Let's Change Some Sports Team Names!
Changing the names of some teams with Native names can be fun!
In case you haven’t noticed, people are angry. I’m not one of those goons who thinks anger is a flaw in the human condition, and in the case of the thousands of protestors in major American cities from Minneapolis to New York to Portland, I am firmly on their side. They’re angry because the United States has really not done right by them for decades, centuries, its entire history. The kicker is even if the stock advice from the right of “if you don’t like it, leave it” wasn’t crass and dismissive, COVID-19 has limited the list of countries to which Americans can travel to Mexico, Turkey, Tanzania, and various former Yugoslavian republics.
The anger has spilled over into sports in that the continued protests against names and logos that have co-opted Native American/First Nations imagery have boiled over. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Protests against police brutality were not focused on teams like the football club in Washington, but sponsors started seeing the writing on the wall and applying pressure. Said football team announced that they would play the 2020 season under the name “Washington Football Team.” That won’t be the permanent name, mind you, but team naming discourse is the best kind of Discourse™.
Look at the hubbub around the Seattle Kraken. The National Hockey League struggles to carve out a niche as the fourth option for sports in America with NASCAR, golf, and lately esports, but damn if the day that the expansion hockey team unveiled its new name wasn’t fun. For one day, the NHL and its newest team were the talk of the town. For one day, it was 1985 again, and hockey looked like it was on top of the world. The Washington Football Team isn’t the only one that can have this exciting thing happen for them. Sports Twitter can have several fun days of discussing and debating new team names across three of the four major sports leagues. Hell, I’ll even it started with my suggestions for five teams that should probably change names and/or logos.
Major League Baseball
Atlanta – This team name has an easy fix. No, it’s not as easy as just changing the logo. The word “brave” used as a noun has a specific connotation. One doesn’t call a firefighter a “brave” for doing their job; it’s a word used to describe a Native warrior. However, one can play with that word as an adjective turned into its form as a noun. The Atlanta Bravery rolls surprisingly smoothly off the tongue, and it doesn’t require too much changing of what they have now. Of course, the logos and imagery around the team need to change in order to fit the name, and they gotta get rid of that awful chop they do. Those are all easy fixes though. I would suggest firefighter imagery, complete with a new Dalmatian mascot.
The counterargument here is that “Bravery” doesn’t fit the mold of the other major team sports leagues. It’s a women’s sports league name or one they’d use in Major League Soccer. I don’t disagree that the Atlanta Bravery sounds like a WNBA name, but where I do disagree is that a WNBA-sounding name is bad. This idea that American team sports names have to be macho and not abstract is so shortsighted and counterculture to team naming conventions in leagues more popular abroad. Quick, what’s Manchester City’s nickname? Or FC Barcelona? Trick question, because either they don’t have one, or they’re not officially part of the team name. There’s no precedent worldwide, and the precedent here is superfluous. If it takes renaming an insensitive team name to normalize abstract, non-plural nouns in one of the big three leagues, so be it.
Cleveland – The popular choice for the former lovable losers by the lake turned perennial contenders by Lake Erie is the “Spiders.” The nickname has history, sure, but has anyone considered what kind of history it has? Sure, the Spiders in their decade run in the pre-turn of the last century National League finished second place three times, but no one remembers that tidbit. I had to look it up on Wikipedia myself. If folks DO remember anything about the team though, it’s that the Spiders were the worst team in baseball history. In 1899, the team played 154 games and only won 20 of them. For frame of reference, the worst team in post-1901 Major League history was the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics team. They went 36-117, 16 games better with one fewer game played. Baseball is a game steeped in superstition, and while I tend not to believe in things like jinxes and curses in real life, sports occupy a different breed of animal. You have to think of a different name for the current team.
What are things that are associated with Cleveland? The river caught on fire, and while that seems embarrassing, it can lead to a pretty cool, fearsome, unique team name. The problem is that anything I can come up with – the River Monsters, River Phoenix (yeah), River Fireballs – feels like a minor league name. Can you normalize an abstract name? I think so. Can you normalize a name that feels like it should be associated with Bark at the Park and Star Wars Nights and gonzo food as gimmicks to sell tickets? I’m not sure. LeBron James is perhaps Cleveland’s greatest import, but the Cleveland Kings feels like a rote name.
Cleveland is home to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, which feels rife with fodder for team names. The Cleveland Rockers could work, as could the Cleveland Spinners or even the Ohio Players. My choice, however, would be to take a name from the early pioneers of rock – Bill Haley and His Comets. “Rock Around the Clock” was one of the genre’s earliest hits. They could honor one of the earliest inductees into the Hall with the name the Cleveland Comets. The name would also provide some depth to the team’s aura by way of astrological trappings for the logo and imagery.
