Chatting with Mike Richmond of The Redskin Historian.com, ESPN analyst / Pro Football Hall Of Famer Mike Ditka (above, right) denounced efforts to pressure Dan Snyder into changing Washington’s nickname as “asinine” (“I didn’t think that Lombardi and Halas never had a problem with it, why would all these other idiots have a problem with the name?”). From DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg :

“What’s all the stink over the Redskin name?” Ditka said. “It’s so much [expletive] it’s incredible. We’re going to let the liberals of the world run this world. It was said out of reverence, out of pride to the American Indian. Even though it was called a Redskin, what are you going to call them, a Brownskin? This is so stupid it’s appalling, and I hope that owner keeps fighting for it and never changes it, because the Redskins are part of an American football history, and it should never be anything but the Washington Redskins. That’s the way it is.

“Its been the name of the team since the beginning of football. It has nothing to do with something that happened lately, or something that somebody dreamed up. This was the name, period. Leave it alone. These people are silly — asinine, actually, in my opinion.”

Richman suggested that non-Redskins fans and people outside the D.C. area are the ones driving the controversy about the name.

“It’s all the political correct idiots in America, that’s all it is,” Ditka said. “It’s got nothing to do with anything else. We’re going to change something because we can. Hey listen, I went through it in the 60s, too. I mean, come on. Everybody lined up, did this. It’s fine to protest. That’s your right, if you don’t like it, protest. You have a right to do that, but to change the name, that’s ridiculous. Change the Constitution — we’ve got people trying to do that, too, and they’re doing a pretty good job.”