Inside The Huskies

More Bark than Bite: How About the Washington Huskies, D.C.-style?

University of Washington fans surprisingly are willing to share their nickname with that team in need of one in the nation's capital.

Dan Raley

It started out as a joke.

OK, it still is.

Yet on a day that the Washington Redskins became no more, with that nickname permanently shuffled off to NFL purgatory, football followers in Seattle presented a novel alternative.

How about a pro football team christened the Washington Huskies?

OK, a canine sports moniker probably doesn't stand a chance in the nation's capital, which, when it comes to animals, is dominated by elephants and donkeys.

But it was interesting that Northwest football fans were willing to share this near century-old sports ID.

At the same time, D.C. is a town that's had professional sports teams answer to the Nationals, Senators, Generals, Capitols, Bullets, Wizards, Spirt, Mystic and Defenders.

Huskies easily could fit in there somewhere, couldn't they?

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While it's a league heavy on wildlife names, the NFL doesn't have any dogs anywhere to rally behind, though Cleveland, which answers to the Browns, does have its rowdy Dawg Pound bleacher section on game day.

That doesn't seem right, considering all of the cats represented across the league in the Bengals, Jaguars, Lions and Panthers.

The NFL is loaded with birds, too, with the Eagles, Falcons, Cardinals, Ravens and, of course, the Seahawks.

There are horses in the Colts and Broncos, a fish in the Dolphins, a goat in the Rams and a carnivore in the Bears.

For now, the University of Washington shares its beloved nickname only with other collegiate entities such as Connecticut and Northern Illinois. 

Washington, D.C., is a political town that demands abject loyalty. Everyone, on both sides, are dog lovers, aren't they?

What a unifier.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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