Re-Brands That Never Happened

[ThePreacher]

Oakland Señors

Tennessee Copperheads

[ThePreacher]

Oh yeah, here's one for you:

For nearly a year, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have borne the brunt of many baseball jokes. Why don?t they add a few more cities to their name? Or why don?t other teams adopt some more cities? The Brooklyn Dodgers of Los Angeles, anyone?

For the last year, while everyone else has laughed at the utter ridiculously of this marketing gimmick, the City of Anaheim hasn?t been in on the joke. In fact, the City of Anaheim ? a distinct municipality with Orange County in California ? has been so incensed by this slight that they took Moreno to court.

This week the lawsuit between the Angels and Anaheim got underway, and so far, it?s been an lesson on how not to make friends conducted by Moreno.

Last year, when Moreno announced the name change, his intentions were clear. The Angels had long played second fiddle to Dodgers, their neighbors 30 miles to the north. While Los Angeles and Anaheim are two distinct entities in one giant urban sprawl, Moreno played upon the sprawl perception and adopted the Los Angeles moniker in front of the Angels.

But Moreno couldn?t completely omit Anaheim from the name. According to the lease signed by Disney, the then-owners of the Angels, and the City of Anaheim a few years ago, the city agreed to kick in $20 million for stadium renovations as long as Anaheim appeared somewhere in the team?s name.

The question at issue now is whether or not the current name with its convoluted structure adheres to that deal. Based on recent testimony in the case, this is one contest the Angels probably won?t win.

Over the last few days, the Angels have relied on a strategy designed to show that they have not broken the contract stipulating that the team name ?include the name Anaheim therein.? The official team name is still the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

However, the official name and the actions of the team?s owner seem to be at odds. Nearly every mention of Anaheim is absent from team merchandise, and earlier this year, Moreno sent a memo to the other Major League Baseball teams asking them to refer to the team as being from Los Angeles instead of from Anaheim.

During his testimony this week, Moreno put on an exhibition of how not to win over friends in Anaheim. At one point, he noted that the name changed was focused around drawing fans from the ?L.A. media market.? In doing so, he compared the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to the New York Yankees and Mets. Those two teams don?t pay homage to the Bronx and Queens respectively; why should he pay homage to Anaheim?

Of course, what Moreno failed to mention contains a little lesson in geography. The Bronx and Queens are part of New York City while Anaheim is part of the O.C. It?s not a borough in Los Angeles; it?s not a suburb of Los Angeles; and in fact, it?s a good 30 miles away from Los Angeles. The New York Jets and Giants of New Jersey are closer to their namesake than the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are to theirs.

While Moreno stands by his decision that keeping Anaheim in the name, albeit on a second-tier basis, is within the letter of the lease, the City of Anaheim is relying on testimony from the original framers of the lease to show that Moreno is in fact breaking the terms of the lease. Last week, the city called upon Tony Tavares, the president of the Angels in 1996 who negotiated the lease with the city officials.

During his testimony, Tavares said that team officials promised city officials that Anaheim would appear prominently in marketing and print coverage around the country. The spirit of the phrase ?include the name Anaheim therein? was supposed to be an all-encompassing term covering the team and its relationship to the city. It was not meant to be the literal phrase Moreno has interpreted it to be.

This argument may or may not be enough to convince jurors. Moreno, in rebutting Tavares? testimony, wondered why the city couldn?t get a guarantee of the name Anaheim Angels built into the lease. The response focused around Michael Eisner?s original intent to call the team the Mighty Angels of Anaheim, a worse name than the one they have now.

So far, it?s unclear whose reasoning will hold up in court. But it is clear that Moreno?s antagonism isn?t going to win him many converts in a City that has tried to distance itself from Los Angeles in an effort to establish an identity outside of Disneyland.

In the end, at the heart of this matter is whether or not the name change hurts tourism in Anaheim. While the Angels have benefited from a closer association with Los Angeles, what has this negligence done to Anaheim? A jury could end up awarding the city nearly $100 million in damages.

As this saga plays out, it will be interesting to see the response of the city if the Angels win. One thing is clear: Cities, already wary of public financing for stadiums, will be driving harder bargains to maintain geographic ties with teams receiving their welfare.

Of course, one way out of this sticky mess could just be for the Angels to adopt a Spanish name. If they called themselves Los Angeles de Anaheim, everyone would win.

[_RH_]

[Darth Danielus]

^^ Oh yeah....forgot about that nordiques abomination... I don't think I ever saw uniforms, just the logo. Wouldn't be quite so bad without the "nordiques" wordmark, and the colours are kinda neat. Template looks interesting too. Would love to see them with the original nordique logo.

