My, how could you leave out the newly named “Greensboro Grasshoppers”? Now that name certainly strikes fear into opponents. Sadly it may be better than the previous mascot, which was the “Bats”. . . thats the flying mammal not the equipment. Which does beg the question: which looks sillier holding a Louisville Slugger - a grey bat or a green bug?
Whoops. Link
Danbury Trashers. Decently intimidating name, right? Until you see that their logo/mascot is a garbage can, and then it suddenly becomes “Garbage collectors on ice!”
If North America’s professional sports leagues were just being established now, I wonder how many team names that are now in existence would be seen as inappropriate, dated or just plain?
Do you see names like the Miami Fronds or the Dallas Feathers? Not too different than the unintimidating-sounding Toronto Maple Leafs.
Would you name a team after an ethnicity or nationality the region generally doesn’t want to to associate itself with? Scratch the Montreal Canadiens
Chicago Blackhawks, Cleveland Indians, Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs - No explanation needed. You definitely don’t want a name that sounds like the n-word either, so forget the New York Knickerbockers.
The idea of the El Paso Stitchers, Las Vegas Dealers, San Jose Coders, Hartford Actuaries and Charlotte Bankers seems silly, right? What about the Green Bay Packers? It’s also too close to the contemporary slur “fudge packer”.
What’s the first color that comes to mind when you hear the term “ewwwwww!” Thats right. Would you name a team that, like the Cleveland Browns?
Phoenix Pebbles? Raleigh Rocks? Milwaukee Boulders? Denver Nuggets?
We’d laugh at team names like the Houston Khakis, Portland Sneakers, and Philadelphia Blue Shirts. So, would we name a team the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, or Cincinnati Reds (Red Stockings) today?
What about traffic and pedestrian phenomenon like tailgating and jaywalking? What about running between passing streetcars? Sounds silly and dated, right? Forget the Los Angeles Dodgers, then.
Will the mighty New York World Fairs ever hit the field? Expo '67 ihas long since past, so the idea of the Montreal Expos is dated.
With the molestation scandals, we’re not going to see “Priests” or “Bishops” used as team names. What about the San Diego Padres?
Very plain names, like “Urbans” or"Standards", would never be considered today.
Would the Oakland Athletics, or New York Mets (Metropolitans) be?
San Diego Padres - An association with Catholic clergy, especially after the molestation scandals, is not something a new team would want to associate with.
IIRC, the team is at least semi-publicly owned, and took the name from a “name the team” contest.
Which is named after a former coach, whose last name was Brown.
Unfortunately, I’ll have to nominate the logo for my very own Rabid Ferrets.
It wasn’t until near the end of last season that I happened to see Dora The Explorer at a friend’s house and I found out my ferret was actually a fox. :smack:
Oh, and the Expos are now defunct. The team relocated to DC, and is known as tyhe Nationals.
I know, but assuming where we’re in a alternate universe where there’s no professional sports teams named “The Browns”, would a new team consider the name, even if there was an owner or acclaimed with the name? We don’t have the Green Bay Lombardis or the Miami Shulas, after all.
Teams with names like the Red Sox and Browns might have seemed appropriate for the era, and they don’t sound strange to us because we’re used to hearing them. Would new teams have such names now, though? Would we see … oh, the Indianapolis Greens, because the team was owned by a guy named Green?
MLS fan chiming in here. Man, the team names in this league alone could support an entire thread.
First off, I find the name ‘DC United’ classy. And Chivas USA, as previously mentioned, is owned by the owners of the Chivas team in Mexico.
F C Dallas? Pretty lame. However, the original team name was the Dallas Burn, so it is a slight improvement. When the Kansas City team was named the Wiz, I liked to think of Dallas/KC games as “the STD Cup”.
Kansas City has since, fortunately, renamed their team the Wizards.
The league really did get off on the wrong foot when it started play in 1996. The rumor was that Nike’s marketing department insisted on coming up with names and logos for all 10 teams. So besides the aforementioned, there were the San Jose Clash (since renamed Earthquakes, in honor of the NASL team of the same name; the booster club, however, still retains the name The Casbah).
The Chicago expansion team was threatened to be named the Rhythm; cooler heads prevailed and the team began play in 1998 as the Chicago Fire. (So now Chicago/San Jose matchups are dubbed “The Natural Disaster Cup”, at least in my mind.)
The Denver team is called the Colorado Rapids. Fortunately, that name couldn’t POSSIBLY be mangled by adding one letter at the front, a “C” perhaps. I think the team was named when the club’s PR director, Asswipe Johnson (pronounced Ahs-WEEP-Ay), asked his sons Rod, Dick, and Peter for ideas.
The team in Columbus, Ohio, is named the Crew. Fairly inoffensive, if you can look past the irritating singular name. However, the standing rule is that a team’s logo (look in the upper left corner) should NEVER remind anyone of The Village People.
And the New York team, which plays in Giants Stadium in New Jersey, was named the New York/New Jersey Metrostars before they dropped the geography, presumably out of terminal lameness. They now play as “the Metrostars”, and retained the terminal lameness only for their on-field product.
I had a buddy start at UCSC in the fall of 1986. He wrote me about this.