National Hockey League
Chicago – One shortcut to fixing their imagery would simply be to change the logo, at least on the surface. However, when one thinks of a “Blackhawk” outside of the context of the hockey team with the Native bust as the logo, they think of an assault helicopter. Your mileage may vary on using sports as a way to stoke military fervor, but that’s not my bag. Separating the word into “Black Hawks” might work too with a logo change, but honestly, that feels like such a copout. Where’s the fun in that? A simple and cursory Google search shows that birds of prey native to Illinois include the hawk, the goshawk, the osprey, and the buzzard. Of all those, the “Chicago Goshawks” has the best ring to it. Locals can still use the shorthand ‘Hawks to refer to them, and now the team has a unique raptor as its mascot instead of recycling the word “hawk” like some mid-major college basketball team.
National Basketball Association
Oklahoma City Thunder – No, this name isn’t offensive. I just think it would be nice if they moved back to Seattle and called themselves the Supersonics again. It would be neat. Luckily for the NBA, it hasn’t had a team name that appropriated Native imagery since the Buffalo franchise with the same name as the Atlanta baseball team moved to San Diego and rebranded as the Clippers. Of course, the Clippers had their own brush with racism and insensitivity, but Donald Sterling is dead, and the team is now owned by tech bros. Totally different kind of bad juju!
National Football League
Kansas City – The one team that doesn’t even have to change its name is the latest to win the Super Bowl. The term “Chief” isn’t loaded like the term “Brave” is, and a rebrand with a new logo and mascot might be all the defending Champs need. That being said, I already proposed firefighter imagery for the Atlanta baseball team, so I’m not going to propose it for the Kansas City football team either. In this case, all the team would have to do to create perhaps the most fun team name in all of sports is remove the letter “I” from its nickname. The Kansas City Chefs slicing and dicing the competition, putting heat on the quarterback, making the other fanbases salty, having receivers burn the defense like bad toast. Kansas City is a culinary town anyway. While few would call barbecue master a “chef,” the imagery still fits. Plus, it would take the head off other teams’ fans’ insults. They’ve been calling the team the “Chefs” for years and taking that weapon from their arsenal would be sweet for fans of the Champs.
Washington – The holy grail, the reason why this issue of the newsletter is what it is, the NFC East rivals of my chosen team have already taken the first steps to changing the name. Team owner Daniel Snyder didn’t do this out of the goodness of his heart; he’s quoted as saying in the past that he’d never change the name. This is capitalism in action. It’s not ideal to have corporations being drivers for change, but hey, I guess if the unintended circumstances lead to good things, it’s a silver lining, huh?
In typical happenings surrounding this franchise, the web domain names for several potential replacement names were purchased up before Snyder could even consider them. The legal battle in grabbing these names is probably the reason why the team will go under the very European handle of “Washington Football Team” in 2020, if there’s a season of course. I wouldn’t at all hate it if they went by something like the “Washington Football Club” or “Football DC” or some other permanent European name, but conversely, no sport is as truly American and as insulated to America as football is. One might as well keep the naming conventions intact. City/State/Region plus Nickname rules and all other conventions can stay in international futbol, or soccer as we Yanks call it.
Many names have been brought up, and some of them are pretty good honestly. The Washington Redtails shift the team name from denigrating one marginalized group to honoring another. The Washington Red Pandas give an awesome animal more spotlight, even if it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. The Washington Sentinels is such a great name it was used in the best (and most problematic, but I’ll leave that for a future issue) football movie ever, The Replacements. My personal favorite name, however, is to leave the “red” out of it altogether and delve back into the team’s history. In the 1980s, the team’s offensive line was so big, so nasty, so tough, that they garnered the nickname “The Hogs” from fans and eventually the national media. The nickname stuck so well that the group engendered a fan section of Rubenesque, middle-aged men to get themselves up in sundresses, frilly hats, and pig noses and sit in the front row. The Washington Warthogs honor that bit of team history in a way that is unique to the good parts of that team’s past. You can’t name them the Washington Hogs because you might engender someone to make a dick joke on SportsCenter, and no one wants that. But “the Warthogs” name rolls off the tongue naturally. Savor the flavor, Washington Football fans, because you’re never going to get me to write lovingly and constructively about your team like this again unless they’re playing the Dallas Cowboys.
Photo via Richmond.com