I agree with cities buying teams being ridiculous, but I much prefer "THE ORIOLES" or "THE TIDES" to "[city name] [sport] [club]". It's okay to get a little goofy with it - life is too short to be serious all the time. Have a little character to you.
I did not expect to see the Tides referenced in this thread. Hi neighbor.
Small state, innit
So Virginia?
It just sounds less prestigious. These team are a century old, most of them at least. Also I'm not against names, but against corny ones, real Madrid isn't the name of the city, but sounds great.
I mean as far as age goes, if I counted right, 16 of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball are over 120 years old. Also it's not like teams in England don't have nicknames if they didn't I wouldn't spend so much of my time ponder what in the hell a womble is.
I've seen Real [insert city] as a team name often. What is real supposed to mean in this context? It's a REAL team? It's REALly based in [city name]? Or pointing out that the other team in town isn't REAL?
I think you're confusing prestigious with pretentious.
If you haven't looked at minor league baseball teams yet, it's worth the dive. My personal favorite is the Rocket City Trash Pandas.
You keep mentioning “prestige”, what’s so prestigious about a city name? Also sometimes teams change names. Like at one point the Jazz became the Hornets. If Barcelona FC moved to Madrid it could just be renamed Madrid FC. No fuss there. Why does a sports team have to be tied to a place? Which matters more, the team or the location?
Both.
You keep getting downvoted because you’re not really explaining yourself well. Let’s say all of the players, coaches, etc. just up and moved to another city but left the team name behind. What would be the difference between that and moving the whole team. I guess why question is what constitutes “the team”? Is it the players or the place. And if the latter, what does the place provide to that of the team?
Team names were originally tied to local history, local flora and fauna, and nicknames for the locals.
For example, people from Indiana became nicknamed the Hoosiers.
Then the Hoosiers nickname got picked up as the sports teams' name for Indiana University Bloomington.
Similarly, (University of Tennessee) Volunteers
And so on and so forth
My favorite of these is the Toledo Mud Hens minor league baseball team.
Then came major pro sports... The pro teams started out as named for local things, but as they discovered national sports broadcasting and marketing, the names became more and more generic to appeal to a wider audiences, so now you get names like Washington Commanders (which is a vast improvement from their long standing insulting name of Redskins, BTW).
Then there are the teams that moved whose names don't make sense for where they're located... The Minneapolis Lakers were named after the Great Lakes of that region, then they moved and became the Los Angeles Lakers, which doesn't make local sense at all.
You kinda have to have the stupid names when moving teams. Chelsea FC would be Chelsea Megakillers FC and would then be Newcastle Megakillers FC.
Both shouldn't be a thing to be begin with. Is like you lost prestige with a silly name plus not being really rooted to a city.
Yeah, it's one thing to buy the functional parts of a team, say the trainer + the players. But you buy them into your city's team.
It's a tradition that mostly started with just the name of the color of their socks.
Not really any different than the Italian National team being "Azzurri"
That's a nickname though, and also that's a national team.
We're talking about nicknames.
New York Yankees = City Nickname
Yankee Global Enterprises, LLC = official legal name
Nobody on the damn planet is going to call them Yankee global enterprises, cmon. Also Yankees is I think the only exception of a half decent name. Isn't as childish as "raptors" or whatever
I just right now called them the Yankee Global Enterpirse. Checkmate.
Also, Toronto (Raptors) is not in the US, fyi.
That’s your opinion and you’re more than entitled to it. My opinion is that having a logo on your jersey is much cooler than having the name of an airline or some other megacorp on it.
Here nobody thinks on the corp. Owning the team. Is all about the city representation.
Again, that’s your opinion, mine is that’s the teams are walking advertisements as is every jersey that is bought by a fan.
What a weird thing to be bothered by; Americans are so... shuffles deck...dumb with sports team names. I've seen quite a few like this lately, it's kinda funny.
Anyway, I'll admit there are some dumb names, especially in semi pro but how can you argue names like Raiders, Patriots, Eagles, 76ers, 49ers, Rangers, Trailblazers, etc. My personal stupid favorites are the Lakers (as in bodies of water) from Los Angeles, they moved from Minneapolis in the 60s and then the Utah Jazz, um Utah...Jazz? Yeah, they moved from New Orleans in the 70s. You'd be hard pressed to find any natural lakes in LA and I'd guess the jazz scene in Utah is underwhelming (never been there myself).
US cities don't buy teams. Rich fucks do and move them to what they presume to be a more profitable and/or friendly market.
What's hilarious to me about US sports is the soccer (yes, in the US it's called soccer, I don't make the rules) teams trying so hard to act like they're European teams. Cmon folks, you aren't an FC, you're an SC.
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