Logocentrism

I’m not sure I accept your premises, Bérubé; the Angry Turquoise Fisherman looks as though he’d stop at least two of three.

These are hilarious. Milwaukee and Syracuse are especially bad–but good bad.

Oh, the t-shirt options. So hard to decide, so hard to decide.

Not much to disagree with here, only to add that the original NHL teams have not only cool logos, but also great uniforms. Those all-red Detroit unis may be the best uniforms in all North American team sports (and I say this with no rooting interest in the Wings…I’m a Devils fan).

All the more reason to wonder at the awfulness of the expansion-team logos. The Minnesota Wild may also have the worst name in all team sports.

Am I the only one for whom sportslogos.net is not resolving?

todd: You have to copy and paste the URLs.

I rather like the Ottawa logo. A centurion! Neato.

Did the ones for the relocated teams suck less in their old locales (off the top of my head, I’m thinking of the Nordiques and the North Stars)?

P. O’Neill asks:

Did the ones for the relocated teams suck less in their old locales (off the top of my head, I’m thinking of the Nordiques and the North Stars)?

The answer is mas oui and yes, respectively. I’m not quite sure what the old Nordiques de Quebec logo was supposed to make me feel, but its very incomprehensibility says Quebec to me.

As for the old North Stars logo, it was classic–up there with the best in league history. Of course, Norm “Sucks” Green changed the logo to the crappy Dallas Stars incarnation two years before he moved the team, because he was planning to move the team to get away from the bad press from his sexual harassment lawsuit.

As for the Wild–well, hate the name, love the team, I guess. The NBA charted the stupid course where singular nouns could be a team name, and unfortunately, the NHL followed. It’s still better than “Blue Jackets.”

The hockey-playing fisherman apparently moved north and tried to set up shop with the Halifax Ice Breakers of the proposed, but never operational, World Hockey Association of 2005.

I should also note that the local outfit — that training ground for 17-year-old goons, The Seattle Thunderbirds — have an outstanding logo.

The Calgary Flames? Really?

The really funny part is that we kept the name after the team moved from…Atlanta. I really can’t begin to explain the extent to which Sherman’s march through Western Canada is seared into the memory of every Calgarian…

Not quite as bad as the Utah Jazz, I guess.

The Browns Rule should apply to all professional sports . . . I hereby decree! (by the power invested in anonymous blog commentors). (Browns’s rule?) The business can move, but the city/state owns the name.

Except when the name is stupid, or racist and totally unrelated to location (no one needs the Boston Braves again — Red Sox are much better, though it would be interesting to see the logo for the Atlanta Crackers).

North Stars is the perfect name for a Minnesota hockey team, so much so that it was evidently impossible to think of another name.

Cardinals in any sport naturally belong in St. Louis.

It’s not too late to insist that Dodgers can only play in Brooklyn. Right is right/ a fact’s a fact/ it belongs to them/ let’s give it back.

Observations.

— The current/classic Islanders logo, and the Minnesota Whatever logo look like summer camps. Which is appropriate for Minnesota, and I guess upstate NY.

— The Senators, Maple Leafs, and Bruins look like fraternal organizations. Why hasn’t there been a hockey team named the Elks? The Colorado Elks would have been great.

I’m with jackmormon: that crusty Islander fisherman looks like he’s ready to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and he’s all out of bubblegum.

And I have two words for those who would mock the logos of sports teams: State College Spikes. Sorry, three words. No, it’s not really a fair comparison, since their logo budget is three dollars, but still.

Also, riding the train recently from the Home of the Beast, I chanced to scrutinize a playing field along the way, and was met with this sight. Granted, if a team is going to be named “Bluefish,” there probably has to be a fish somewhere in there. But holding a bat? And it looks more like its ready to hammer on the hood of a car than to swing at a pitch. Then again, it is Bridgeport…

Wait, hockey is the sport with the other type of stick, isn’t it? Sorry for singlehandedly derailing the thread with my Chomsky cheerleading baseball segue.

rm, the Atlanta Crackers didn’t have a very interesting logo at all.

Shudder shudder. And their pretty blue jerseys were fringed with fleurs-de-lis, thus ensuring that they would never play in a Cup final, even with the Stasny brothers.

Sounds to me like the talk of a self-hating aigu.

