basketball

Fixing Team Names

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The NBA regular season is over, and since I’m somewhat (completely) fair weathered when it comes to pro hoops and the Pistons don’t just suck but are a complete and total embarrassment to the city, there’s only one thing I care about…and it ain’t LeBron or the Lakers.

The New Orleans Hornets are no more!

It’s always bothered me when teams move to a new city – and have to rebrand anyway – and they don’t go through the trouble of changing the team name.  So we get ridiculous names like the Utah Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma SuperSonics…oh, wait.  Theoretically team names are supposed to reflect the culture of the cities they play in, but the closest Grizzly Bear to Memphis is either in a zoo or 1300 miles away, and let’s not even talk about a style of music that is predominantly black providing the nickname for a team in the whitest state in the country.

So I’m fixing that.

Here’s the rules:

  • We’re only changing the nicknames of teams that have changed during the respective sport’s current “eras”.  For baseball, that’s the expansion era (1969-present).  For the NFL (1970), NBA (1976-77) and NHL (1979-80), this refers to the time since their mergers.  So teams like the Oakland A’s and Los Angeles Lakers lucked out, even if their names make no sense.
  • Team names stick with the city (a la Cleveland Browns, Seattle SuperSonics, etc.).  If a second team comes to that city, they are eligible to adopt that moniker.
  • They haven’t moved, but we’re going to address Native American names, which means that the Redskins will be getting dealt with.
  • I don’t have a problem using a nickname that is currently in use in another sport.

That’s it, it’s that simple.  It should be noted that while I tried to research some of the cities’ histories in their respective sports to come up with names, but in the end, I’m an accountant with no creativity, and my buddy Jeff came up with a bunch of these names.  I think you’ll like them.

MLB

There’s literally no corrections to be made.  Only three baseball teams have moved during the expansion era: the Seattle Pilots became the Milwaukee Brewers in 1970, the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers in 1972, and the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2005.

Good on you baseball!

NFL

Not a ton of movement, but enough that teams require some adjustment.  In fact, only one team that’s moved recently has done it right and rebranded themselves, and even that was after the Titans spent 2 years as the Tennessee Oilers (interesting fact: the Oilers nickname has since been retired by the NFL…I have no idea what that means, but I find it interesting).

Also, I’m not addressing the Raiders, since they were originally the Oakland Raiders.  And since the San Diego Chargers were originally the Los Angeles Chargers, they can keep their name when they move in 2 years.

  • Arizona: There are a lot of opportunities here.  Vipers, Cobras, Wolves, Rattlers and Pythons all work, but they’d seem to be redundant with the Coyotes and Diamondbacks.  The Roadrunners would be an utterly fantastic tie-in with the Coyotes, but I can’t imagine it would ever fly with the stodgy NFL.  To me, there are two options: Firebirds (it continues the bird theme from the Cardinals) and Apache/Apaches.  And since Arizona is the Apache State, we’re getting permission from the tribe and calling them the Arizona Apache.
  • Baltimore: Theoretically they’d get to revert back to the Baltimore Colts when they stole the Browns from Cleveland.  But in a way, that would be a reward for doing the exact same thing to Cleveland that they spent years bitching to Indianapolis about.  Plus, Ravens is a better name and tie in better with the city.  They’re staying the Baltimore Ravens and will be the only team in this exercise to keep their nickname.
  • Indianapolis: There are two options here.  One, stick with the horse theme (Mustangs, Stallions, Thoroughbreds, etc.).  Two, you go with the racing theme, which is really the only thing Indianapolis is known for (Racers, Fuel, Turbo, Wings, Spoilers, Aeros, etc.).  But again, the Pacers already cover that, and I don’t feel like those nicknames really fit with the boring standards of the NFL.  So we’re going with the Indianapolis Stallions.
  • St. Louis: this one’s simple.  The Los Angeles Rams are the second (third?) incarnation of the St. Louis Cardinals. ‘Nuff said.
  • Washington: They moved from Boston in 1936, but that’s not why we’re addressing the elephant in the room.  Let’s face it, you can’t do a post about changing sports team nicknames and leave the Redskins out.  If the Redskins’ history weren’t so sordid, maybe they’d get a pass on the most blatantly racist team name in sports.  But they had to be forced to integrate by the federal government, they proudly played as “the South’s team” for years (back when the South was opening fire hoses on blacks marching for civil rights), and they intentionally changed their team song to reference Dixie instead of D.C. (thank God that’s been changed back).  This team’s history sickens me.  Let’s just do this quick and easy, change the team name to the Washington Pigskins and be done with it.  Tradition is no excuse for bigotry.  I’m glad this team is run by an unlikeable prick like Dan Snyder.

