City vs State/Region Team Names

[The_Admiral]

7 hours ago, cajunaggie08 said:

the Texas Rangers is a much better name than Arlington Rangers or Dallas Rangers.

 

 

"Dallas Rangers" sounds fine to me. Calling a sports team "the Texas Rangers" is so on-the-nose and corny. A more oblique reference to the lawmen would have suited them just fine and not purported to be the team of an entire state that already had a team when they got there.

 

FAR superior:
San Francisco Warriors

Boston Patriots

Charlotte Panthers

Miami Marlins

Los Angeles Angels

Halifax Schooners

Phoenix Cardinals

Phoenix Coyotes (to the extent that the Coyotes are far superior to anything)

Indianapolis Colts

Hartford Whalers

 

Considerably superior:
Dallas Rangers

Denver Rockies (or Denver Zephyrs)

Phoenix Diamondbacks (or Phoenix Snakes?)

 

City would be better but would necessitate a name change:

Tennessee Titans

 

Toss-up:

Indiana/Indianapolis Pacers
Utah/Salt Lake City Jazz

St. Petersburg Rays?

 

City wouldn't be better:

New Jersey Devils

the Minnesotas

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Tampa Bay Lightning

 

 

[The_Admiral]

12 minutes ago, tigers said:

How does Boston appeal to people from Attleboro, Taunton, New Bedford, Providence and more?

Boston doesn't appeal to anyone

 

[rorinator]

Wow, not often that my Coyotes are considered superior in anything besides accumulating second round picks and filing for bankruptcy, haha! 

 

I definetly prefer them using the name Phoenix, I understand why it was changed but I'd like to see if the change actually helped the Cards and Yotes and appeal to more Arizonans...

[The_Admiral]

Can't imagine how it could have; it changed nothing about their material realities. I doubt people in Flagstaff and Tucson felt alienated and unrepresented by the Phoenix Suns in the Finals.

[ManillaToad]

24 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Phoenix Diamondbacks

 

this sounds terrible

[sky1324]

While I'd rather they be the Charlotte Panthers, at the very least a Carolina panther was a real animal. They're extinct in the wild, but they existed. That justifies the use of a regional name. Not to mention they didn't play in Charlotte for a year, they played in South Carolina. Florida Panthers is also ok since they are real, and I can extend that to the Rangers as well.

[MilSox]

I generally prefer city names with a few exceptions. 

 

In the case of Minnesota and Indiana, the city's name is such a mouthful that it's just easier to identify by the state. But in Minnesota's case, I really wish Twin Cities would have taken off. Although then there's the fact that none of their teams played in either of the cities when they started. 

 

I can also understand using the state's name when the team actually plays in a remote suburb rather than the city or an inner suburb... provided no other teams play in that state. The Michigan Panthers were a good example of this. Unlike the Lions, they never played in Detroit and didn't have any plans in the foreseeable future to do so. 

 

I kinda feel like Tampa Bay is the gold standard for regional names. In fact, I weirdly wish more teams were named for bodies of water that still directed you to a specific area. For that reason, I wonder why the Warriors stuck with Golden State when San Francisco Bay Warriors would serve the same purpose and is much less ambiguous. Although I wouldn't necessarily want the 49ers to follow suit. That would come across as a slap to the city they spent their first 70+ years in. 

 

Carolina I can tolerate for the Panthers. They actually started in one Carolina before settling in the other. I suppose I understand the Carolina Hurricanes for similar reasons and because it actually does sound a lot more major league than Raleigh or Raleigh-Durham. 

 

New England Patriots is an interesting case. They spent a good decade being the bastard child of Boston sports before moving to a town that's just as close to Hartford, so it kinda makes sense. But New England Whalers was just desperate. Glad they eventually smartened up and became the Hartford Whalers. Hartford as a brand name just seemed to work for a hockey team.

 

I don't like any pro team named for Florida or Texas. It's not like it would be such a mystery what Miami Panthers or Dallas Rangers was referring to. I know the Rangers have never actually played in Dallas, but the team they're named for did. The Cowboys play in the same town and I doubt people in Fort Worth or wherever have ever been discouraged from rooting for the Cowboys because they're named for Dallas.

