The dog days of summer are apparently the time to re-brand teams. A couple of weeks ago we saw Cleveland announce the new name for their baseball team. The Guardians. Sounds like a terrible name for an upstart non-NFL football franchise. Then, earlier this week Valparaiso announced they would change their name from The Crusaders to The Beacons. That’s a name that is sure to strike fear into opposing teams. These are just two of the most recent nickname changes that show we’ve lost the plot on what a nickname is supposed to be in sports.
There’s been a trend in the past 20 years to drop historical nicknames. A lot of this was initiated at the college level when the NCAA put in a ban on nicknames for Native American tribes. This was heavily contended and eventually they gave way if the tribes granted permission for their name to be used. The most prominent example of this is the Florida State Seminoles getting permission to keep their nickname. This lead to some terrible nickname transitions. In one of the longer fights, the University of North Dakota tried to get permission to keep the name Fighting Sioux. They got permission from one or both of the Sioux tribes in the state, but then it changed enough that they weren’t allowed to keep the name. They decided that Fighting Hawks was an acceptable name – it’s not. Fighting wasn’t the part the fans wanted to keep, and combining it with hawk reminds you more of the chicken hawk from Looney Tunes than a college mascot.
Going back to the professional level, in the NFL Washington dropped the name Redskins and opted for an unoriginal name – no name at all. They decided to go with the name Washington Football Team until they could find a suitable replacement. The potential new names aren’t looking so hot right now. It’s a hodgepodge of generic mascot names. Some of their potential replacements include Red Wolves, Red Hogs, and Redtails. Like those in North Dakota, they miss the mark – it’s not the Red they want to keep.
Let’s not speculate at what terrible name the Washington Football Team might choose. Instead, let’s take a look at some of the changes that have already been made – none of them good. Hofstra, one of the nickname changes that wasn’t made for offensive reasons, decided to change from a great college name – The Flying Dutchmen to The Pride. No idea what The Pride is, but it’s terrible. They’ll try to sell it to you that this is a pride of lions… it’s not. It’s the same thing as The Beacons – a generic name that means nothing and doesn’t inspire fans whatsoever. Both of these changes sounds like something the President of the university thought would be a great name, even though they’ve never watched a sport in their life. In fact, when Valparaiso changed their name to The Beacons this week they said it was because “we are beacons of light in our community“. A good rule of thumb, when choosing a name for your team don’t make the reason be something that will make people’s eyes roll.
Using democracy to decide on a name doesn’t get much better results. While it didn’t go to a formal vote, Cleveland surveyed over 40,000 fans to help them chose The Guardians replacement for the Indians. They site the Guardian of Traffic from the Hope Memorial Bridge as the reason for going with the new nickname. Sure it ties nicely into the community, but it still just sounds terrible. Going back to the Cleveland Naps (shortened from Napoleons) would have been a better way to tie back to the history of the club. You tie back to the community when you have a new club, not when you’re re-branding.
Nicknames are tricky. Too often now they’re overthought, over voted, and just come out bland. Some of the best nicknames come from the most basic places. The Browns were named after a coach. The Celtics because of Boston’s Irish heritage. The Lakers because of all the lakes in Los Angeles. Nothing fancy, just a straight line to create a name. I’m sure with time we’ll all get used to these new names, but I’d rather have the Washington Football Team than the Washington Redtails at this point.