It is my hope to see someday before I die a major league team called something like the Texas Texans or the New York New Yorkers. They would instantly be my second favorite team.
Not a major league team, but the Arena Football Carolina Cougars just moved from Raleigh, NC to Charlotte,NC, however because they had a regional name, they didn’t have to change it. And the Carolina Courage (women’s professional soccer) sounds a lot more impressive than the Cary, NC Courage.
Lots of points here:
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The “Minnesota” designation for the Twins (and Vikings – the Twins were first) is the case of discretion being the better part of valor. People in Minneapolis did not get along with people in St. Paul (one apocrypal story is that the members of a Minneapolis church walked out on a minister who began a sermon featureing St. Paul). The two cities had a long minor league rivalry before they got major league teams. The fear was no one from St. Paul would ever watch the Minneapolis Twins, so they used the state name. (Our local newpaper refused to go along in the beginning, saying the Twins were from Minneapolis on their sports pages for several years before giving up.)
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Los Angeles Angels came from an old PCL minor league team. It isn’t redundant in the slightest (and neither is ATM machine or PIN number, for that matter).
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Saying the NY Jets and Giants are not New York teams is splitting hairs. They are no far from New York city proper than most NFL teams with stadiums in the suburbs. It just happens that New Jersey is right next door to NYC.
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Regional names took off with the American Basketball Association in the 60s. Before they came along, only the Twins and Vikings had state names. The ABA had in its illustrious history the Carolina Cougars, the Floridians (which may be the only case where the team had no city or state attached, just a nickname), the Indiana Pacers, Kentucky Colonels, Minnesota Muskies, Minnesota Pipers, New Jersey Americans, Texas Chapparals, Utah Stars, and Virginia Squires. Not part of our topic, but they also have the delightfully named Spirits of St. Louis (NOT St. Louis Spirits).
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One pro team actually had TWO city as their name – the Kansas City-Omaha Kings of the NBA from 1972-75. The Kings are also the only major league sports franchise to have five home cities over the course of its history: Rochester, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Omaha, and Sacramento.
The Tennessee Titans are so named because of the effort here in the state to get voters to approve the stadium. It’s state funded, not just city of Nashville. So to throw the people(mostly Memphis) a bone, they are Tennessee instead of Nashville.
Why they didn’t do the same thing for the Grizzlies, I have no idea. Not that I really care, mind you.
Speaking of Spirits of St. Louis, IIRC the Mighty Ducks are officially the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
Disney has recently inquired about selling the team, so hopefully someone will buy them and change that god-awful name. Maybe they can bring back the Golden Seals!
I thought this made sense if there was not already a team there. Meaning, the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks were the first team of their league in the area, so it would make sense that they would, in fact, be the default for the area. As for California Angels and Golden State Warriors, that I don’t get (unless the Warriors were first in CA).
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Why not?
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I always thought “Tampa Bay” was a body of water, but what do I know? 
jjtm, for your information, according to my 1994 NBA Guide, the Warriors were not the first NBA team in California. The Lakers moved into L.A. for the 1960-61 season. The Warriors moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco for the 1962-63 season. They were known as the San Francisco Warriors until the 1971-72 season, when they moved into a new arena over the bridge in Oakland and renamed themselves as the Golden State Warriors.
A weird team name that hasn’t been mentioned yet is the “Capitol Bullets”, the NBA franchise now known as the Washington Wizards. The franchise started in Baltimore as the Bullets and moved to a new arena in Landover, MD for the 1973-74 season. That first year in Landover the team was called the Capitol Bullets. They renamed themselves the Washington Bullets the following year.
The name of the NHL’s “Florida Panthers” does make sense, as there is an animal known as the Florida panther, IIRC.
Sorry to bring this back up, but I was away for the weekend:
Yeah, I missed the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but can you blame me.
I guess I was wrong in the Redskins, I thought I just read something where the stadium was in VA. I brought up the Washington teams because when dealing with state names there is the state of Washington. If you didn’t know anything about the teams our the sports, when you heard that the Minnesota Vikings play in Minnesota you would conclude the Washington Redskins play in Washington.
I only listed the NY Giants & Jets to show that they didn’t play in NY. I know they are still associated with NY and have many NY fans, but they still play their home games in NJ.