 

Granted, I'd probably have a problem if a team playing in Waukesha County named itself for Milwaukee, which is kind of why I understand why people don't like the Angels being named for LA as it's a very similar dynamic at play. But I can promise I'd hate the very idea of California Angels if that wasn't what I grew up with.

 

I guess this is my long winded way of saying the city name is preferable, although there are exceptions to every rule, the real life exceptions are often just plain dumb.

[MilSox]

11 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

I definitely do not subscribe to the notion that the state name necessarily means that the team is the only team in the state.  For that reason, I prefer "California Angels" to all other versions.  The name "Los Angeles Angels", while having a PCL history, is just goofy, with the repeat of "angels" in two different languages.  And "Anaheim" as a name is strictly minor-league. It ranks, as in the Mel Blanc / Jack Benny gag, with Azusa and Cucamonga; it has no business being in the same league with the New Yorks and the Chicagos of the world, or even with smaller (but still major) cities such as Seattle and Kansas City.  "Anaheim" is simply far too cheesy a name for a team in Major League Baseball.  (Response to anticipated retort: it's too cheesy for the NHL, too.)

 

I prefer LA Angels, but I never understood this argument against Anaheim. Is it a place you think of amongst the New Yorks and Chicagos of the world? Probably not. But it still has cache in American pop culture. The Hollywood Stars name worked for the same reason IMO.

[ManillaToad]

36 minutes ago, NicDB said:

For that reason, I wonder why the Warriors stuck with Golden State when San Francisco Bay Warriors would serve the same purpose and is much less ambiguous.

 

well for one most people would think they were called the Bay Warriors

[MilSox]

23 minutes ago, ManillaToad said:

 

well for one most people would think they were called the Bay Warriors

 

I don't think that's such a terrible thing. Besides, I think most people would get the hint when their scorebox acronym would be SFB.

[Brian in Boston]

12 hours ago, NicDB said:

New England Patriots is an interesting case. They spent a good decade being the bastard child of Boston sports before moving to a town that's just as close to Hartford, so it kinda makes sense.

Gillette Stadium in Foxborough isn't "just as close to Hartford" as it is to Boston. As the crow flies, the geographic center of Hartford's a good 50 to 60 miles more distant from Gillette Stadium than the geographic center of Boston happens to be. You're likely thinking of Providence, Rhode Island.

[tigers]

33 minutes ago, Brian in Boston said:

Gillette Stadium in Foxborough isn't "just as close to Hartford" as it is to Boston. "As the crow flies" the geographic center of Hartford's a good 50 to 60 miles more distant from Gillette Stadium than the geographic center of Boston happens to be. You're likely thinking of Providence, Rhode Island.

 

With so much changes to American sports why do people dislike basically one of the few clubs to keep their history in tack?

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

21 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

"Anaheim" is simply far too cheesy a name for a team in Major League Baseball. 

 

 

9 hours ago, NicDB said:

I prefer LA Angels, but I never understood this argument against Anaheim. Is it a place you think of amongst the New Yorks and Chicagos of the world? Probably not. But it still has cache in American pop culture. The Hollywood Stars name worked for the same reason IMO.

 

The name "Hollywood" is at the exact opposite end of the cheesiness scale as the name "Anaheim".  Hollywood has tremendous cultural weight and cache; Anaheim has absolutely none. Hollywood is to some extent a synonym for showbiz and for stardom; it has a million different associations and connotations, all of them big-time.  By contrast, Anaheim is the home of precisely one thing. It is, essentially, nowhere.  A Los Angeles team called "Hollywood Stars" could definitely work in one of the major leagues, and would fit in well next to New York and Chicago, where a team with the Anaheim name strikes a sour note.