[ThePreacher]

I was gonna post that one, but I wanted to focus more on teams that completely changed their names (like the Bullets --> Wizards) and the Nets almost changing to the "Swamp Dragons" lmao.

But I suppose we can do re-brands (With teams keeping the same name) that never happened, like this ATL Hawks one:

The Bucs:

And the Sixers:

[ThePreacher]

Speaking of that Nordiques re-brand, it's such a QMJHL logo! Haha.

[kiwi_canadian]

What about the Washington Capitals one? I remember on the old version of NHLuniforms, there was a picture of the concept jerseys and someone also posted on the board somewhere that ugly eagle looking thing as the logo. They were also reverting back to a red, white and blue colour scheme. Ted Leonis stepped in and put an end to that abomination.

[ThePreacher]

What about the Washington Capitals one? I remember on the old version of NHLuniforms, there was a picture of the concept jerseys and someone also posted on the board somewhere that ugly eagle looking thing as the logo. They were also reverting back to a red, white and blue colour scheme. Ted Leonis stepped in and put an end to that abomination.

You mean this disgrace?

[illwauk]

This...

...reminds me of this...

[Mac the Knife]

What about the Tennessee Titans? Didn't they consider the name Copperheads at one point, complete with a copper helmet that has a "shadow" of the old Oilers derrick? Or was that not officially considered?

There was a list of 34 different names they were considering at the time, but I don't recall if Copperheads was among them.

[Darth Danielus]

The first of the two hawks logos is alright... The bucs and 76ers....no.

And I remember that caps logo too...what a joke......"Its the Colbert Report."

[Jigga]

Anybody got any higher res of those Dragons logos or uniform consepts?

Vancouver Mountaineerss logos and any other unused logos would be appreciated as well.

http://www.nba.com/media/bobcats/Bobcats_Brand.pdf

Check out page 11 of this PDF for the Dragon concepts (Flight concepts on page 10, Bobcats concepts on page 12). If you aren't a fan of their logo now, this will likely make you loathe it even more once you see all they could have had.

There is also a nice template in the PDF as well.

[Bleujayone]

The Vancouvers Grizzlies were originally named the Mounties, then fans were mad, so FedEx paid them $120 million dollars to re-name the team the "Express" before David Stern nixed the idea.

They were never actually called the Mounties, it was just a possibility that was tossed out. Of course, the RCMP own their own identity and would have prevented the name being used anyways.

I've always been curious about that. So the RCMP actually hold copyright to the term "Mounties"? Rather a waste of taxpayers' money on something that trivial. Does that mean if a movie or TV show just happens to mention them, the RCMP have the legal right to block the producers from doing so if they so choose? If so it's not like they stopped Monty Python from dressing up like them in the "Luberjack Song" or stopped Jay Ward from producing Dudley Do-Right cartoons. Very Odd. I thought "mounties" was a colloquialism. How can you hold rights to a slang terminology? This would have been like the NYPD blocking the UFL from naming their team the "Sentinels" as they have been known to go by that term. Or the Catholic Church blocking MLB from calling the San Diego team the "Padres" especially in the content in which they use it.

Wouldn't the RCMP just come off looking bad if they stopped a sports team from honoring them in their moniker? Wouldn't they want people cheering for the Mounties? Again it can't just be about money as many production outside of sports have obviously made a profit while using the name and/or likeness. Better still, what if I had a sports team and my colors were red, navy and yellow, and I just happened to call them the Mounties? Who's to say I mean RCMP? I could mean a cavalry or mountain rams. What makes them so special?

[Gothamite]

Again it can't just be about money as many production outside of sports have obviously made a profit while using the name and/or likeness.

Without licensing the name? Which ones?

[totc]

FC Tennessee Copperheads???????

[kiwi_canadian]

The Vancouvers Grizzlies were originally named the Mounties, then fans were mad, so FedEx paid them $120 million dollars to re-name the team the "Express" before David Stern nixed the idea.

They were never actually called the Mounties, it was just a possibility that was tossed out. Of course, the RCMP own their own identity and would have prevented the name being used anyways.

I've always been curious about that. So the RCMP actually hold copyright to the term "Mounties"? Rather a waste of taxpayers' money on something that trivial. Does that mean if a movie or TV show just happens to mention them, the RCMP have the legal right to block the producers from doing so if they so choose? If so it's not like they stopped Monty Python from dressing up like them in the "Luberjack Song" or stopped Jay Ward from producing Dudley Do-Right cartoons. Very Odd. I thought "mounties" was a colloquialism. How can you hold rights to a slang terminology? This would have been like the NYPD blocking the UFL from naming their team the "Sentinels" as they have been known to go by that term. Or the Catholic Church blocking MLB from calling the San Diego team the "Padres" especially in the content in which they use it.

