Ferdinand Cesarano

You are right about that; I shouldn't have oversimplified. I agree with all the examples you cited; and I would throw the Durham Bulls and the Indianapolis Indians into that set. But that's about it. The way I see it, the teams we mentioned count as exceptions; for the vast majority of minor league teams, being named after the parent club is the right move. Furthermore, even a team with a unique nickname can look like its parent club. When the Buffalo Bisons were affilliated with the White Sox, their uniforms looked like the White Sox. When they were affilliated with the Indians, their uniforms looked like the Indians. Now that they are affilliated with the Blue Jays, they have done specialty days in which they wore Jays-themed uniforms, which should be their regular look. The Connecticut Tigers had both the name and the look. And they are throwing it away for what will likely be some trendy crap. That is true for the home uniform; even a change of nickname would not necessitate a change of home uniform. But their road uniform says "Tigers", in a script that is the same as the parent club's "Detroit". Of course, this could be changed to spell out any new nickname, and the look would remain intact. Anyway, at least I can console myself with the Syracuse Mets' change in the right direction.

Booooo. Fixed that for you. This change is particularly unfortunate because the Connecticut Tigers are an example of how a minor league team should be named and should be outfitted. They look just like their parent club, and even feature a letter logo in the style of the parent club. Not only do these guys look like professional ballplayers, but any observer could tell at a glance what organistation the team is affiliated with. To dump this classic identity and look for some goofy local kitch is criminal.

Muy bueno.

There have been two Knights teams in New York. The New York Knights of the Arena Football League in 1988: ...and the New York / New Jersey Knights of the WLAF in 1991 and 1992.

(I am just catching up with this thread; hence my response to a comment from several months ago.) I must say that I really dislike this comment. Even if we accept that the majority of lower-league players could not play in the NFL or the CFL, the fact remains that those players are still elite athletes. Someone who is 80% of NFL quality is nevertheless performing at an extraordinarily high level; and we see any number of individual performances in the AAF and all the indoor leagues that demonstrate this fact. These players should not be regarded as "rejects", or equivalent to a guy who was cut from his high school team. Furthermore, there are only so many jobs in the NFL and CFL; and only a tiny percentage of all the football players who are talented enough to play in those leagues ever get the opportunity. Notwithstanding all the scientific pretense involved in using metrics at scouting combines, scouting is in fact very dependent upon the dominant conventions (a polite way of saying "prejudices"). And even the metrics themselves become a kind of mythology; a slavish reliance on sprint times and bench presses tells us nothing about the many intangible qualities that make up a competitor. For every NFL or CFL player, there are dozens to hundreds of other players (depending on the position) who could do the job equally well. These guys wind up playing in the AAF and other lower leagues. The AAF has been successful in presenting high-level competition in a way that is interesting for spectators. The relatively good television ratings are very encouraging, and indicate that plenty of people see these players not as rejects, but, rather, as the quality professionals they are. The XFL will also be drawing players from the enormous pool of high-quality players who do not have NFL or CFL jobs. If that league fails to match the AAF's modest success, this will be for reasons other than the level of talent available.

 I don't believe you can completely delete it. You can go back and edit it so that it's almost completely blank, but there would still be an indication that you posted something. Ah, thanks. So some evidence of my ill-advised distracted post will remain. Drat.

I am a bit embarassed that I don't know the answer to this after all these years; but how does a user delete his/her own post?

The trashy Northeast (which I like to call "the Queens of Philadelphia") is where I typically stay when I go down there. The bicycling up there is excellent.

Neon colours are ridiculous. But there is a way to use bright and bold colours in an attractive way.

The logos of both Star Trek and The Orville look great on caps.

The team theme song:

Bring back the Zephyrs.

Too messy. We'd get even more complaints from people getting blasted with notifications. Ah. Well, such a thing would be strictly opt-in, of course.

So, how about the suggestion of an auto-follow button, so that it wouldn't be necessary to follow every newly-posted thread.

I wonder if it would be possible to have a setting that allows a user to "auto-follow" every newly-posted thread in a forum. This would prevent the need to hit "follow" on every single new thread. By the way, on the reigning topic of ads: I can say that I am still not experiencing anything like the problem that other people describe. I use Chrome both on a PC and on an Android phone; and I just see small ads at the bottom that I can X out (or just ignore).

