Embattled football team Washington Redskins, seeking to find a less racially-controversial name, recently adopted an entirely new direction: instead of focusing on American themes, which can be offensive and divisive, the team will rename itself “Einsatzgruppe” after the German term for “minutemen.”

“We wanted something patriotic, but then someone pointed out that the founding fathers were racists like everyone else back then and probably now, so we had to choose something from another culture,” said board chairperson Howard Zetigo-Robinson. “Looking for a neutral country, we settled on Germany and their version of the minutemen, the ‘ready military’ who stood up to fight for American Independence so we could live in a proud diverse egalitarian country someday.”

The minutemen were American irregulars during the American Revolution who worked normal jobs, but could be summoned in minutes to respond to the presence of British military, fighting back using guerrilla tactics much like those currently employed by drug cartels during the war on drugs. “The Minutemen are a proud part of our history, but we wanted a gender-neutral term, and only the German word for ‘task group’ or ‘ready team’ provides that image,” Zetigo-Robinson added.

According to Google translate, the term “einsatzgruppe” in German means “task group” in English, but Zetigo-Robinson explained that “task” also had an implication of instant readiness. “The Einsatzgruppe in Germany would be the men who would be standing by to hop up and accomplish a necessary task, like a field goal or fifty-yard gain.”

Some have expressed skepticism about the new name. Jill Albertson, a researcher at the University of Washington, sounded a note of alarm. “While task groups existed before the war, during WW2 the terms einsatzgruppe and einsatzkommando referred to local citizens entrusted with rounding up Jewish, gypsy, homosexual, and mentally disabled people for extermination,” she said. “I guess the extermination part goes with football OK, but the rest really isn’t going to avoid controversy. Didn’t any of these guys take a history class?”

Recently appointed head coach Dallas Wayne-Jinping expressed confidence and enthusiasm. “We’re really looking forward to getting past all this controversy and finally playing some football,” he said, to cheers from the team. “We’ve never been a political team or had any racial bias, so we are hoping that this new name clarifies to all of our fans of every shade of skin that the Washington Einsatzgruppe are gonna go all the way this time.”

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