Jump to content

Singular or Non-Plural Team Nicknames


MichiganPackers

Recommended Posts

Must respectfully disagree. Singular names are awkward when referring to a single player, and are therefore automatically inferior to almost any plural name.

Abstracted singular names are even sillier when broken down and are therefore inferior even to concrete singular names.

Which is why I've always referred to the individual players on the Orlando Magic as "Magicians" because that's really silly.

PvO6ZWJ.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 74
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Why not just refer to the player as "a member of the ______," create a nickname, or something along those line? It's not that hard, we already do something like that for inhabitants of a state, city, or town. I just don't see how a singular team name is automatically silly just because it takes a little more thought and vocabulary to use. Especially when there are some (like the New Orleans Jazz or Orlando Magic) which are miles better and more fitting than nearly every other name I've heard proposed for them.

Tradition is the foundation of innovation, and not the enemy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A name's a name. The real problem is that minor league teams aren't named silly enough. No minor league affiliate should ever take their branding seriously.

I hope you're being sarcastic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I don't know about that. I like whimsy minor-league branding (or at least I did before Brandiose carpet-bombed the minors with anthropomorphic EVERYTHING), but it can't be every single team at every single level. I also like parent-team derivatives for certain teams, when done well. Given their regional strength and emphasis on the very farm system they invented in the first place, I like having Cardinals all the way down. I suspect I would like, say, Mariners all the way down much less. (As for turtles all the way down, now is not the time to discuss the nature of the universe.)

There are some overly serious minor-league brands that fall flat on their faces to me. The Omaha StormChasers stands out as the big one, but I don't know whether that's a failure of "serious" branding as a philosophy or if it's just one crappy brand. And of course, whimsy logos can be terrible, too:

3vl6i37dupmka11fbdzodgfth.gif

Why hello there, bane of my sports logo existence!

As for singular team names, they're generally bad, but somehow I tolerate the Miami Heat and the Utah Jazz (DON'T EVEN START). "Miami Heat" sounds edgy and flashy in a way that "Flamingos" or "Sun Dragons" or whatever else wouldn't have. It even sounds just like Miami Vice! And Jazz is fine; we've all seen the parallels of improvisation and individualism-meeting-teamwork between jazz and basketball. And if you haven't, there you go, think about it, man!

Avalanche is bad, Magic is really bad, Lightning is bad, Thunder is even worse, and "Minnesota Wild" is the single worst team name in the major leagues now and forever.

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's a hockey team here in the UK called the Manchester Phoenix. That name bugs me to no end. I mean, how do you refer to a player on that team? Is an individual player also a Phoenix, or does each player get to claim a body part? Why not name the team the Firebirds instead?

On top of that, they even arose - hence, the "Phoenix" - from another team using a singular name, the Manchester Storm.

mTBXgML.png

PotD: 24/08/2017

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed.

Singular names suck muchly, but abstract singulars take it to a whole new level of suckitude.

Count me in on this. Jazz (the least bad of the bunch), Heat, and Avalanche are bad in large part because "He's a Heat" is so dumb compared to "He's a Hawk" or something. But at least "Heat" does not need to be explained to anyone. "Wild" on the other hand does not make sense until it's explained. It's far too abstract.

As for "Red Sox" and "White Sox"...I don't really love those, but since they date back to the deadball era, I can give 'em a pass...and you can still say "He's a "Red Sock" in my opinion.

One place I am OK with it is when a college is named after a color. "Harvard Crimson", "Stanford Cardinal", etc. School colors are different than "pro colors" and old-school college names like that feel natural to me (though it's still hard to say "he's a Crimson."

On the college level I can only name a handful of teams that are singular but until 1932 Ole Miss had the athletic nickname of the "flood"

Tulsa "Golden Hurricane" drives me nuts.

Disclaimer: If this comment is about an NBA uniform from 2017-2018 or later, do not constitute a lack of acknowledgement of the corporate logo to mean anything other than "the corporate logo is terrible and makes the uniform significantly worse."

