Washington Redskins

The Washington Redskins are a professional American football team located in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The Redskins compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team plays its home games at FedExField in Landover, Maryland; Its headquarters and training facility are at Redskins Park in Ashburn, Virginia, and the Redskins Complex in Richmond, Virginia, respectively. The Redskins have played more than 1,000 games since 1932, and are one of only five franchises to record over 600 regular season and postseason wins, doing so in 2015. The Redskins have won five NFL Championships (two pre-merger, and three Super Bowls). The franchise has captured 14 NFL divisional titles and six NFL conference championships. The Redskins were the first team in the NFL with an official marching band, and also the first team to have a fight song, "Hail to the Redskins".

The team began play as the Boston Braves in 1932, based in Boston, Massachusetts, before relocating to Washington, D.C. in 1937. The Redskins won the 1937 and 1942 Championship games, as well as Super Bowls XVII, XXII, and XXVI. They also played in, and lost, the 1936, 1940, 1943, and 1945 Championship games, as well as Super Bowls VII and XVIII. They have made 24 postseason appearances, and have an overall postseason record of 23-18. The Redskins' three Super Bowl wins are tied with the Oakland Raiders and Denver Broncos, behind the Pittsburgh Steelers (six), San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys (five each), and the Green Bay Packers, New York Giants, and New England Patriots (four each).

FedExField

FedExField (originally Jack Kent Cooke Stadium) is a football stadium located in an unincorporated area near the Capital Beltway (I-495) in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States, near the site of the old Capital Centre (later called USAir Arena in 1993 and US Airways Arena in 1996). FedExField is the home of the Washington Redskins football team. From 2004 until 2010, it had the largest stadium capacity in the National Football League (NFL), at over 91,000. Currently, the capacity is 82,000.

History

FedExField was built as a replacement for the Redskins' prior venue, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C. In 1994 Jack Kent Cooke sought to build a new stadium on the grounds adjacent to Laurel Park Racecourse along Whiskey Bottom and Brock Bridge roads. Lack of parking facilities and support prompted a second site selection.

The stadium opened in 1997 as Jack Kent Cooke Stadium, in honor of the recently deceased owner of the team, and the stadium site was known as Raljon. The name "Raljon" is a portmanteau of Jack Kent Cooke's sons' first names – "Ralph" and "John". Notably, Cooke was even able to register Raljon with the United States Postal Service as a legal alternate address for the 20785 zip code of Landover, Maryland, in which the stadium is located, and went to some lengths to require media to use Raljon in datelines from the stadium. This ended when Daniel Snyder bought the Redskins from the Cooke estate, and the Redskins now give the stadium's address as Landover.