Philly Front Office

UPDATE: Since the Flyers are playing the Hurricanes in the 2nd round of the NHL Playoffs, this one is getting reposted.

I live in Miami, FL and with a Category 5 Hurricane Melissa ravaging nearby Hispaniola, it is a strong reminder of just how close to danger this city is all the time from hurricanes. I moved here long after Hurricane Andrew, but a certain generation still talks about in hushed tones and with real reverence for that kind of destructive power. Because I am not a serious person, this got me thinking of how ridiculous it is for the local university to name the school after something responsible for so much death and destruction. The Miami Hurricanes, are you kidding? Yes, hurricanes are strong and unstoppable, but they are direct reminders that they are strong and unstoppable to LOCAL MIAMI RESIDENTS! Why are you rooting for the thing that is trying to kill you? It’s like sheep having a wolf mascot. Anyway, this has me thinking of the other unfortunate or straight silly team names out there that do not make a lick of sense.

Local Catastrophe Division

The Carolina Hurricanes were formed in 1997 after moving from Hartford. Though not as prone to disaster as Miami, North Carolina still gets its share of storms. In 1996 alone, 3 hurricanes hit the Carolina coast including Hurricane Fran which caused $2.55b in damage and killed 14 people. How in the world did they go from unbelievable local devastation to shiny new hockey team in less than a year? Was someone sitting at one of the funerals, stand up, shout I’VE GOT IT, and run out of the church with a team name on his mind? The name is as callous as it is unnecessary. It’s like naming your new dog Ford because how you lost the last one.

That’s not even close to as bad as the MLS’s Chicago Fire. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 killed 300 people and destroyed like half the city. It’s an event that shaped the city and something the locals have become somewhat proud of, but still…THEY DID NOT HAVE TO NAME A SOCCER TEAM AFTER IT. I mean, that isn’t even the only fire disaster to hit Chicago either. In 1903 there was a fire in a Chicago theatre that killed 600 people, a factory burned down in 1911 causing 146 deaths, and a school fire in 1958 killed 92 children. Did you know the University of Illinois at Chicago goes by Flames? What the fuck people?

Then there is the San Jose Earthquakes, also of MLS, founded in 1994. Just 5 years earlier, an earthquake hit the Bay Area killing 63 people and famously occurred during the World Series that featured the local Giants vs A’s. The San Andreas fault is in the area and lurks as a great unpredictable daily fear. Fear, what a great thing to manifest into the local hockey team. That’s like a promiscuous college naming themselves the Syphilis.

The Colorado Avalanche? Who has ever said “An avalanche? AWESOME!” There’s nothing to even marvel at from afar like a hurricane. If a thousand tons of snow is coming down a mountain, everyone in its path is probably dead. This is entirely a local problem and terrifying.

The city of Calgary had a great fire in 1886. Despite all of the great destruction, no one was killed somehow. To prevent another disaster, maybe one where the locals wouldn’t be so lucky, the city decided to make a law requiring local buildings to be made of sandstone instead of wood. Thus, the Calgary Flames. At last, a disaster name with historical significance that can intimidate others while giving locals pride in their ingenuity rather than a constant reminder of tragedy.

Canada Trying to out Canada Itself

Speaking of Canada, it doesn’t get any more on the nose than the Montreal Canadiens. We get it. You aren’t just from Canada, you are the CANADIENS! That really stinks for the other Canadian hockey teams though. Like, they want to be Canadian too, right? How would the conversation amongst Canadian hockey fans go?

Toronto, hipster dufus: Sure, Montreal can say they are Canadian. Anyone can do that. But the mighty Maple Leaf embodies what it means to be truly Canadian. We are all the individual leaf and full of delicious syrup.

Vancouver, super casual pacific northwesterner: All of you are being way too high brow about your Canadian-ness. Over here in the California of Canada, we are just super chill and go by Canuck. Why are you being so pompous anyway?

Quebec, too cool for school and smoking a cigarette: We speak French and yearn for the old country. Call us the Nordique.

Winnipeg: Nordique is Scandinavian. We can fly you there, because we have Jets!

The music rips to a halt and everyone just looks at the Winnipeg guy confused.

Winnipeg: …because the Royal Canadian Airforce is headquartered in Winnipeg, duh. ¹

And then there is Ottawa who call themselves the generic Senators because Ottawa is the capital of Canada. I mean, that’s not even clever. They couldn’t call themselves the Parliamentarians or even the Queen Elizabeths or something?