Sorry, Smiley Penguin — Mellow Penguin was properly the post-Stanley Cup logo.

The worst non-nickname change (besides the Jazz) I am aware of was when the Boston “Tea Men” of the NASL (soccer) moved to Jacksonville and stayed the “Tea Men” complete with tall masted ship logo. A poor nickname became a ludicrous one.

For bad hockey logos for an otherwise good team, I nominate the Cleveland Barons (original AHL version.) Their monocled logos made the Planters Peanut seem sophisticated in comparison.

For actual predictions, I have to go with the Pens. How can any good American root against a team led by guys with all-American names like Crosby and Malkin?

So I think that the Chicago Blackhawks logo is considered kosher because it’s an actual guy (Chief Blackhawk), rather than a generic ooh-scary-tomahawk-wielding-Indian.

Second, the Oilers logo is pretty lame, but Todd Macfarlane, who did the Spawn comic, invested in the team and did an alternate logo, which many people hated, but isn’t particularly boring, I don’t think (plus, according to the logo page, has all sorts of symbolism).

But the Oilers logo leads me to the question of what ever happened to naming teams after the local workin’ folk? Like the Steelers, the Oilers, and even the Cowboys? These days it’s all scary (imaginary and/or extinct) animals. They couldn’t even be bothered to come up with an actual animal name for Nashville: “hmm, yeah, predators are like scary animals, right? Let’s choose one of them. Which one? I don’t care, you pick.”

I think it’s time to bring back the local working-class pride names, only updated to reflect the 21st century economy. So let’s say hello to the San Jose Programmers, the Las Vegas Strippers, the San Francisco Real Estate Speculators, the Nashville Transhippers, and so on.

Oh, and the Sharks are totally gonna make it to the Western Conference finals before choking this year.

It celebrates Columbus’s role in making uniforms for the right side in the Civil War.

They might want to consider doing more to explain this. I had always assumed that the name was the result of some Junior Vice President completely forgetting his assignment to come up with a name for the new team . . . and then suddenly remembering it about ten minutes before the deadline.

JP, you brought back my repressed memories of the Cleveland Barons. I must say that, as a native Lake Erie sailor, I’ve never heard of the Bessie that the new team is named after. But apparently, this “legend” was not just recently made up by a tourism office. If it’s the Lemmy from Huron, that would explain it — those West Siders are strange folk.

Hartford Whalers:

http://www.sportslogos.net/logo.php?lo=5060

Major League Soccer (I first wrote “MLS soccer,” which is like “PIN number” and “ATM machine”) has, in contrast, some great logos. The exceptions are the badly-named Columbus Crew (Cardinals corollary to the Browns Rule: cities ought to be able to force all their teams to share a name, once they find a good one, e.g. Blue Jackets) which looks like a Broadway revival of the Village People, and the two beverage-looking ones (Red Bull New York and Ree-al Salt Lake).

Re the Columbus Blue Jackets: The team, sadly enough, missed out on a great name. Columbus has the nickname “Cowtown” for its historical reputation as a sleepy backwater relative to Cincy and Cleveland. This is no longer true, as boosters will relentlessly remind you. But it does explain why the local contest for a team name yielded…

The Columbus Mad Cows.

The stadium name? The Meadow of Doom.

Team slogan? “Got Milk?”

The suits were unwilling to go with the popular name for some reason or another. Pity that.

The Minnesota Wild didn’t pick my suggested name, and now it’s no longer available:

“William Mitchell has an informal hockey team, the mascot of which is the “Fightin’ Eelpout.”[1] Rumor has it the name was suggested by then Governor Jesse Ventura, who was a guest on campus. A student asked him what he should name the school’s hockey team, and Ventura suggested the “Fighting Eelpout.”

With the team motto being “Winnin’ Ugly”.

Hartford Whalers? Another case of keep-the-nickname-when-you-change-the-city. You can’t catch many whales off the shores of Hartford, Connecticut.

Great information about the Blue Jackets, Ben. I’ll have to root for them if they ever get a team.

Absolutely agree about the plural. Mass-term nicknames (Avalanche, Wild, Storm) are terrible. And great as they are, I doubt that local-working-people names (Oilers, Steelers, Packers, even Jets (Winnipeg)) are coming back. First, ticket prices have gone up so much that going to the game is pretty much only for rich folks now. (That’s certainly true in Toronto.) Second, the marketing of sports teams is now largely directed at kids, to get (rich) families to come. That’s shown not only in obviously kid-focused names like Mighty Ducks (ugh), but also in the Toronto Raptors (name chosen shortly after Jurassic Park) and in the obnoxious music, video displays, etc. that fill every non-playing minute of a game — which made me stop going when I still lived where I could afford to go.

An unrelated point: if you look at film of games from the 50s the fans in the stands are wearing overcoats, because it’s cold in the rink. (It’s an ice rink, after all.) But cold rinks don’t sell much food and beer, hence modern heated arenas and (as a result) modern crappy ice. That’s it: ruin the game, or at least make it significantly worse, so you can sell more product.

Siva: absolutely go Sabres, a very good team and entertaining to watch (too bad about all those d-injuries last year), as well as a sports-wise deserving city. So absolutely, go Sabres!

Ben @ 39: Nice to read the story behind the name, but the Blue Jackets didn’t do their job, spoiling Anaheim’s seizure of the Pacific Division.

[40] ok, I hereby predict that the next expansion franchise in Cali will be known as the California Bubble…or what about the Golden State Bubble?

As for Las Vegas Strippers, ok, as long as we understand that team members and employees will refer to them as the Dancers…

Hey, Michael, you pulled a fast one on us: you started off talking about the most masculine logos and then shifted ground to the best-designed. One could argue that masculinity and good design are orthogonal axes.

On the cock, balls, sweat and muscle measure, Very Scary Animals come in tops every time. Just because you can’t show bleeding corpses on a sweater.

And on the masculinity axis, what exactly was the WHA all about, what with the boobs on the Bulls/Toros, Baltimore Blades (any relation to the Washington Blade?) and Calgary Cowboys (or were those skates dangling low enough to be testicular? Oh, and the that Denver logo really belongs on a figure-skating team.

Hmmm…not sure I agree with some of this, but I don’t have much to add other than to make the point that, in my opinion, longevity is the 9/10ths of a sports logo’s cred and appeal.

Also, with advent of new ownership, the Canucks uniforms are being redesigned once again, and rumour has it Johnny Canuck (of the WHL era Canucks) will be making a return. I’m not sure how I feel about that….it’s all in the execution I guess. And the longevity.

Indeed, this sportslogos.net is a treasure trove. Tim, the wimpiness of the WHA(look at the Minnesota Fighting Saints!! A Keilloresque logo, you betcha) looks to be balanced out by the brutality of WHL logos. check out the Calgary Hitmen. That is downright irresponsible. And I thought the Washington Bullets (now Wizards) had an inappropriate name.

The Fighting Saints reminds me of some great oxymoronic university team names from North Carolina — the Demon Deacons, the Fighting Quakers, the Fighting Christians (now the collective-noun Phoenix).

The Minnesota Wild may also have the worst name in all team sports.

True story: One of the other finalists for the team’s name was “Minnesota Blue Ox” (as in Babe from the Paul Bunyan myth). Not “Oxen,” mind you: “Ox” nonpluralized, like the Miami Heat – as in, the team is collectively one ox.

I actually think of the old Seals and Canucks logos as being in a class by themselves. I think the Seal looks more like a cubist slug than like a cockroach, and that the effect is rather ruined by giving the cubist slug a hockey stick. (But either a slug or a cockroach would be preferable to the word “Seals” in sloppily-proportioned sans serif lettering, which is what you had in the early 1970s as the team became unfathomably bad.) And the Canucks logo is kind of awesome in its minimalist unimaginativeness. Still, that’s nothing compared to the pajamas the Canucks were forced to wear for a few seasons. . . .

Hey, I like the Bluefish logo. Never saw it before till just now.
And even if the Avalanche was one of the first singular nouns as team name, it does make sense for a Colorado team. And I think the logo on the uniforms does have an appropriately Sasquatch kind of feel.

A hockey-fan friend in Columbus told me the Blue Jackets’ name was a reference to a Shawnee leader named Blue Jacket. But none of the team marketing has picked up on that, if it’s true, and there are allusions to the Civil War (the ridiculous mascot bee wears a Union cap, e.g.)