I don't mind it in song titles. But in the names of teams please stick to actual words. Cambridge Dictionary moo noun [C] - /mu:/ PLURAL moos the sound that a cow makes moo verb - /mu:/ PRESENT PARTICIPLE mooing, PAST TENSE AND PAST PARTICIPLE mooed to make the long, deep sound that a cow makes  Oxford Living Dictionaries moo VERB Make the characteristic deep, resonant vocal sound of cattle. 'the cows mooed from the barn'  NOUN 1 The characteristic sound of cattle. 'the doleful moo of a cow' 2 British informal An irritating or incompetent woman. 'you silly old moo'  Merriam-Webster moo verb mooed; mooing; moos Definition of moo intransitive verb : to make the throat noise of a cow  I can't speak for its current standing - if any - within Esperanto, but moo is, in fact, "a word word" in the English language. Very nice. All languages have onomatopoeias; in Esperanto we have the cry "mu", from which we get the verb "muĝi". And yes, you can find these onomatopoeias in dictionaries; and they behave like normal words in most settings. Buuuut ... they aren't exactly normal words. They are imitations of sounds. Would you like a team to be called the Minnesota Ah-Choo or the Sioux City Cokk-a-Doodle-Doo? How about if the Las Vegas 51s, instead of switching to a sensible name, had instead kept the sci-fi theme and had become the Las Vegas Pew-Pew-Pew? None of these are any worse than the Fremont Moo.

It's an onomatopoeia, an orthographic imitation of a non-word sound. As Ralph Kramden used to say: "Bang, zoom!" Even if one wishes to ignore the fundamental difference between an onomatopoeia and a word word (the kind with an etymology), there is no way to deny that this represents a new low in the naming of teams. You want to honour the cows? Then call the team the Cows. Or the Herd (a singular name, but at least collective in meaning, like wolfpack). The lesson here is that there is such a thing as "too creative".

Holy f-ing s. I had thought that singular team names were bad. But now these names have left words behind altogether, and have moved into the realm of sounds that are not even words. What a breakthrough. Surely it won't be long before we see the debuts of the Denver <raspberry noise>, the Kansas City <fart noise>, and the Omaha <boi-oi-oi-oi-oing>. This is a reminder that, no matter how terrible things are, they can always get much worse.

There was a New Orleans Hurricanes basketball team. Professional Basketball League of America 1947 Houston Hurricane played in the old North American Soccer League 1978-1980 Yes; but you couldn't do that now, after Hurricane Katrina. Consider that the XFL originally planned to call its Birmingham team the Birmingham Blast, but people in that city objected because that name evoked thoughts of a 1963 firebombing of a black church. So the team wound up using a different name. A similar bit of common sense will prevent any attempts at New Orleans or Houston teams using the name Hurricanes for some time. But maybe not forever. The 1906 earthquake in Northern California happened long enough ago that people can now joke about it. Also, I understand that the current Chicago Fire team is paying homage to the fire department; indeed there is even a television show called Chicago Fire about that department. Still, the main referent of the phrase "Chicago fire" in the English language is the 1871 conflagration. Despite this, the WFL team could use that name in 1974 partly for the same reason that the name San Jose Earthquakes is considered acceptable, namely, the century that had passed since the tragedy. The other factor that has defanged the name is the widespread notion that the fire was beneficial to the city in the long run, allowing for the "Great Rebuilding".

Ah, interesting. Well, let us remember that the name Chicago Fire in sports originated in the WFL, and that that team's imagery did not borrow from the fire department. That team was just playing on the existence in the language of the term "the Chicago fire", just as other teams named themselves after existing terms: Texas Rangers, Baltimore Orioles, Colorado Rockies, New Jersey Devils. I will say that I find the whole trend bizarre. Imagine the New Orleans Hurricanes, the Las Vegas Snipers, the Florida Sinkholes. All of those are awful; yet none of them is any worse than the Chicago Fire (if you remove the FD reference) or the San Jose Earthquakes.

Not to mention Fire (Chicago, MSL), Avalanche (Colorado, NHL), Tornadoes (Worcester, former independent minor league baseball Can-Am League), Volcanoes (Salem-Keizer, Minor League Baseball), Blizzard (Green Bay, Indoor Football League), Cyclones (Iowa State, NCAA), etc. (I'm not counting names like Storm, Thunder and Lightning, as they don't necessarily attain the same threat level as the aforementioned forces of nature and other disasters.) This might make a good thread of its own. Anybody have others to add? Once I was in a chat with someone from England who was somewhat interested in American sports. He was fascinated/appalled by the existence of names such as the Chicago Fire and the San Jose Earthquakes, mentioning that he couldn't imagine that anyone would go for the English equivalent, the London Plague.

And named their mascot Sasparillo

I usually use the built-in Samsung browser. But I just checked the site on the Chrome app, and it looks the same as on the Samsung browser: there's just a small ad at the bottom that you can X out.