 

Similarly, a New York team could be named "Harlem", a name with a great deal of cache.  Harlem is a renowned cultural centre, with associated styles of dress, music, cuisine, etc.  Also, as much as I hate the name "Brooklyn" for the team that should be the New York Nets, I understand that "Brooklyn" is a name with considerable cultural weight and cache, owing to Brooklyn's former exisitence as a city (before it was improved by joining the real City).  Whereas, the name "Queens" has absolutely no such weight. 

 

I hasten to add that this is not a knock on Queens, where I have lived my entire life, and where I hope to live always.  I display a Queens flag both at home and at my office, and I possess several hats with "Queens" on them.  I dig Queens.  But I know that the name is not fit to be a location name for a major league team.  I live in Queens, and I also live in reality.

 

And let us once again note that minor leagues are something else entirely. Queensboro FC will soon begin play in the USL (and I have that team's hat, too); but such a team could never be in MLS. 

[TBGKon]

15 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

 

Well, the team that the Patriots were afraid of hasn't played in New York since 1975.  

 

Indeed, both New York teams and both Los Angeles teams in the NFL play outside their nominal home cities, as do, of course, the Cowboys and the 49ers.  

 

So being a few miles outside the city limits is not an excuse to abandon the city's name. 

The NY football teams are at most 6-8 miles from a New York state border.  The Patriots play about 25 miles outside of Boston, hardly "a few miles outside the city limits".

[cajunaggie08]

13 hours ago, NicDB said:

I don't like any pro team named for Florida or Texas. It's not like it would be such a mystery what Miami Panthers or Dallas Rangers was referring to. I know the Rangers have never actually played in Dallas, but the team they're named for did. The Cowboys play in the same town and I doubt people in Fort Worth or wherever have ever been discouraged from rooting for the Cowboys because they're named for Dallas.

 The Cowboys had 48 years of brand history prior to moving to Arlington. There was no way they were going to change names just because they moved across the metroplex. The San Francisco 49ers didnt change names because they moved down to Santa Clara. The Rangers local history started in Arlington. The local officials who helped get Major League baseball to the area were not going to let Dallas get slapped on the team name. Its not because they didn't think people from Fort Worth, Arlington, or any of the other mid-cities between Dallas and Fort Worth wouldn't support a team because it was named after Dallas as the Cowboys are the very proof of that.  Outside of Texas, you probably have to tell people you're from the Dallas area even if you live right outside of Fort Worth, but locally it is perceived as an insult if you say someone from Fort Worth is from Dallas and vice-versa. So by putting a team in the middle of the Metroplex, they had a chance to create a new name that appealed to the whole market without just calling it a Dallas team when more people in the area don't live in Dallas than do. As a Houston guy, I don't like that the Rangers name tries to claim the entire state. But it makes more sense than calling a major league team the Arlington Rangers or Metroplex Rangers and you have an Anaheim situation on your hands.

[MilSox]

13 hours ago, Brian in Boston said:

Gillette Stadium in Foxborough isn't "just as close to Hartford" as it is to Boston. As the crow flies, the geographic center of Hartford's a good 50 to 60 miles more distant from Gillette Stadium than the geographic center of Boston happens to be. You're likely thinking of Providence, Rhode Island.

 

You're right... I was thinking of Providence, which google maps tells me is actually a bit closer to Foxborough than Boston.

 

Either way, I totally understand the mindset of rebranding as New England. The Patriots were just over a decade old and didn't have the generations-worth of entrenchment that the Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics enjoyed. Pro football had already failed to take off a few times in Boston. I suspect that may have had to do with the large amount of college teams in the area that were considered "major" for much of that time.

 

Here was an opportunity to play closer to one of the other major New England cities and market themselves as something other than just another Boston team that the rest of New England roots for by default. It's not like they were stepping on toes in doing so (unlike the Whalers a few years later), and New England just "works" with a name like Patriots in a way it wouldn't with any of the other teams named for Boston.

