Sometimes
I play a game with football team names, which itself doesn’t have a name. It seems to work well with football
nicknames, because they are, in all honesty, somewhat derivative of each other. You’re going for a lot of the same things. They generally want the name to be scary, and
in as much as in any sport, I think fans picture an actual representation of
their team fighting one from their opponent.
Thus, I’ve noticed, there are correlations across the conferences of
team nicknames. Here’s how they lined up
this time:
Houston and New
Orleans: These are both southern
cities, so it makes sense why they should have a similar theme as far as the
marketing of their team goes. And while
on the surface this may seem like the correlation between their names isn’t
very strong (there aren’t going to be many Texan
Saints, let’s just say), where they connect the most is, I believe, in the
logos. Both are versions of
somewhat-overused symbols from the places they associate with. Texas is something like a different country,
but Louisiana is one of the more under-ratedly provincial states in the union.
Kansas City and
Minnesota: These places also seem to
have a connection with each other, given that they are both western areas on
rivers. But while many might see no
connection between a Norse warrior and a stoic Native American, I see it more
like this: Vikings are members of a type
of tribe, in a very dog-eat-dog world.
The chiefs could very well be a member of a similar tribe in America,
from a time when they might have first been starting to make tools (thus the
Arrowhead), and many think the Vikings made it to America anyway. Plus their logos are very pointy.
Indianapolis and St.
Louis: When you have a couple
franchises like this which take long and storied journeys across the United
States (and in some cases folding back east, a little bit) you do start to have
some similarities in the image of the teams, if not the logos and nicknames
themselves. Both teams have one
championship within most of their fanbase’s lifetime, but also play in a market
that generally prefers a different sport (baseball for St. Louis, basketball
for Indy). And both teams have rounded
logos which are shorthand for hoofed quadrupeds you wouldn’t want to have to
fight, but aren’t inherently scary, either.
Seattle and Miami: In each of these coastal towns with large
foreign ethnic identities, football has nonetheless become an important part of
the local identity. Unfortunately for
fans of aesthetics, each of these teams has changed their marine-animal logo to
one that misunderstands the original’s charm.
Seattle’s ‘Hawk has gotten more angry, though less like one you’d find
on one of the area’s famous totem poles.
And Miami didn’t realize that what its logo had going for it was just “It’s
a Dolphin wearing a Helmet!”
Pittsburgh and San
Francisco: To start, I had always grouped my Packers with Pittsburgh on “Midwestern
towns whose teams pay tribute to an historical industry” qualifier. But I tried something different this
time. The Steelers and 49ers both pay
homage to their area’s history, and both of these industries revolve around a
metal (useful and valuable, respectively). Each of these teams has also had
strong recent runs after dominant runs in the early days of the Super Bowl era.
The Rest:
Philadelphia
Eagles à
Cincinnati Bengals
Dallas
Cowboys à
Buffalo Bills
New York
Giants à
Tennessee Titans
Washington
Redskins à
New England Patriots
Chicago Bears
à Cleveland Browns
Detroit
Lions à
San Diego Chargers
Green Bay
Packers à
New York Jets
Carolina
Panthers à
Jacksonville Jaguars
Tampa Bay
Buccaneers à
Denver Broncos
Atlanta
Falcons à
Oakland Raiders
Arizona
Cardinals à
Baltimore Ravens
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