NBA

The NBA is just a disaster.  The only reason Oklahoma City became the Thunder is because of the public relations disaster that happened in Seattle (again: Oklahoma City…Seattle…Sacramento…do unto others what has been done to you).  Let’s just start, because there, I think some pretty good ones.

  • Brooklyn: theoretically the Nets are just in keeping the nickname, because they were the New York Nets when they came over from the ABA.  But that’s no fun.  What sucks is that Brooklyn Kings would be a really cool nickname, especially because Brooklyn is in Kings County.  But the Kings nickname belongs to Kansas City where the current Kings played before they moved to Sacramento, and we’re not changing the rules.  Besides, with the “cool” factor that is Brooklyn and the fact that a rapper helped move them there from New Jersey, we’re calling them the Brooklyn Ballers.
  • Charlotte: Wait a second!  The Bobcats have broken none of the rules.  They entered the league as the Bobcats.  Why change the name?  First, because Bobcats is boring, and it’s rumored that the team was named after the original owner, Robert Johnson.  Plus, now that the Hornets nickname has been abandoned, and the Hornets name dates back to the Revolutionary War in Charlotte, we’re giving the name back.  We’ve got the second iteration of the Charlotte Hornets.
  • L.A. Clippers: There are tons of problems with the Clippers, starting with their racist owner who would never spend a penny to go through a massive rebranding effort.  But let’s ignore that for now.  The first problem with the Clippers nickname is that it’s a great nickname for when they were in San Diego, where there’s a massive sailing community.  In L.A. it makes no sense.  But the other problem is that by just changing the city name, they’re going up against the Lakers, and you’re never going to top the Lakers in L.A.  So we’re taking the Los Angeles out of the Clippers and coming up with a name so awesome that there’s no way I could’ve possibly come up with it myself (and I didn’t).  Can you imagine how many units a Blake Griffin Hollywood Stars jersey would move?
  • Memphis: Memphis Soul and Memphis Blues would be cool nicknames…way cooler than having a name that made more sense in Vancouver.  However, we’re sticking it to David Stern with this one.  Back when the Grizzlies were planning on moving, they explored the option of selling the naming rights to the team (not just the stadium, the entire team).  One of the options was for the team to move to Louisville and be called the Kentucky Colonels (sponsored by KFC).  The other would’ve had them moving to Memphis and being sponsored by FedEx.  Stern put the kibosh on that, to which I say fuck that.  The Memphis Express will be the first team to sell the naming rights to the team (most assuredly not the last).
  • Sacramento: Theoretically we should ignore the current Kings since they’re likely to move to Seattle next year and become the new Seattle SuperSonics.  But that’s no fun, is it?  Plus, I think Sacramento has one of the coolest names my buddy came up with.  Sacramento, much like San Francisco, was a boom town during the California Gold Rush, so we’re going to call them the Sacramento Prospectors.
  • Utah: Changing the team’s name is a no-brainer, because if you ask any sports fan in the country what team name needs to be changed the most, Utah Jazz is going to be second (see: Redskins).  The tricky part is figuring out what to go with.  Saints would be a good shout out to the importance of the Mormon faith in the state, while Miners would be a good marker of an important piece of the state’s economy.  I said we would use nicknames that were in use by other teams, but I didn’t say it was required.  And the fact that there’s already a Saints team out there means we’re calling them the Utah Miners.

NHL

The NHL generally does things right.  The Quebec Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche, the Atlanta Thrashers became the Winnipeg Jets, etc.  There’s one small exception.