Wouldn't the RCMP just come off looking bad if they stopped a sports team from honoring them in their moniker? Wouldn't they want people cheering for the Mounties? Again it can't just be about money as many production outside of sports have obviously made a profit while using the name and/or likeness. Better still, what if I had a sports team and my colors were red, navy and yellow, and I just happened to call them the Mounties? Who's to say I mean RCMP? I could mean a cavalry or mountain rams. What makes them so special?

Let's be honest here, with the way Vancouver played in the NBA, would you really want a national police force being "represented" by a piss poor team? lol

[kiwi_canadian]

What about the Washington Capitals one? I remember on the old version of NHLuniforms, there was a picture of the concept jerseys and someone also posted on the board somewhere that ugly eagle looking thing as the logo. They were also reverting back to a red, white and blue colour scheme. Ted Leonis stepped in and put an end to that abomination.

You mean this disgrace?

That's be the one

[IceCap]

The Vancouvers Grizzlies were originally named the Mounties, then fans were mad, so FedEx paid them $120 million dollars to re-name the team the "Express" before David Stern nixed the idea.

They were never actually called the Mounties, it was just a possibility that was tossed out. Of course, the RCMP own their own identity and would have prevented the name being used anyways.

I've always been curious about that. So the RCMP actually hold copyright to the term "Mounties"? Rather a waste of taxpayers' money on something that trivial. Does that mean if a movie or TV show just happens to mention them, the RCMP have the legal right to block the producers from doing so if they so choose? If so it's not like they stopped Monty Python from dressing up like them in the "Luberjack Song" or stopped Jay Ward from producing Dudley Do-Right cartoons. Very Odd. I thought "mounties" was a colloquialism. How can you hold rights to a slang terminology? This would have been like the NYPD blocking the UFL from naming their team the "Sentinels" as they have been known to go by that term. Or the Catholic Church blocking MLB from calling the San Diego team the "Padres" especially in the content in which they use it.

Wouldn't the RCMP just come off looking bad if they stopped a sports team from honoring them in their moniker? Wouldn't they want people cheering for the Mounties? Again it can't just be about money as many production outside of sports have obviously made a profit while using the name and/or likeness. Better still, what if I had a sports team and my colors were red, navy and yellow, and I just happened to call them the Mounties? Who's to say I mean RCMP? I could mean a cavalry or mountain rams. What makes them so special?

Really? REALLY? When you say "Mounties" (especially if you associated the term with the colours you listed) it's clear that you're trying to invoke the imagery of the RCMP. Which they have the right to block.

As for Sentinels, from what I know the NYPD aren't as well known as Sentinels the way the RCMP are known as Mounties. It's a bad analogy. Even if they were, however, the New York Sentinels didn't try to invoke NYPD imagery. Their logo was a skyscraper, and their primary colour was lime green. Not exactly NYPD imagery. The Vancouver Mounties, on the other hand, actually used a Mountie in the traditional RCMP uniform as the logo. The RCMP has the right to block such attempts, and they exercised that right.

Wouldn't the RCMP just come off looking bad if they stopped a sports team from honoring them in their moniker

They did stop it, and they didn't come of looking bad.

Wouldn't they want people cheering for the Mounties?

Perhaps they don't like the notion of equating men and women who risk their lives in the line of duty with millionaire pro athletes?

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I had a picture somewhere that has a guy wearing a Copperheads concept jersey where the sleeves had the Tennessee three star emblem that's found on the flag and green stripes. It was a white jersey. I'll keep searching for it

Edit: Found it along with a logo concept??

Ok, that looks awesome. Kind of makes the Titans' look seem boring by comparison.

---

Speaking of that Nordiques re-brand, it's such a QMJHL logo! Haha.

Actually, looking at past logos from the Q, it's the traditional Nords logo that looks rather minor league.

[BaltimoreFan]

Wasn't that express name thing after the grizz moved (or were moving) to memphis (aka, the home of federal express?)

It'd be interesting to get another look at lists of all the candidate names for recent expansion teams... As often as not, the name teams wind up choosing is inferior to some they'd considered. I know there were better alternatives to "thunder" when the sonics moved to oklahoma.

The Ravens also considered "Marauders" and "Americans" for their name when the Browns moved to Baltimore. I'd say they made the right choice.

[Cujo]

Anyone else tired of seeing the 'prototype' thread come up every single month?