Redskins rebranding necessary

Washington's NFL team is shedding the "Redskins" name and logo after recent pressure from sponsors and decades of criticism that they are offensive to Native Americans.

T. Bettinna Cornwell is the academic director at the Lundquist Collge of Business' Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.

She says the Redskin had no choice in rebranding after key sponsors and advertisers called for the name change and threatened to pull out.

The change comes less than two weeks after team owner Dan Snyder launched an organizational review of the name.

A new name for one of football's oldest franchises must still be selected and it's unclear how soon that will happen.

Native American experts and advocates have long protested the name they call a "dictionary-defined racial slur."

The name dates to 1933 when the team was still based in Boston.