From http://psychcentral.com/psypsych/University_of_California,_Santa_Cruz:
UCSC’s mascot is the banana slug. In 1981, when the university began participating in NCAA intercollegiate sports, the then-chancellor and some student athletes changed the mascot to the “sea lions,” which they considered more dignified and suitable for intercollegiate play. Most students disliked the new mascot and continued to root for the Banana Slugs. In 1986, students overwhelmingly voted to return to the Slugs as UCSC’s sole mascot, a vote the chancellor refused to honor, on the grounds it was the athletes who should choose the mascot. When a poll of athletes showed that they also wanted to be “slugs”, the chancellor relented. A statue of sea lions remains in front of Thimann Lecture Hall, and a popular prank pulled by students involves painting the seals yellow to represent the university’s current mascot. 14
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My votes:
Name: The Philadelphia Phillies. Yeah, I know it looks okay in writing, but when spoken it makes it look like they named their team of male athletes after a bunch of young female horses.
Logo: the Oakland Raiders. These guys are supposed to be the scariest team in the NFL. Why does their logo look like a vaguely amused middle-aged accountant in an eyepatch?
Stupid:
Utah Jazz. So they moved up from New Orleans. So what? Utah and jazz have less than nothing to do with one another.
L.A. Lakers. So they moved west from Minneapolis. Again, so what? L.A. is close to a major body of water. But IT’S NOT A FREAKING LAKE!!11!!
Waaaay stupid:
Female “name-ettes” for college teams with a male name. Fordham U. calls it’s women’s teams the Lady Rams, fercrissake.
Totally cool names:
Columbus Blue Jackets, Ohio minor hockey team.
Fort Wayne Kekiongas, Indiana pro baseball club that lasted exactly one season (1871). (Ft. Wayne today has a Class A ball team, but it’s called the Wizards. Bleh.)
Stupid colors:
Bowling Green State, orange and…wait for it…brown. Huh?! BG’s teams are the Falcons, which is OK, but the stadium is named for a guy named Doyt. 
“Doyt”!
I’m all for coloured socks names in baseball. It’s traditional – Cincinnati Red Stockings, Boston Red Stockings, St. Louis Brown Stockings, Hartford Dark Blues, Louisville Grays, Providence Grays, Homestead Greys, Chicago White Stockings. Those are the best names.
That still doesn’t excuse 35 years of a really bad name.
The team relocated to DC, and is known as tyhe Nationals.
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Another bad name. The Nationals? How boring. They Greys would have been much better.
The Packers were named after the team’s original meat-packing sponsor, the Indian Packing Co.
Unfortunately, it’s incomplete. “United” is part of the first part of a team’s name, as in Manchester United, as opposed to Manchester City. What it means is that D.C. United doesn’t have the second part of the name, the nickname.
But it’s better than the other names the team has used – Quakers, Red Quakers, Philas, Blue Jays. The team never has had a good name.
Huh? I don’t follow this at all. What ‘nickname’ are they missing?
All the team names we’re talking about have two parts: an organizational part (usually, in the United States, a geographical indicator) and a nickname. When there’s limited space, the organizational part of the name is usually the unambiguous indicator of the team (like in standings, etc.)
The “Metrostars” have dropped the organizational part, so have half a name.
“D.C. United” has only the organizational part, so has half a name.
“United,” like “City,” in a professional sports club name is part of the organizational name, not the nickname.
Examples:
Organizational…Nickname
Cincinnati…Reds
Miami…Dolphins
Manchester United…Red Devils
Manchester City…Blues
D.C. United…?
OK, I see. But DC United is trying to merge that with not having ‘official’ nicknames, which I see as a sensible move (most of the MLS names make us cringe!)
DC United = whatever the fans decide to call them. Neither ‘Red Devils’ nor ‘Blues’ is an official name (and nor is ‘Tractor Boys’, despite the farming-related merchandise 
). The full names are ‘Manchester United Football Club’ and ‘Manchester City Footbal Club’, nothing more.
FWIW, English rugby league adopted American-style names a while ago. And it’s awful - ‘London Broncos’? ‘Leeds Rhinos’? :dubious:
In that case, it makes no sense to cite D.C. United as a team with a “good” (or bad) name. It’s like saying, ooh, “Jacksonville,” that’s a great name for a sports club! No way, dude, they should have gone with “Altoona”; that’s a much better name. Altoona, no way! “Charlotte” is the bomb! Well, okay, anything’s better than “Cincinnati.”
Well, yeah, OK. I was only wanting to defend them against accusations of having a bad name, when I think they have one of the few MLS names that isn’t cringe-worthy. And that the good names get made up by the fans 
You just have to love the Stanford Cardinal. I can’t think of another team named after an adjective. I take great snarky pride in correcting those who call them the “Cardinals.”
Alas, have pity for my own alma mater, the pathetic UCSB Gauchos. I know that the historical, real-life gauchos were probably some pretty bad-ass men, but in the 21st century that moniker conjours up images of thinly mustachioed troubadours with oversized guitars serenading Dorothy Lamour.
Our local art school has sports teams, but they are clubs, not Division whatever.
Anyway, they are the Nads (Go, nads!) for Hockey and the Balls for basketball. Are the names good or bad? You be the judge. I do love the Nads’ mascot though - Scrotie. Here he is:
Scrotie