Trending that caught Doug’s eye… weird team names

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/06/2014 (4121 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What’s in a name? Quite a lot if you happen to be a professional sports franchise.

If you have a cool name, you’ll probably rake in tons of extra cash from selling souvenir jerseys and other team merchandise.

If you have a stupid name, you are probably the Ottawa Redblacks, the third Canadian Football League team to call our nation’s capital its home.

It’s never easy coming up with a memorable nickname, but legions of football fans are having a hard time lining up behind the two-colours-squished-together moniker of the CFL’s newest entry.

In a recent Ottawa Citizen poll on reaction to the club’s name, more than 90 per cent voted “Uh, is this a joke? No!”, while just under nine per cent of respondents selected the “Yes, I’d get behind that” option.

Team co-owner Jeff Hunt has offered this explanation: “At an event we had at the Grey Cup, at Real Sports in Toronto, a guy said: ‘What about Red and Blacks?’ I said Red and Blacks is a bit wordy, how about just Redblacks? It was one of those casual conversations that was relatively unremarkable.”

For Hunt, the big upside is the fact the new name allows the team to preserve the iconic “R” on its helmets, a tribute to the defunct Rough Riders squads that won nine Grey Cup championships in Ottawa.

We have no idea how the Redblacks will perform on the field — assuming a labour dispute doesn’t derail the season — but their nickname has already earned them a spot among the Five Weirdest Sports Team Names in History:

5) The Evergreen State College “Geoducks” — What you need to know here is that a geoduck (pronounced “gooey-duck”) is not a duck at all. In fact, it is a mollusk native to the Pacific Northwest. Weighing in at an average three pounds — so large it can’t fit into its own shell — the geoduck is the world’s largest burrowing clam. So why did the nice folks who run this liberal arts and sciences college in Olympia, Wash., decide to name their sports teams after a clam that has an average lifespan of 147 years along with a savory flavour that makes it a delicacy in some countries? The school website says Speedy the Geoduck epitomizes the difference between traditional schools and Evergreen’s innovative ideas. The opposite of “all the snarling, fierce, aggressive mascots,” the burrowing clam is a symbol of all who are “willing to dig deep.” We don’t care about that. We just care about sharing the awesomely weird lyrics to the school fight song: “Go, Geoducks, go/Through the mud and the sand/Let’s go./Siphon high, squirt it out,/Swivel all about,/Let it all hang out/Go, Geoducks go,/Stretch your necks when the tide/Is low/Siphon high, squirt it out,/Swivel all about,/Let it all hang out!”

 

4) The Long Beach State “Dirtbags” — All the sports teams at California State University — Long Beach, are officially dubbed the 49ers, but since the late 1980s the baseball squad has been proudly known to one and all as the “Dirtbags.” How exactly do you become a Dirtbag, typically a reference to someone who is less than classy? Well, in 1989, Dave Snow was hired to coach a ragtag team in complete disarray. Without a home park, they had to take infield practice on an all-dirt Pony League field that left their uniforms caked with mud and blood and earned them their inspiringly slovenly nickname. Against all the odds, these “Dirtbags” reached the College World Series in their new coach’s rookie season. They now have a shiny new home, Blair Field, and a banner proclaims the stadium: “Home of Dirtbags baseball.” Spokesman Roger Kirk told ESPN the team fields lots of questions about the name. “On the road, all the time,” he says. “Everybody’s wearing their Dirtbags stuff, and everybody kind of giggles, like, ‘Dirtbags? You guys really are the Dirtbags?’ ” But the players take pride in their gritty past. Chirps retired pitcher Steve Trachsel: “It’s a badge of honour… I’ve always considered myself to be a Dirtbag.”

 

3) The Scottsdale Community College “Fighting Artichokes” — Are artichokes inherently terrifying? No! As vegetables go, their main quality is that of being delicious when served with melted butter. But, when you stick the word “fighting” in front of them… well, still not terrifying. According to an article entitled “Mascot Mayhem” on the website collegevisits.org, Artie the Fighting Artichoke mascot is pretty much the only cool thing about this school, located in a suburb on the eastern boundary of Scottsdale, Ariz. Students picked the nickname as a sort of badge of shame. Says collegevisits.org: “The Fighting Artichoke was chosen by the students as a protest to the school’s perceived favouritism to the football team. Apparently, some nerds felt like the school was putting too much money into the athletics programs and not enough into the remedial level academics, so when given the chance to choose a mascot, students chose the Fighting Artichoke to embarrass the school and its athletes.” When they play the Delta State University Fighting Okra, we think the game should be called The Salad Bowl.

2) The UC Santa Cruz “Banana Slugs” — What could possibly be less terrifying than an artichoke? How about the banana slug, a slimy yellow mollusk that slides across the ground, leaving an oily residue in its trail? It also happens to be the off-the-wall nickname of the sports teams at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For years, students embraced their slimy mascot “Sammy” as a backlash to the fierce athletic competition at most universities. In 1980, when Santa Cruz joined Division III of the NCAA in five sports, officials picked a new mascot — the more dignified sea lion. Irate students kept rooting for the slug, even after a sea lion was painted on the basketball floor. “After five years of dealing with the two-mascot problem, an overwhelming pro-slug straw vote by students in 1986 persuaded the chancellor to make the lowly but beloved banana slug UCSC’s official mascot,” the school website notes. The slug has drawn a lot of attention since then, appearing in a full-page feature in People magazine and — prepare to be overwhelmed — shooting to fame when John Travolta wore a Banana Slugs T-shirt in the 1994 cult classic Pulp Fiction. Fun fact: Along with Speedy the Geoduck, Sammy is one of two non-insect invertebrate college mascots. So now you know.

 

1) The Llanfairpwll Football Club — What makes this name so (bad word) special? Especially when there are other wacky soccer names out there, including the King Faisal Babies of the Ghana Premier League, and Thailand Tobacco Monopoly of the Thai Premier League? Well, probably the fact that the full name of this team from the Welsh Football League is (take a deep breath, people) Clwb Pel Droed Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Football Club. Why is it called that? Because it’s the home team of a large village in Wales known as (take another deep breath) Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, the longest place name in the U.K which translates in English to “St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave.” Formed in 1989 as the Llanfair Rovers, the club is commonly referred to by a shortened version as CPD Llanfairpwll FC, for reasons you have already deduced. One of the star players is Gafyn Lloyd Jones, leading to our favorite sports cheer ever: “Gafyn Lloyd Jones, he’s our man! If he can’t do it, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch can!”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca