Lady Stanley
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- May 26, 2021
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I love the UTAH Jazz, ironic team histories are far better than trying to find obscure historic events to create a team around.
Personally I wish they had to nerve to make them the Utah Whalers.
Bettman meeting with Ryan Smith, owner of Utah Jazz and Real Salt Lake (upd: Smith asks NHL to open expansion process)
- Thread starter GKJ
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Personally I wish they had to nerve to make them the Utah Whalers.
KevFu
Registered User
Baseball's got the best team name origins, most about newspaper guys saving characters in headlines.
Philly had two teams: The NL team wore a P on their cap, so the AL team put an A on their caps. Hence, Phillies and As.
In New York, the NL team was a juggernaut when the Baltimore AL team moved to New York. A newspaper writer wondered if the AL team could be as good as John McGraw's "giants of the National League." The AL team became known as the Yankees, because Yankees is another name for Americans, and Yanks was a space saver for the papers.
The Mets named their team to mimic those backstories: Calling their company the New York Metropolitian Baseball Club, and their team the Mets.
ponder719
M-M-M-Matvei and the Jett
Or the Pittsburgh Alleghenies, who were accused of stealing or “pirating” a player from a rival team.
KevFu
Registered User
Honestly, the five AL teams playing in the same cities as NL teams (BOS, PHI, STL, CHI, then NY) probably ALL WERE called the Americans informally until nicknames became more ubiquitous.
Baseball-Reference says the Red Sox were the Americans from 1901-1907.
KevFu
Registered User
It's very possible. The reporting on this stuff is like, "what's TRUE is what we have evidence of being reported" but in tons of cases, what's reported isn't necessarily the 100% truth but someone's view of events told to a reporter.
Not to open a horrible can of worms, but a prime example is the history of eye-witnesses saying "I heard/felt an explosion" turning into "reports of an explosion" and then when it turns out there WASN'T actually an explosion, but something that sounded and felt like an explosion... conspiracies are born that if so many people reported an explosion there must have been an explosion, why are they LYING about an explosion?" When the reality is, people without the whole story telling a partial story gets printed in the newspaper and accepted as fact.
Hell, two people can be standing with each other, witness the same thing and have completely different interpretations of the event.
Which, when you think about it, a TON of the convos about the last five franchise relocations or Arizona is exactly that: We're reading what's reported and drawing our own conclusions from it, when without being in the room, we can't possibly know for sure. Hell, different members of ASG could have different opinions on if hockey can work in Atlanta based on the same data (that WE don't have access to).
Stumbledore
Registered User
An excellent post. The bolded part has been confirmed many times by science.
That's why it always pays to have the right judge and be very, very careful about which personalities you allow to testify.
The A's were the Athletics because they were taking an abandoned nickname previously used by the (previous) NL team in town. The early AL did that a lot to take the piss out of the NL.
The Braves were originally called the Red Stockings because they were founded by one of the original owners of the original Cincinnati Red Stockings. When the AL put a team there, that team was known variously as the Americans (because they were in the AL) and, because the NL team was by then using the nickname Beaneaters (seriously), they copped the NL team's original nickname in shortened form. And so they became the Red Sox.
Same with Chicago. The Cubs were originally the White Stockings, so the AL team became the White Sox. The Cardinals were originally the Brown Stockings, so the AL team became the Browns. The Phillies (which is just short for "Philadelphians") replaced the previous Athletic Club of Philadelphia (who had been booted for refusing to go on a season ending road trip in the NL's first season), so the AL team became the Athletics. Baltimore recycled the Orioles nickname (twice). And Washington insisted on being officially the Nationals despite being in the AL until the 1950s, when they finally relented and officially adopted the Senators nickname that had long been more popular.
The Braves were originally called the Red Stockings because they were founded by one of the original owners of the original Cincinnati Red Stockings. When the AL put a team there, that team was known variously as the Americans (because they were in the AL) and, because the NL team was by then using the nickname Beaneaters (seriously), they copped the NL team's original nickname in shortened form. And so they became the Red Sox.
Same with Chicago. The Cubs were originally the White Stockings, so the AL team became the White Sox. The Cardinals were originally the Brown Stockings, so the AL team became the Browns. The Phillies (which is just short for "Philadelphians") replaced the previous Athletic Club of Philadelphia (who had been booted for refusing to go on a season ending road trip in the NL's first season), so the AL team became the Athletics. Baltimore recycled the Orioles nickname (twice). And Washington insisted on being officially the Nationals despite being in the AL until the 1950s, when they finally relented and officially adopted the Senators nickname that had long been more popular.
RoyalAir
Looks Better In Gold
Stingers or Swarm would be great for a Utah-based team.
Is the CBJ mascot Stinger? Would they have to negotiate rights in this case?
Yukon Joe
Registered User
Stingers is already the name of the Concordia University hockey team, as well as the old WHA Cincinnati Stingers. It probably doesn't matter but Edmonton's CEBL basketball team is the Stingers as well.
I think it's harder to come up with sports names as we get more and more concerned about trademarks and copyright law. Remember Vegas had some litigation over the US Army Golden Knights parachute team or something - and parachuting and NHL hockey are pretty different things.
Only conflict I can find for Swarm is the Georgia Swarm of the NLL (Lacrosse).
KevFu
Registered User
Well, the London Knights would have a harder time because most of the "doing business as" stuff is by country.
ponder719
M-M-M-Matvei and the Jett
There's also the Greensboro Swarm in the G League, and a smattering of youth league teams, but not too many.
Yukon Joe
Registered User
Not really. Trying to remember way back to my IP course in law school, it's all a matter of "confusion". Will the consumer be confused. So it's not only a question of having the same name, but how similar is the business, how similar is the logo and design, etc. There's no hard-and-fast rule.
So going to Stingers... the Concordia Stingers might have an issue given they are both hockey teams, and the NHL certainly has wide spread in Canada, even for US-based teams.
KevFu
Registered User
I was relying on the ignorance of Americans in the trademark office to no be aware of the London Knights.
Yukon Joe
Registered User
But it's more a matter of if London challenges the issuance of the trademark. IIRC they didn't, although the Army Golden Knights did.
Yukon Joe
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GKJ
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Yukon Joe
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GKJ
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Of course, because teams want to use their trademarks on merchandise as well, there can be conflicts from other areas who also do merchandise. I remember seeing a piece when the Leafs moved their AHL team to Toronto and renamed them the Marlies. Apparently, the Leafs had looked at naming the team the Toronto Rush but going with that name would have meant that all apparel merchandiese would have to use the full Toronto Rush name because of the band Rush's trademark which included apparel.
RayMartyniukTotems
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