Why do announcers still say this? The NY baseball Giants were gone years ago.
Are people still getting confused?
I haven’t heard an announcer use “New York Football Giants” seriously in years. And then it was only in print, referring to a time when both teams still played in New York and was written as “New York (Football) Giants”.
Chris Berman still does it, but he’s obviously joking.
Randy Galloway does it on his Dallas area radio show as a way of poking some fun.
It’s the official corporate name of the team, probably left unchanged since the days that there were two teams called “New York Giants.”
I’ve only heard it used when someone announces “this broadcast is copyrighted by the New York Football Giants”, or some similar legal-ese.
It is not a joke; it is their actual name. It’s printed right on their tickets, plain as day. Anyone using it in a mocking sense is failing miserably. It would be like trying to mock the Cowboys by calling them the Dallas Cowboys.
Living in the greater NYC area I hear the official name (as opposed to just New York Giants) all the time.
I have even occasionally heard people say the New York Football Jets, which has to really piss off everyone who is involved with or a fan of the Jets. Since I’m primarily a fan of the Giants and only a secondary fan of the Jets, I laughed.
OK, but how many people go around referring to the New York Metropolitans or the New York Knickerbockers? Both of those are the official corporate names as well, and just like “New York Football Giants”, they’ve fallen by the wayside of popular use.
In what contexts do you hear New York Football Giants all the time? I’m curious.
Oh, Galloway is poking fun. It would be calling the guy down the hall Leopold when he’s gone by Leo since he was 8. Technically correct, but not “right”.
I hear Metropolitans and Knickerbockers all the time. On newscasts, sports talk radio, etc…
It’s akin to making fun of the Bucs by calling them the Buccaneers.
It’s more like calling the kid down the hall Leopold when he’s gone by Leopold since he was born. It’s their actual name, and they actually go by it.
Missed the edit window. You can’t say Chris Berman calls them that as a joke and then claim the name has fallen out of popular use. The two assertions preclude each other. This very thread started from the premise that sports announcers still use the name.
An actual burn along the line you guys are talking about is how Tiki used to always refer to Eli as Elisha. (Pronounced like Elijah with an extra touch of “sh” as in “shoot.”)
This is a humorous component to it, Ellis Dee. I wouldn’t describe it as mocking the Giants because it doesn’t. It’s more of a deliberate anachronism since there’s no longer a baseball Giants.
Until a few years ago I didn’t know that the double name thing was somewhat common. The early NFL includes a NY Yankees football team and a Brooklyn Dodgers team, and also few Cleveland Indianses, Washington Senators, Cincinnati Reds, and Detroit Tigers.
There were baseball & football St. Louis Cardinals until very recently.
I’ve also wondered if there was some name connection between the Chicago Bears & Cubs, or Detroit Lions & Tigers.
Oh come on Ellis, go to nygiants.com and you can’t find the New York Football Giants anywhere, not even the disclaimer at the bottom that says
Their tickets don’t even say it.
True, if you consider 1987 to be “very recently”; the Cardinals moved to Arizona after the '87 season.
Just FYI, the football team was originally the Chicago Cardinals; they moved to St. Louis in 1960.
Yes. The Bears were originally named the Chicago Staleys. The name was changed in 1922 when they began playing at Wrigley along with the Cubs.
As Marley23 mentioned, there was a Detroit Tigers NFL team in 1921. The Detroit Panthers played 1925-26. When the Portsmouth Spartans moved to Detroit in 1934, they were renamed the Lions in reference to the Tigers.
There were also NFL teams called the Hartford Blues and Louisville Colonels whose names were based on those of 19th century baseball teams in the same cities (in the case of Hartford, the Dark Blues).
When the NFL was being established in the 1920s and 1930s, baseball was far more popular than football, and team owners tried to draw on that by giving teams the same name as the local baseball team.
Well, technically…
The Bears were originally the Decatur Staleys – Decatur is a small town about 180 miles SW of Chicago, and Staley referred to A.E. Staley, a starch company which sponsored the team.
After playing one season (1920, the first season for what would become the NFL) in Decatur, George Halas moved the franchise to Chicago, where they played the 1921 season at Wrigley Field. However, in that season, they were still referred to as the Staleys (A.E. Staley paid Halas for the sponsorship again).
In 1922, Halas changed the name to the Bears.
The one guy who runs giants.com isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.
As I understand it, the team name is on the back of the ticket. I note that the front of the ticket doesn’t say “New York Giants”; does that mean that isn’t their name either?
The Washington Redskins were originally the Boston Braves, too.
As an aside, when the upstart American League started in 1901, several teams adopted earlier names that had been abandoned by the National League teams in those cities. For example, the Chicago Cubs were the original White Stockings, and the Boston Braves were called the Red Stockings early on. The St. Louis Cardinals were originally the Brown Stockings, a name which was adopted by the AL St. Louis Browns. The Browns themselves later (1954) became the Baltimore Orioles, which was the name of a nineteenth century NL team in that city. The 1901-1902 AL franchise that later became (or was replaced by, depending on how you look at it) the NY Yankees was also called the Baltimore Orioles.
Baltimore’s minor league baseball team was called the Orioles from 1903-1953, excepting 1915 when the Federal League’s Baltimore Terrapin franchise forced the minor league team to re-locate. wiki cite.
Interestingly, adding to Marley23’s earlier post, there were also five football teams in various leagues known as the New York Yankees Wiki cite and three versions of Brooklyn Dodgers wiki cite
Try the 2009 Media Guide (17¾Meg PDF):
“NEW YORK FOOTBALL GIANTS” appears 65 more times after that, 64 of which are with player bios.