  • Calgary: The Calgary Flames started out as the Atlanta Flames and kept the nickname when they moved north.  I wonder why a team named after the city burning down didn’t work out in Atlanta. How well do you think a team named the Detroit Riots would do financially?  If Calgary hadn’t been relatively successful, I’d say the team name was cursed…then again, they did lose the Stanley Cup to the Tampa Bay Freaking Lightning and then the sport did shut down for a year.  So maybe.  Sorry…digression.  There’s only one thing of note in Calgary, and that’s the annual Stampede, which is one of the world’s biggest rodeos.  I know there’s already a CFL team named the Stampeders, but (a) that’s the CFL, and no one cares, and (b) the CFL once had teams named the Roughriders and the Rough Riders playing at the same time.  They can deal with having a hockey team called the Calgary Stampede.

Wasn’t that fun?  Tell me you wouldn’t prefer those names over at least some of the ones we’ve got now.

Fixing the NCAA Basketball Tournament

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The NCAA basketball tournament is as close to the perfect sporting event as you’re going to get.  Three weeks, 64 (er…65, no wait, 68) teams all playing down to get 6 (ok, or 7) wins before anyone else can.  The Thursday and Friday of the first weekend are perhaps the two finest days of sports in the country – 2 days, 16 teams each, with gambling opportunities aplenty.

But it’s not perfect yet.

See, college football claims that their regular season matters more than any other, and they’re absolutely right (that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a playoff, but that’s a discussion for another day).  College basketball, on the other hand, requires that a team only have a good week (or 3, or 4…I’ll explain further) to find themselves competing for one of those pretty NCAA plaques.

And the reason is those vile conference tournaments.

It happens every year.  A team that’s had a sub-par regular season and otherwise wouldn’t find themselves in the bracket goes on a 4-day run to win their conference tournament and knocks out a perfectly deserving team (likely one that played in a smaller conference and could use the exposure).  We’re 4 days into conference tournament week and we’ve already seen a 15-20 Liberty team go on such a run to knock out a bubble team.  And keep in mind, they’re 15-20 after their tournament run – they went in at 11-20.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun story, but no one’s going to convince me that Liberty belongs in the tournament.  The only conference in Division I that doesn’t hold one is the Ivy League, who actually breaks a tie at the end of the regular season by having a tiebreaker game if necessary.  That’s pretty cool, but unfortunately, I’m going to kill that cool little tradition.  Knock down tradition for a better system is what sports is all about in the 21st century.

The problem is that these conference tournaments are all massive cash grabs, and if we’ve learned anything through conference realignment, it’s that college sports is all about money (well that and institutional slavery, but let’s not pretend we’re going to fix everything today).

The solution?  A bigger NCAA tournament.  And no more conference tournaments.

The NCAA tournament currently has 68 teams.  Eight teams – 4 playing for 2 16 seeds and 4 playing for 2 seeds somewhere between 12-14 play on the Tuesday before the tournament “starts” (I know technically these are the first round games, but let’s not kid ourselves, they’re play in games).  After that, it’s a simple 64-team bracket.  Remarkably, that’s not enough.

So how do we do it?  It’s really pretty simple.

Eliminate Conference Tournaments

Look, I’m a Michigan State fan.  The conference tournament has been the bane of my existence for quite some time (unless we win, then it’s awesome!).  The fact remains that in the “Big 6” conferences – Big 10, Big East, Big 12, SEC, ACC and Pac-12 – the tournament only serves to get a team in that doesn’t belong (well, and to cram a bunch of fans paying to watch a bunch of basketball over 4 days and give ESPN a week’s worth of programming).  Worse is the smaller conferences who get a single bid.  Liberty finished 6 games behind 2 different teams who finished 12-4 in conference.  The kids on those teams are going home because they ran into a hot team or had a bad night.  Three months of work goes down the drain because of 1 bad night.

So my solution: every conference gets 2 bids.  Eliminating the conference tournament leaves basically a week of free games for the conference, which equates to an extra home game for each team.

I’m sure I’m one of the few people who hates conference tournaments, but you can’t tell me that taking the actual 2 best teams from a conference to the tournament is worse than taking a team that went 15-20.

So last year, there were 19 conferences that only had 1 bid.  We’ve just added 19 teams to the bracket.

Modify the NIT

The NIT used to be an extremely prestigious tournament.  But after opening up the tournament to non-conference champions in the ’70s, the NIT has gone downhill and is now largely irrelevant.  Sure, it provides recruiting opportunities for teams who didn’t make the tournament, but really it’s a consolation prize that no one cares about.

