Interesting. The only NFL team which really has no chance of ever moving is the Packers; they’ve been publicly owned since the 1950s (I own a share of stock), and the bylaws significantly limit how shares can change hands, and how many shares any one person or organization can own. All the other NFL teams are privately owned, either by individuals, families, or small groups of people – the NFL has a rule which limits how many owners a single team may have (the Packers’ ownership structure predates that rule, and was grandfathered in, IIRC).
“Philly-Dallas” is a perfectly acceptable way to describe the game. As is “Scumbirds-Doucheboys”.
Like I said, you are wrong.
Read Ray Anderson’s comments in this column.
Well, I stand corrected. I think. 
Watching any play in any game should make it immediately clear that helmet-to-helmet hits are not banned in a blanket fashion. On every single play there are 4 or 5 guys at the line of scrimmage banging heads at the snap.
That said, the NFL and their media partners have done an abysmal job of communicating what the expectation is to fans and what defines an illegal hit. The best I can gather is that the player has to be “defenseless”. That in and of itself is pretty vague but I suppose they want officials to use some judgment in being able to limit hits that are simply too vicious regardless of the fine print on the rules.
Of course all that helmet stuff fits in with a bunch of other rules that have been forgotten about like spearing and the wonderful “unnecessary roughness” catch all. In the offseason the NFL really ought to go nuts defining some of these rules in more concise manners. I think there ought to be an “unnecessary roughness” penalty for late hits and generally being a jerk and an “illegal tackling” penalty that is defined to get players helmets in the right spot. Maybe a third call for defenseless player hits to make them distinct from late hits on the QB or out of bounds shoves.
Just curious, kenobi, but why do you keep referring to team names as their “nicknames”? 
The Phillies, Oilers, Titans, etc. are all team names, not nicknames. (For the Phillies, that actually was a nickname at first, but it’s been the official team name since 1890.)
The “Bucs,” “G-Men,” “Pats,” etc. are nicknames.
And the phrase “official nickname” sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Force of habit, I suppose. Though, I note that NFL referees rarely, if ever, make reference to a team’s nickname / team name when they’re making announcements. They usually use terms like “offense” or “defense”, or “visiting team”, but, when they do need to refer to a team by name, it’s almost always the city name.
The exception being when it’s the same city. It always tickles me to hear the refs say “Giants” or “Jets” when they play each other. eg: “The ruling on the field is overturned. The Giants are not charged a timeout.”
Also, I’m pretty sure that officially, it goes <Team Name> <Nickname>. So “New England” is the team name, and “Patriots” is the nickname.
:dubious: I’m pretty sure that’s incorrect, because it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
According to their website, the official name of the team is the “New England Patriots.” “New England” is simply an abbreviated form of “New England Patriots,” as is “Patriots.” Neither are nicknames.
The only common nickname for the Patriots is the “Pats.”
Hardly compelling.
OK–do you have a cite for your contention?
I’ll be more specific. The copyright notice on their official website is the “New England Patriots,” and their legal notices lists them the same way. This seems like fairly compelling evidence to me.
The team is owned by “New England Patriots LP” (a limited partnership), which is owned by Kraft Sports Group, which is part of The Kraft Group (a holding company).
I’ve never seen anything, anywhere indicating that the official team name is simply “New England.” Where on earth did you get that from?
The Bears are officially “Chicago Bears Football Club, Incorporated”.
I’d like to hear Joniak say that on game broadcasts.
I’m talking about how they’re officially known by the NFL front office, not how they’re legally registered.
(I think the Giants are officially named the “New York Football Giants.”)
And it annoys me everytime they call them that on Sportscenter.
Why? As a Giants fan, I love it.
I thought that was just a Cosellism, now being perpetuated by Chris Berman. Cosell always called them the New York football Giants to differentiate them from the baseball team, which was no longer in New York by then anyway. One of Cosell’s annoying affectations.
ETA: So then I Googled and found out that that apparently really is their official name. Cosell still sucks, though.
I can’t say either way what the NFL officially designates the location and, uh, “mascot”? portion of team names. I did remember a couple things:
When I downloaded and processed the pro-football-reference database, the guy who runs it may have named those fields “team name” and “nickname.” That would obviously not be official, but it could certainly have cause me some confusion. (This was like 4 years ago, so I may be just conflating things in my memory.)
Another thing is that some teams do seem to have “official nicknames”: Oakland A’s (Athletics), New York Knicks (Knickerbockers), New York Mets (Metropolitans), etc…
Again, I have to concede that I really don’t know either way. I do maintain that the individual teams’ registered legal names aren’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about, for example, when the refs get instructed how to refer to teams when announcing penalties, the league clearly instructs them to just use the <city name> and not the <nickname>. I think the league officially (internally) considers those terms to be “team name” and “nickname”, but of course cites would be hard to come by.