I have always felt that the Houston Texans were rather poorly named - that the team name made no more sense than “Miami Floridans” or “New York New Yorkers.”
The name “49ers” or “76ers” also feels odd, and hard to understand without specific historical context (the 49ers could easily have been named the “Miners” though and still sound like Niners, especially given that the 49ers were gold prospectors.) “Buffalo Bills” also is hard to understand without context, especially if the team were to move away from Buffalo (although I understand the team name would also change if that happened.)
IMO, the obvious winner is the CFL’s Baltimore Football Team…or, as the team’s stadium announcer put it, “Baltimore (pause while pretty much everybody in the stadium yelled “COLTS!”) Football Team”. Eventually, they became the Baltimore Stallions, before leaving when (a) the CFL decided to end its experiment with teams in the USA, and (b) even if they hadn’t, the owner had said that he would move if Baltimore got an NFL team.
I also suggest the Memphis Tams (ABA), which Charlie Finley thought was better than the Memphis Pros, which was their name before he bought the team.
“Washington Nationals” is also rather uninspiring.
I’ll give a pass to really old monikers like Philadelphia Phillies, Montreal Canadiens, or the like, in part because really old nicknames often started out as actual nicknames - not official trademarks - but seriously, teams named in the last twenty years can do better than “Texans” or “Nationals.”
I like quirky names like Buffalo Bills, actually.
My personal irritations are:
Names that are not plurals. Utah Jazz, Minnesota Wild, Colorado Avalanche, spare me.
North American soccer teams that use weird European naming conventions, like Toronto FC, D.C. United, Sporting Kansas City, what a bunch of crap.
“Nationals” is one of the old names used for the original Washington Senators team, though, the one that moved to Minnesota in 1961. Newspapers favored the name because the abbreviation “Nats” fit easily into headlines, as in “Nats take Yanks, 3-1.” The current Washington team went with Nationals because Washington D.C. doesn’t have representation in the Senate, and also undoubtedly because they didn’t want to jinx the team by calling them the Senators after two other teams with that name moved out of D.C.
As others have noted, team names that made sense as connections to their original cities (Minneapolis Lakers, New Orleans Jazz), but which make little to no sense with their current locations (Los Angeles Lakers, Utah Jazz). That, for me, is the big one that I wish would get “fixed”…but as those two examples have been in place for decades, I’m fairly certain they’ll never be changed now.
I’m not a big fan of singular words as team nicknames (Jazz, Heat, Magic, Avalanche, etc.). It’s a phenomenon that really took hold in the 1990s (along with teal and purple as uniform colors), and, to my eye, tends to date a team as being established in that era.
In the bucket of “team names that only make sense if you know the context” is my beloved Packers…but I love the fact that such names do have a sense of history, rather than just being the result of some fan vote or market research.
I recall hearing that the Texas Rangers (the result of the second incarnation of the Senators moving out of Washington) still held the rights to the name “Senators” and blocked the Expos from adopting the moniker when they moved.
Yep, although it seems as if they may not have revived the name anyway:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
Although there was some sentiment to revive the name Senators when the Montreal Expos franchise moved to Washington in 2005, political considerations factored into the choice of Nationals, a revival of the first American League franchise’s official name used from 1901 to 1956.[17] Politicians and others in the District of Columbia objected to the name Senators because the District of Columbia does not have voting representation in Congress.[18] In addition, the Rangers still owned the rights to the Senators name,[19] although the Nationals were able to acquire the rights to the curly “W” logo from the Rangers.
[/QUOTE]
(Edit: Pretty much what cochrane said, now that I read his post more carefully.)
Cleveland Browns. They named the team after their coach. Oh…kay. Oh, and they have no team logo. Nothing. Just a plain orange helmet. Orange, not brown. Even though Brown is a name, not a color, but… Oh, who even cares? (Well, somebody must. The good people of Cleveland fought like hell to keep the most uninspired name in sports after the team skipped town on them.)
The current owner of the Angels wanted to rename the team to their original name of Los Angeles Angels and drop the name Anaheim when he purchased the team from the Disney Company. However, the city of Anaheim enforced a clause in the team’s stadium lease that required them to keep the name Anaheim as part of the team name. They’re just referred to as Los Angeles in the standings and the schedule.
It made sense in a ‘we want to own that team’s past as we move’ type of thing. You’ll note the teams that change their names when they move tend to want to have little to do with its history - like the Oklahoma City Thunder (used to Seattle Supersonics) or the Minnesota Twins (used to be the Washington Senators) or the Texas Rangers (who also used to be Washington Senators, 2.0).
The Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz, or the Atlanta Braves (used to be Boston and Milwaukee Braves) or Oakland A’s (used to be Philadelphia and then Kansas City A’s), and even teams like the Memphis Grizzlies, etc. wanted to continue the history of the franchise. The way of thinking is that the franchise isn’t connected to the city its located in as much as it is to its own internal history regardless of where that is.
Sporting KC is a LOT better than the initial name of the Kansas City franchise, which was the Kansas City Wiz (it became the Kansas City Wizards in 1996).
MLS teams (some of them) started shifting to European naming conventions in order to be taken more seriously. Some of those original MLS 1.0 names were seen as a joke. The worst - the Wiz/Wizards and Metrostars have been replaced (though its still a question as to whether Red Bull New York is better than Metrostars), but some still remain - Rapids, Fire, Earthquake, Revolution, etc.