But we’re not eliminating the NIT entirely.  We’re merging it with the NCAA tournament.  After the Final Four has been determined, the NIT will be played between teams who have been eliminated from the tournament.  It will be played either by the 4 losers in the Elite 8, or the highest seeded teams to have been eliminated from the tournament.

Expanding the Field

We’ve now added 19 automatic conference bids and (theoretically) 32 NIT bids.  However, there is some overlap, so we’re expanding the NCAA tournament to 96 teams.  The tournament still starts on Tuesday, but now there will be 8 games each on the Tuesday and Wednesday games prior to the “normal” beginning of the tournament.  The games will be played at the same sites of the round of 64.  Teams seeded 1-8 will get a bye into the round of 64.  Teams seeded 9-24 will need to win 7 games to win the tournament (those 8/9 seedings will obviously become much more important).

Reseeding the Brackets

A few years back the tournament changed so that the top seeds were ranked, and therefore the #1 overall seed would (theoretically) play #4 in the Final Four, and #2 would play #3.  Realistically, the better option would’ve been to reseed the Final Four when those teams have been determined, but billions of dollars were at stake in tournament brackets and computerized pools weren’t sophisticated enough at the time to handle that reseeding.

(You’ll never convince me that this isn’t the reason the tournament isn’t reseeded.)

Now, much as I love a good 8/12 match-up in the Sweet Sixteen…wait, I hate a 12/13 match-up in the Sweet 16.  It’s fun that one of them will get that far, but more often than not the winner of that game will be the sacrificial lamb to a better team in the Elite 8.

While it’s not feasible to reseed the teams going from the first round to play the teams who have the byes, it is feasible to do it after every weekend.  Regional brackets will be reseeded so that the top seeds will play the bottom seeds.  Last year, this would’ve seen the following:

  • South Regional: 1 vs. 10, 3 vs. 4 (was 1 vs. 4, 3 vs. 10)
  • West Regional: 1 vs. 7, 3 vs. 4 (1 vs. 4, 3 vs. 7)
  • East Regional: 1 vs. 6, 2 vs. 4 (1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 6)
  • Midwest Regional: 1 vs. 13, 2 vs. 11 (no change)

The Final Four wouldn’t have changed last year, but based on my experience (i.e., what I can remember in my head), this is a rarity and not the norm (remember 8th seeded Butler playing 11 seed VCU for a chance to go to the national title game?).

But wait, what about all those brackets?  How can we gamble all this money on the tournament if we don’t know how the brackets are going to  look at the end of the weekend?  Well, it’s real simple.  Every person needs to have their picks in by noon of the first game on Thursday (because no one cares about the Tuesday games).  Well, it’s the same thing, only this time, you need to have your brackets for the first week of the tournament in by tip-off Tuesday.  Then, after we’re down to 16 teams and the brackets have been reseeded, players make new picks and have to have them in by tip-off of the Sweet 16 games.  Same deal with the Final Four.

Now, you tell me you wouldn’t rather watch that as opposed to what we’ve got now?

Introducing the Sports Czar!

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Anyone who knows sports knows who Bill Simmons is.  And anyone who   reads Bill Simmons knows that even though he’s turned profoundly annoying and has always had a serious anti-Detroit bias, he’s had some pretty good ideas.  Foremost among those, in my opinion, has been the idea of a sports czar who would oversee all sporting issues throughout the land.  It’s not a terrible idea.  In fact, it’s such a not terrible idea that I’m commandeering it, proclaiming myself Sports Czar, and deciding what needs to be fixed in sports.  Because I watch more sports than most and therefore my opinion is completely valid.

Now, will this just be a simple case of me fixing all the problems in sports?  Of course not.  Some things just can’t be fixed.  But a lot of things can, with relatively simple changes.  That’s the fun of things.  A lot of this will be Detroit focused and discussing what the local teams need to do to fix their problems.  Example: cut Titus Young!  Done and done.  See, some of this stuff isn’t that hard.

There will be no rhyme or reason.  Lately I’ve been thinking about fixing the Baseball Hall of Fame and changing certain team nicknames, so those will be coming soon.  I doubt this will have any kind of respectable schedule, because I’m lazy, I like my TV, I’m trying to get in shape, and I have a job and friends.  I’ll try to be funny, but really, if you’re looking for comedy, read Rogo.

Beyond that, enjoy, and I welcome your comments.