The Raiders will always be the Raiders. They will never change their name. They have fans everywhere and love them or hate them their “brand” is as strong as any team in sports. Raider Nation.
I always wondered about that. How did sportscasters handle it when they played each other?
You think it would have been beyond their mental abilities to consider referring to them as “Ottawa” and “Saskatchewan”?
True, but “Saskatchewan” is quite a mouthful if you have to say it every time you’re identifying that team.
I want to say that Saskatchewan was referred to as ‘The Riders’ and Ottawa as 'The Roughies"…
Wikipedia—
Ottawa was frequently known as the “Eastern Riders” while Saskatchewan was referred to as either the “Western Riders” or “Green Riders”
When the All-American Football Conference was still a going concern in the 40s. you also had football teams named the New York Yankees and and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Until a few years ago, the American Hockey League (AHL) had two teams called the Admirals: the Milwaukee Admirals and the Norfolk Admirals. The kicker is that neither team started in the AHL. The Norfolk Admirals started in the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL), a lower-level minor league, as the Hampton Roads Admirals, did so well in their market that ownership moved them down the road to bigger digs in Norfolk and were granted an AHL franchise. Just after the Norfolk Admirals started up in the AHL, the International Hockey League (IHL), which had long been the AHL’s rival as the top minor hockey league, folded and the remaining successful franchises were merged in to the AHL. One of those teams was the Milwaukee Admirals, which had been playing in the IHL since the 1970s.
Of course not. But it might have gotten a bit boring and impeded the flow of their patter. Which must have been the case, since, as per your last post, folks did give them distinct nicknames.
Pittsburgh’s original NFL team was called the Pirates, after the city’s major league baseball team. In 1940, owner Art Rooney decided he had had enough of the “copycat” name and held a contest to choose a new one in cooperation with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The name Steelers was chosen from a poll of entrants.
SEC has the Georgia Bulldogs and Miss. State Bulldogs. Don’t know which one was picked first.
Bulldogs and Tigers are very popular school nicknames. I’d guess if you took all the universities, colleges, and high schools, something like 10-15 percent t would be Bulldogs or Tigers.
It’s funny there no major league Bulldogs in North America.
Georgia started using the Bulldog nickname in the 1920s. Mississippi State formally adopted it in 1961, when they became a university; but they claim that it’s been associated with the school’s teams since 1905. :dubious:
Whoever has seniority aside, it’s obvious that Uga is far superior to that Starkville mutt.
- Slow Moving Vehicle
UGA ‘90
There was a minor league hockey team called the Macon Whoopee. I’ll leave it to you to decide if that’s an example of best or worst.
In Italy we don’t use team nicknames but american football tries to keep that tradition.
We’ve got 81 teams across three divisions. Almost all of the NFL names are present, most of them don’t make much sense (Verona Redskins, or Torino Jaguars 
)
The current champions are the Milano Seamen, and Milan is nowhere near the sea.
A few teams managed to take an already existing name just by translating it: possible matchups are Eagles vs Aquile, Lions vs Leoni and Mastifs vs Mastini.
Some of the names are appropriate, like the Trieste Muli (people of Trieste say “mule” to mean “guy”), the Terni Steelers (the Pittsburgh of Italy) and the Padova Saints (Padova is known as the “City of the Saint” after St. Anthony).
Finally, the Pescara Crabs named their women’s team the Lobsters 
Well … two hours’ drive from Genoa. That’s closer to the sea than a lot of places 
Whaddaya mean, Milan isn’t on the sea? Then how could Prospero’s brother have set him adrift on a boat, to land on the island?
But you can’t blame that one on the NFL: There’s no NFL team (or any other major American sport) named the “Seamen”. It sounds too much like “semen”, and would be the occasion for way too many bad jokes.
Sounds like the punch line to a raunchy Who’s The Boss joke.
According to Wikipedia the Seamen Milano were founded by Giorgio Armani. Think he would have considered Marinai or Marittimi.
I’d argue the Yankees is a pretty inappropriate name for a team from New York since they aren’t from Vermont and they don’t eat pie for breakfast.