Relocation Division

Hands down the single dumbest nickname is sports is the Los Angeles Lakers. That’s indisputable, right? The Lake-show came from Minneapolis, a land famous for its lakes, but moved to California in 1960 and kept the name. This wasn’t new considering the LA Dodgers had already done the same thing, but the Lakers? LA not only doesn’t have many lakes, but the term Laker doesn’t have any other meaning. “Dodgers” may be a Brooklyn nickname by trade, but “to dodge” is at least a verb. “To lake,” not so much. I’m assuming the name coincidentally sounded so good with the city that they just had to keep it.

That isn’t terribly different from the name that most probably think of first in terms of misplaced teams, the Utah Jazz. The Salt Lake City community isn’t exactly known for its Jazz, like say New Orleans, but at the very least Utah Jazz is a tight sounding name. Plus, good basketball, especially with Pistol Pete Maravich in the team’s history, can seem like music. Still, Utah Yeti? The Great Salt Lakes? There should have been a convention called to swap the Lakers to Utah and Jazz to LA.

Not Scary Division

One of my favorite jokes is to claim that the single scariest team name in all of sports is the Tennessee Volunteers. What could be worse than volunteering??? Now I know that it is really for the volunteer militia but some names out there are just not even trying…

When Cleveland businessman Mickey McBride started his football team, he was convinced to hire 36-year-old Ohio State coach Paul Brown to lead the team. McBride gave Brown an ownership stake and full control of the team including the name. No, he didn’t name it after himself, but he did reject the name that everyone wanted, the Panthers. So, they named it Browns and he was like, “I guess you can name it after me.” Imagine Steve Wozniak goes to Steve Jobs in the 1980’s and says Apple doesn’t make sense, we should call our company Jobs, and Steve goes “sure, why not.”

Despite the whole history of the Oklahoma City Thunder being gross in their shady move from Seattle, at the very least, keeping the electro-storm theme was pretty savvy… until you actually think about it. They named themselves after the sound made from lightning; not lightning itself, the thing that can cause destruction, but just thunder, which does nothing except scare pets. At least they didn’t name themselves the Tornadoes or the Bombers like some of these other cities would have.

It cannot be stressed enough how silly the names White Sox and Red Sox are. In a chicken or the egg situation, they were both previously named after the color of their “stockings.” The only problem was that the name was too long to fit the papers. So, the White Stockings shortened themselves to Sox and Boston just rolled with it too. This was only after the Cincinnati Red Stockings decided to shorten their name to Reds back in 1890 for unknown official reasons, but probably for getting drunk and playing on Sundays.² Of course, they also decided to get rid of their name altogether due to McCarthyism in the 1950s.³

What Were They Thinking Division

Nashville was awarded an expansion team in 1997. In an odd continuity error, they had a mascot and logo before they actually had a team name. To fit the logo, they set it to a fan vote on either the Ice Tigers, Fury, or Attack. One problem though, the owner didn’t like those names and wanted it to be Predators instead. Guess who won?

The real problem though…Predators? The TV Show To Catch a Predator didn’t start until 2004, but the term sexual predator isn’t exactly a new one. So far, we have had teams named after natural disasters, touchstones of other cities, aggressively Canada, and their own socks, but being closely tied to physical abuse is something I simply can’t comprehend. If the Washington Bullets can rebrand to Wizards and the Devil can be taken out of the Rays, you’d think Nashville could maybe go without invoking such a clear loser of a name.

I’m not one to cause problems without solutions though. Why don’t we completely flip the script and call them the Nashville Hot Chickens? Named after the local food, the marketing possibilities write themselves. If Predators is fine, then no one should have any problem with a fishnet clad buxom chicken beckoning everyone to the ice, right?

1. In a bit of irony, when the Jets moved to Phoenix, they scrapped the name for Coyotes. That same year though, Atlanta, the city with the busiest airport in the world also got a team and they named it the generic “Thrashers” which is apparently the state bird? When hockey failed in Atlanta (AGAIN), they moved to Winnipeg and once again took up the name Jets. It should have been the Atlanta Jets! ↩︎
2. This is apparently the reason they were kicked out of the National League in 1880. Considering “red” could mean drunk, this is extra appropriate. ↩︎
3. I know what you are thinking, what the fuck is a Phillie? It’s someone from Philadelphia. That should be extra scary to you. ↩︎