Last week, the Oilers announced 39 finalists in the Rename-the-Team contest. Who’s on this renaming committee? The same people who got together to design our ugliest-in-the-country license plates? Clearly, most of these names made the cut so some hard-working committee member can go around saying, “I almost named the football team.” A whole lot of obvious team-naming factors were ignored, such as:
1. It's a football team, dumbass.
Football team names end with an ‘S.’ I’m amazed that I have to explain this. Colts. Packers. Cowboys. All of ’em. This instantly eliminates: Ambush, Blitz, Firestorm, Fury, Power, Rampage, Siege, Sound, Stampede, Tempest, Tradition, and Thunder. Maybe we can trot out these names if we ever get an NBA team.
2. The mispronunciation factor.
No offense to anybody, but in a town where so many people think Kroger has an ‘S’ on the end, and only about 10 percent of the population can pronounce “Demonbreun,” we have to consider it.
Out the door: Conquerors. (People would put the word “queer” in the middle.) Dynamos. (People would accentuate the second syllable, and how many people even know what a dynamo is?) Marauders. (Folks would choke on the “au.”) Doubly eliminated: Fury. People would say “Furry.”
3. Snake names? In Bible country? I doubt it.
Gone: Copperheads, Rattlers, Vipers.
4. The unbelievably lame, which include:
Bandits, and River Bandits. (You name your new puppy “Bandit.”) Cruisers, Daredevils, and Troopers. (Save these for all-boy dance troupes.) Legends. (Lame golf name already. Plus, this ain’t no historic event.) Presidents and Tradition.
(Yeah, sure. It’s every little boy’s dream to grow up and play quarterback for the damn Presidents. Or, imagine a 10-year-old boy spiking the ball in the back yard and yelling out, “Touchdown for the Tradition!”) Sound. (Uh, add an ‘s’ and that’s the baseball team. The one with the guitar-shaped scoreboard.)
5. Despite the Rams/Lambs and Raiders/Faders thing, we’ve got some high-ridicule-factor names in here:
Blitz (rhymes with “I got the _ _ _ _ _”), Rapids (Vapids), Stingers (Stinkers), Smokies (Pokies).
6. Y'all know what? There’s only one passable name on the list, and that's the Bobcats.
I say scrap the list, and form a new committee. Better yet, just name ’em the Studs, like we’ve been telling you.
