—a rusting 1960s-era clamshell on the banks of the Anacostia River—and erect a new state-of-the-art stadium/entertainment district on the site?

https://prospect.org/power/2025-07-29-is-price-too-steep-washington-dc-commanders-football-nfl/]