| There
is an art to picking a good name for a fantasy sports team.
Well, maybe calling it an “art” is a little too
grandiose--we are talking about a group of people that routinely
enjoys pitting the statistics of real-life players against
the other guy’s real-life players and calling it a “hobby,”
after all. In the end, victories net you little more than
bragging rights that others will easily ignore, while a losing
season will garnish you all the attention you could ever want.
Just further evidence that we’ve all got it backwards--we
strive to become champions to get the accolades, yet it’s
the losers that manage to draw the most attention.
Still, participating in fantasy sports is a fun little diversion
and a source of entertainment right from the start as you
place your own hallmark on a team by christening it with whatever
name you’d like. As a regular participant in a variety
of fantasy sports leagues since roughly the turn of the century,
I’ve been able to witness firsthand the many variations
in major-league monikers that my fellow team owners have come
up with.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit today, because
several of the regulars in my fantasy leagues have decided
to add another sport to our current roster of baseball, football,
and hockey--soccer. Well, technically it should also be called
“football” since we’ve decided to base the
game not on our own domestic brand of soccer (MLS) but rather
to try and play using the teams and players of the English
Premier League, the crème de la crème
of British Soccer. So I need to start thinking of what my
team’s name will be, because it could make or break
my career of being a fantasy soccer enthusiast.
There are several methods on which one can draw to come up
with a solid team name. More often than not, geography is
the key element, as even fantasy teams should be given a fictional
hometown. But aside from the geographic element, the sky’s
the limit when it comes to picking what the team’s nickname
will be, to be paired with your city or region of choice.
Now, the most elegant (read: boring) way of going about this
is to just take on the name of a real team, past or present.
When we began our fantasy hockey league, we collectively agreed
on this method, deciding to pick team names from the pool
of defunct NHL teams. So while my team’s name--the Montreal
Wanderers--was really classy, it lacked a very important element:
fun factor.
Being deadly serious about playing fantasy sports is probably
one of the early indicators of having been dropped on your
head as a small child, been allowed to watch too much television,
or some combination of the two. Again, it’s probably
best to embrace the fact that you’re playing
a game with numbers when you could very easily go out and
play the game itself, thanks to these things called “sporting
goods stores.” So playing things a little tongue-in-cheek
is generally an advisable way to approach anything to do with
fantasy sports.
It’s from this flippant frame of mind that we see the
most entries into the world of team names. When I joined my
fantasy football league as an expansion team, I was in fellowship
with the type of people that named their teams things like
the Lincoln Navigators. So rather than buck the trend, I branded
my team the Vatican City Inquisitors--it made sense, as I’d
be playing against the Hebeland Browns and what might be one
of the best names ever, the St. Louis Farrakhans.
But the best team names always add a dash of personal flavor
to the mixture--little nods acknowledging the personal quirks
of the owners. I’ve often exploited my obvious geeky
nature as a source of material: My baseball team was originally
named the Middle Earth Wizards (and sadly, I managed a team
in another league that I named the Isengard Renegades). I
caught all sorts of hell for that name for a number of years,
despite the fact that I managed to get my team to the playoffs
every year, only to lose at some stage in the post season.
So it was after one of these post-season losses that I publicly
swore that since my team choked in the playoffs every year,
I would rename them as the Tacoma Tankers until they finally
won the whole thing.* The Tankers would then go on to advance
to the playoffs the following season … and promptly
lose to the Wild Card team (and divisional rival), the Prince
Edward Island Penetrators.
So now it’s time to christen a new team, a football
team in the traditional sense of the word. Let’s take
what we’ve learned from past experiences and run down
some options, keeping the geographical feel of the United
Kingdom:
The Yorkshire Yeomen; points for alliteration, sure,
but it’s a little sterile.
The Cardiff Drunken Welshmen; I like it, but it’s
not nice to play with stereotypes. Besides, everyone over
there is drunken, not just the residents of Wales.
The Canterbury Tails; see, we’re now in the
phase where I’m trying too hard to be clever. It’s
dangerous… it’s how I ended up with a basketball
team named the Brittany Spears. (Since Brittany’s a
region in France…) Besides, what the hell kind of mascot
is a “Tail”? Although a team cheer of “Come
get some Tail, you wankers!” has a lot of
possibilities.
Speaking of France, though, we could always go with the Hastings
Norman Conquerors; I like that one, as it dabbles in
history references…
Ultimately though, I might have to succumb to the demon that
is my music geek--after all, it’s going to be hard to
pass up owning a team call the Penzance Pirates.
With a reference like that, maybe I was wrong to say that
naming a fantasy team wasn’t an art form.
---
*This was the year Return of the King came out, so
the Tolkein reference was becoming passé anyhow. |