[MilSox]

1 hour ago, cajunaggie08 said:

 The Cowboys had 48 years of brand history prior to moving to Arlington. There was no way they were going to change names just because they moved across the metroplex. The San Francisco 49ers didnt change names because they moved down to Santa Clara. The Rangers local history started in Arlington. The local officials who helped get Major League baseball to the area were not going to let Dallas get slapped on the team name. Its not because they didn't think people from Fort Worth, Arlington, or any of the other mid-cities between Dallas and Fort Worth wouldn't support a team because it was named after Dallas as the Cowboys are the very proof of that.  Outside of Texas, you probably have to tell people you're from the Dallas area even if you live right outside of Fort Worth, but locally it is perceived as an insult if you say someone from Fort Worth is from Dallas and vice-versa. So by putting a team in the middle of the Metroplex, they had a chance to create a new name that appealed to the whole market without just calling it a Dallas team when more people in the area don't live in Dallas than do. As a Houston guy, I don't like that the Rangers name tries to claim the entire state. But it makes more sense than calling a major league team the Arlington Rangers or Metroplex Rangers and you have an Anaheim situation on your hands.

 

I'm not denying that getting rid of Dallas when they moved to Arlington would have been all kinds of stupid. The point I was trying to make was that they only played in Dallas for 11 years before moving to Irving. 

 

There was a minor league team in the area known as the Dallas-Fort Worth Rangers in the 1960s, and the team that played in Turnpike/Arlington Stadium in the years leading up to the Senators coming to town was, in fact, the Dallas-Fort Worth Spurs. 

 

Maybe it's me, but I kind of would have preferred that because the Rangers never register to me as a "Dallas" team the way the Cowboys, Mavs, or even the Stars do. I guess you could argue that Texas is justified for them because they were the lone Texas entry in the AL back when the two leagues actually acted like separate leagues. But now that the Rangers and Astros are division rivals, the fact that one of them claims all of Texas feels that much more eccentric.

[Brian in Boston]

5 hours ago, TBGKon said:

The NY football teams are at most 6-8 miles from a New York state border.  The Patriots play about 25 miles outside of Boston, hardly "a few miles outside the city limits".

To be specific:

• MetLife Stadium is located 11.1 miles from the geographic center of the City of New York.
• SoFi Stadium is located 11.8 miles from the geographic center of the City of Los Angeles .
• Gillette Stadium is located 17.8 miles from the geographic center of the City of Boston.

[Mitch B]

Every team has to market itself as it deems appropriate.  Every situation isn’t the same.  One size doesn’t fit all.

 

The Patriots draw fans from all of New England.  Golden State sounds cool to me and the team’s appeal is regional.  It would be cool if NYC actually hosted a football team, but it makes sense to market the teams across the river as NY.

[tBBP]

I don't mind the more uniquely-named locale identifiers. After all, it's said that "variety is the spice of life". I'm not so rigid as some to say it's either/or; that said, like ol' boy just said above, some just work in ways others wouldn't.

 

"Golden State" has long been one of my favorites; right behind it, New England.  Off the top of my head I can't think of any other "regional" identifiers aside from Tampa Bay. I do remember that the A11FL, had it taken off, would've fielded a team called the "Bay Area Sea Lions"--it'd have been interesting to see how that would've taken off.

 

About the Florida teams: given that Florida Panthers were an actual species of big cat, it works for me. I still kinda wish the Marlins had kept the "Florida" identifier (at the time of their inception they were the only MLB team in the state, after all), but I understand why they went more local. (I don't think it's been working too well for them, though! )

 

All that said..."Indianapolis" is the one that gets me. On the one hand, I've heard "Indianapolis Colts" my entire life, so it doesn't seem weird--and, I know why the Irsays went with the city name rather than the state name. That said, "Indiana Colts" sounds much simpler, and at the same time, kinda weird.   Then you have both the Indy Eleven and Indy Fuel, which I think may be the only two instances (unless one of y'all knows differently) of a pro sports team making an abbreviated form of its city's name their official identifer.

 

Far as OKC, yeah, I think it should be "Oklahoma Thunder", too (which sounds more like a football team than a basketball team)--but OU vs OK ST is real, and so sticking "City" in there was their way* around that potential controversy. (Could be worse...they could've been named the "Oklahoma Rolling Thunder"...)