what team(s) should i root for: episode ii

in the next few episodes of what team(s) should i root for, i intend to explore some of the lesser known (and lesser used) reasons for picking favorite sports teams. these episodes will be less focused and more exploratory than episode i. while episode i provided justification for liking teams for average sports fans, these next few episodes will focus on justifications for for the writers and readers of this guy knows what i'm talking about, in other words, (non)sports fans.

a couple notes before i get started: (1) i will be looking at team identities (team names, team colors, team histories) as reasons for loving (and hating) specific teams; (2) i will limit my discussion to professional sports teams simply because there are too many college teams to consider, however, the same general ideas expressed in these episodes can be exported to picking favorite college teams; (3) i'm looking specifically at the professional sports teams of the nba, nfl and mlb because i don't care for hockey and soccer team names exist in such a different category (soccer clubs often don't have nicknames and the color of their jersey's aren't limited by arbitrary team colors--in short, soccer clubs are so much cooler that you can justify loving nearly any soccer club based on their team name and uniforms).

so, what makes a good team nickname? it seems that when teams choose nicknames, they often look for tough sounding nicknames like scary animals. while this is bad in and of itself, it's worse when teams use a tough sounding nickname that also is an aliteration of the team's city name (like the jacksonville jaguars or the tennessee titans). however, there are a couple of aliterated team names that i like: the philadelphia phillies and the buffalo bills. the phillies because what is a phillie (or is it a philly)? without doing any research (i have my research assistants working on future stories) i'd guess that you get the name phillie from philadelphia. while i think that's a pretty good name, the buffalo bills are even better because the name has nothing to do with the city of buffalo (or even with buffalos despite the fact that a buffalo is on their helmets); it's just a reference to buffalo bill. maybe that guy is from buffalo (if he even existed), but i doubt it. so the name is primarily a joke. a joke name totally undermines the tough name syndrome. a professional franchise with a joke name: what could be funnier?

both of those team names are good because they relied on nonsensical nicknames. other teams that probably fall into this category would include (again based on no research) the cleveland browns (who also go as far as to have no mascot or even identifying marker [unless orange is an identifying marker]), the brooklyn/los angeles dodgers and the texas rangers (who have the added bonus of being linked to chuck norris through walker, texas ranger).