Tulsa Golden Hurricane (NCAA)
Dallas Burn (MLS)
Um, you do know that the Stanford Cardinal is not a ‘bizarre singular’ but rather the name of a color. Chosen in imitation of the Harvard Crimson, another non-s-ending team name.
The Ivy League has two other color team names: Cornell Big Red and Dartmouth Big Green.
Three more NCAA:
Nevada Wolf Pack
Tulsa Golden Hurricane
Marshall Thundering Herd
If I count correctly, that’s at least 15 from college teams and I expect there are more.
NCAA- the Marshall Thundering Herd
Manchester United
How 'bout them Broncos/Mets?
I don’t mean to hijack this thread, but…
Blue/orange match is a match in the same way that red/green is a match and yellow/purple is a match. They’re called “complementary colors”. Simply put, you have your three primary colors: red, blue and yellow. Each primary has its complementary secondary color, which is made up of the other two primaries. Hence, blue is complemented by a mixture of red and yellow; red by a mixture of blue and yellow; yellow by a mixture of blue and red.
Blue and orange is the least common of the combinations, though. But it was because of blue/orange that I learned about complementary colors way back in grade school. They had just built a new wing to the school, and our classroom was decorated in blue and orange. We wondered about the combination, and our teacher explained it. It was still funny to us, though, since our school colors were blue and gold.
Oh yeah:
Seattle Reign (WNBA)
This probably needs to be limited to the four major U.S. men’s pro sports leagues, or there will be far more than 7 or 8.
My favorite WNBA team (and the reigning league champs) the Detroit Shock have not been mentioned yet!
What with Native American names no longer being politically correct, and with new leagues and expansion, it is probably getting harder to come up with the old standard plural team nicknames that are not already being used.
I am pretty sure that both Syracuse and Stanford used to have Native American-related nicknames.
The other trivia that I have been thinking of lately is, how many pro teams have geographical names that are not the name of a city or a state? There is the Golden State Warriors (used to be San Francisco), and the Washington Wizards (formerly Bullets) used “Capital” as their geographical name for a season or two.
There’s only 8 if you just count them. And I agree that for a trivia question, it would be best to limit it that way.
Stanford used to be the Indians, but changed quite a while ago (late 70s or early 80s). Don’t know about Syracuse.
New England Patriots
Some more NCAA (I scanned the W’s):
Washington (MD) Shoremen
Wells College Express (all aboard!)
Wellesley Blue
Wheaton (IL) Thunder
William & Mary Tribe
William Penn, Statesman (I mean William Penn Statesmen)
Williams Ephmen, though officially ‘Ephs’ (apparently pronounced with a long ‘e’)
Wilson Phoenix
Wisconsin (Green Bay) Phoenix
Other interesting nicknames I found -
Most unfortunate feminizing of “Hill Toppers” : Western Kentucky Lady Toppers
Most Creative : Webster Gorloks
Least Threatening : Whittier Poets (though the Whitman Missionaries came close)
Don’t know or care. If I did it would’ve come up by now considering my husband works for Stanford, heh.
Not bizarre if you realize it’s named after the color, not the bird. And the tree is the Palo Alto, again makes perfect sense. But I don’t think the tree is an official mascot, only an unoffical one.
Stanford sports teams used to be The Indians until 1972 when it was changed to The Cardinal, for obvious reasons.
The Stanford student body, mindful of the school’s founder’s source of wealth, voted for “Robber Barons”. The administration stepped in and ordered Cardinal instead, making an implied comparison to the Harvard Crimson.
My favorite team name that meets the OP requirement: The Taichung Robomen of Taiwan Major League Baseball.
NY Liberty (WNBA)
Only three of the 20 Premiership teams end in s:
Blackburn Rovers
Bolton Wanderers
Wolverhampton Wanderers
Hi all… first post… so I figured I’d make it about something I had some insight to…minor nitpick and hijack (Is that a daily double for a first time post?)
Syracuse University’s athletic teams are still called the Orangemen/Orangewomen… They are often referred to as the shortened name “The Orange” in the same way they were referred to as <shudder, damn you Dick Vitale> “The 'Cuse” back in the '96 NCAA Tourney run.
The SU teams were known as the Saltine Warriors or just Warriors until the PC changing of mascots in the late 70s IIRC.
And FWIW orange and blue is much better than the original uniform color of the SU football team in the late 1800’s… errr… pink.
This bit makes it appear that perhaps there was a “s” at the end of Stanford’s Cardinal, though it might well just be a typo in the article. In any case, it’s pretty definitive in clearing up the fact that the tree is purely a band thing, and not in any way an official mascot.
Sadly, I can’t seem to turn up a video clip of the tree and Oski having at it. Good clean fun.
-ellis
Hey, that one ends in “s”! It doesn’t count.
Palo Alto native here, and I remember a dust-up in the early 80’s when Stanford did try to go with “Cardinals” but was stopped by their English department, who pointed out that plurals are incorrect when applied to a color.
Also, the four major American leagues have seven team names which don’t end in “s”, but Major League Soccer alone almost equals that:
New England Revolution
DC United
Chicago Fire
Columbus Crew
Los Angeles Galaxy
Dallas Burn
Also, there are these former names of teams:
Miami Fusion
Tampa Bay Mutiny (both of these teams folded after 2001)
Kansas City Wiz (renamed the Wizards)
Before Kansas City changed their name, every season featured a “Urology Cup” between the Burn and the Wiz.
This is why you never let Nike in the room when you’re conjuring up team names. (They had a big influence in the formation of the league.)
Two of 'em, in fact. Boy do I feel silly. Wait, since there’s two, it’s a double negative, right?