We shouldn’t limit this discussion to just major league clubs. Looking at my 2002 Baseball America Directory, we have:
from the Class AA Southern League
-the Carolina Mudcats, hometown Zebulon NC
-the Tennessee Smokies, hometown Kodak TN
-the West Tenn Diamond Jacks, hometown Jackson TN
From the Class AA Texas League
-the Arkansas Travelers, hometown Little Rock Arkansas
From the Class A California Leauge
-the High Desert Mavericks, hometown Adelanto CA
From the Class A Carolina League
-the Potomac Cannons, hometown Woodbridge VA
From the Class A Midwest League
-the Michigan Battle Cats, of Battle Creek MI
-the West Michigan Whitecaps, of Comstock Park (near Grand Rapids) MI
-the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, of Appleton WI
-the Quad City River Bandits, of Davenport Iowa (franchise relocated to Eastlake OH in suburban Cleveland OH for the 2003 season)
From the Class A South Atlantic League
-the Capitol City Bombers of Columbia SC
-the Delmarva Shorebirds of Salisbury MD
From the Class A NY-Penn League
-the Vermont Expos of Winooski VT
and from the Class A Northwest League,
-the Tri-City Dust Devils of Kennewick WA.
Further, among the independent baseball minor leagues, there are the Long Island Ducks, the Somerset Patriots, the Pennsylvania Road Warriors, the Rio Grande Valley Whitewings, the Gateway Grizzlies, the River City Rascals, the Adirondack Lumberjacks, the Berkshire Black Bears, the New Jersey Jackals, the Quebec Capitales, the Solano Steelheads and the Yuba-Sutter Gold Sox.
I will leave it to another to list the minor league hockey team names from weird place names.
I thought the flap over the footbal Cardials was that they played in Tempe, not Phoenix, and they changed the name to “Arizona” to acknowledge that fact and to be more inclusive of the rest of Arizona. I could be wrong.
PIN is obvious. “I lost my pin,” you say. Bowling pin? Safety Pin? Cotter Pin? “I lost my PIN number,” however, makes it clear.
ATM is merely three letters. Thus “ATM machine” is not redundant. “Automatic Teller Machine Machine” would be, but that’s not what’s being said. The fact that ATM is derived from “automatic teller machine” is no more relevant than the fact that “orient” is derived from “east,” so you can’t say “westward orientation.”
To answer Osiris’ post, there already is a New York New Yorkers…sorta. I.e., the New York Knickerbockers. Knickerbocker, of course, is an old term for a New Yorker. (I actually used it in my Amazing Race 3 thread, if anyone cares enough to go look for it.)
Also, if you’re willing to count a college team, the Indiana Hoosiers.
I think using the whole state is either convenience, laziness, or a combination of the two. In a state where Minneanapolis and St. Paul are both vital cities, you almost have to use Minnesota. Tennessee Titans makes plenty of sense when you consider how that franchise was shunted around nearly the whole state in the early years. Arizona Cardinals? Shoot, they’re having a hard enough time filling seats as it is; you thought they were going to maintain a close tie to just one city?
As for the Green Bay Packers, that’s just keeping a good thing going. Small town team, no owner, rabid fans no matter what…the NFL isn’t giving that up for anything.
The Orioles have the team name on their road jerseys instead of the city or state name because they don’t want to be known as the Baltimore Orioles, but as the Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Deleware, DC, and Baltimore Orioles. They feel it’s important to keep all those state’s fans. Check out some old Brooks Robinson clips…their road jerseys read Baltimore.
Neither. It was the Houston Astros that played on Enron Field. It is now Minute Maid Park.
OK, sports fans . . . trivia time:
Name the first professional sports franchise to be named after a state rather than a city (assuming, of course, that we exclude the “New York Giants/Yankees/Knicks” as being named after the city, even though “City” isn’t part of the name)? Hint: the year was 1961.
A: The Minnesota Twins American League baseball club. Their first season in the Twin-Cities was 1961. The Minnesota Vikings started playing in the fall of 1961.
Actually my hint was off. And remember that I said “professional” rather than “major league”. The Little Rock Travelers of the AA Southern Association began marketing themselves as the “Arkansas Travelers” in 1957. It was 1961 before the Southern Association began listing them as “Arkansas” rather than “Little Rock”; the name of the new ownership group put together before the 1960 season was “Arkansas Travelers Baseball Club, Inc.”. Clark Griffith announced the move of the Washington Senators to Minneapolis/St. Paul in October, 1960. Whether the Travs officially got there before the Twins might be somewhat debatable, if you go only by the Southern Association league office’s practice, but it’s indisputable that they’d been calling themselves the “Arkansas Travelers” for at least a few years before the Minnesota Twins came into being.