 

BADGERS TWINS VIKINGS TIMBERWOLVES WILD

POTD (Shared)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't mind them, but maybe that's just because I've been following the OHL for too long and have just grown used to them since they have 5:

Sarnia Sting

Guelph Storm

North Bay Battalion

Saginaw Spirit

Owen Sound Attack

And while I have seen some posts above talking about how some of these names don't make sense, the same applies with plural names too. Sticking with the OHL as an example, I still have no clue what the hell a 67 or a Pete is (it's probably a good thing those team names normally end with an s).

Sporting Venue Count (for games): OHL: 19 (28 Total)- 770 games (after 18-19),

MLB: 13 (15 Total), NHL: 4

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jazz is really the only one I'm ok with, and that's mostly nostalgia-driven (I got into the Jazz during their 1997-1998 Finals runs because I couldn't help but be a little contrarian back then). Miami Heat is the least offensive aside from that, but even that bugs me in a "this shouldn't be" sort of way. The Wild are only saved because their identity has remained solid since inception, despite near continuous tweaking. Avalanche is pretty bad until you learn what they were originally going to be called upon moving to Denver: the Rocky Mountain Extreme.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought it was Rocky Mountain Xtreme, with an X. I believe 1995 almost gave us the New Jersey Devils becoming the Nashville Hockey Tonks. Sometimes I wonder why we're nostalgic for this decade.

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They were kewl times, dude.

---

Which reminds me of my favorite singular team name. From the depths of the 90s in Pro Beach Hockey, I give you....

¡Salsa!

l.jpg

5963ddf2a9031_dkO1LMUcopy.jpg.0fe00e17f953af170a32cde8b7be6bc7.jpg

| ANA | LAA | LAR | LAL | ASU | CSULBUSMNT | USWNTLAFC | OCSCMAN UTD |

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They were kewl times, dude.

I remember thinking I was the coolest kid around rocking my purple Damon Stoudamire jersey.

Which reminds me of my favorite singular team name. From the depths of the 90s in Pro Beach Hockey, I give you....

¡Salsa!

l.jpg

I thought it was Rocky Mountain Xtreme, with an X. I believe 1995 almost gave us the New Jersey Devils becoming the Nashville Hockey Tonks.

Somewhere, beyond the cosmos, a world exists where both of these things happened.

Sometimes I wonder why we're nostalgic for this decade.

I see kids today go on about how awesome the Hornets' court was or how under appreciated the Rockets' pyjama uniforms were and I just realized I said "kids today."

e222714-5.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought it was Rocky Mountain Xtreme, with an X. I believe 1995 almost gave us the New Jersey Devils becoming the Nashville Hockey Tonks. Sometimes I wonder why we're nostalgic for this decade.

I never heard that one and if you made it up...Kudos.

Disclaimer: If this comment is about an NBA uniform from 2017-2018 or later, do not constitute a lack of acknowledgement of the corporate logo to mean anything other than "the corporate logo is terrible and makes the uniform significantly worse."

 

BADGERS TWINS VIKINGS TIMBERWOLVES WILD

POTD (Shared)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They were kewl times, dude.

I remember thinking I was the coolest kid around rocking my purple Damon Stoudamire jersey.
As I told you on another action-packed episode of BASS this week (available for download on iTunes and various platforms ;) ), my first jersey as a kid was the Mighty Ducks Wildwing 3rd jersey. I was awesome.

Sometimes I wonder why we're nostalgic for this decade.

I see kids today go on about how awesome the Hornets' court was or how under appreciated the Rockets' pyjama uniforms were and I just realized I said "kids today."

e222714-5.gif

It's the same reason that I want to dropkick anyone I see wearing the 90s winged-A Angels hat. 1) That logo is terrible. 2) Those teams were terrible.

5963ddf2a9031_dkO1LMUcopy.jpg.0fe00e17f953af170a32cde8b7be6bc7.jpg

| ANA | LAA | LAR | LAL | ASU | CSULBUSMNT | USWNTLAFC | OCSCMAN UTD |

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought it was Rocky Mountain Xtreme, with an X. I believe 1995 almost gave us the New Jersey Devils becoming the Nashville Hockey Tonks. Sometimes I wonder why we're nostalgic for this decade.

I never heard that one and if you made it up...Kudos.
I remember it from an old site called Neutral Zone Hockey, which sometimes just made crap up.

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.




×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.