The 20 worst team names in professional sports

Former sports journalist Stephen H. Provost is the author of “A Whole Different League,” a history of alternative sports leagues in the United States, and “The Legend of Molly Bolin,” the biography of a women’s basketball’s first pro superstar. Both are available on Amazon.

They went from the most offensive nickname in pro sports to the most unoriginal.

They won their first game of the season, which is what counts, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Washington Football Team has one of the worst names out there. It sounds like a ripoff of the trend in Major League Soccer, where teams have taken to sticking “FC” after city names in order to sound more European. That doesn’t change the fact that elite European teams will still wipe the floor with MLS opponents more often than not.

In light of the Washington team’s new name, I thought it would be fun to come up with a list of the silliest, most absurd nicknames in professional sports. Honorable mention goes to any team named after a piece of apparel, such as the Chicago White Sox, Boston Red Sox, and Columbus Blue Jackets.

20

Green Bay Packers (NFL)

Don’t get me wrong: I love this team. And I wouldn’t change the name, because, how do you change a name this iconic? (This principle applies to a few other teams on this list, as well.) The Packers are a throwback to when NFL teams played in small Midwestern towns like Canton and Duluth. In the early days, businesses often sponsored teams. Fred Zollner’s piston company lent its name to basketball’s Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons, and the Staley Starch Company bankrolled football’s Decatur Staleys. The Pistons moved to Detroit, and their name still worked in the automotive capital of the work. The Staleys moved to Chicago and became the Bears. The Packers, initially sponsored by a meat-packing company stayed where they were. I wouldn’t change their name for the world. So why include it here? Because if you were creating a new team today, you would NOT call it the Packers. Meat-packing is kinda gross.

19

Anaheim Ducks (NHL)

When naming a team after a bird or animal, the idea is to choose something fierce, not something most closely associated with the names Donald or Daffy. (Apologies to the University of Oregon.) Anaheim’s NHL team was actually named after a fictional team portrayed in a movie, the Mighty Ducks. But at least those ducks were mighty. Removing that part of the name just transformed the team into plain old ordinary Ducks. It’s as though Superman retired that name and just called himself Clark Kent all the time. Or the Fighting Irish stopped fighting and just called themselves the Irish. Pretty boring, if you ask me.

18

Denver Nuggets (NBA)

Who names a team after a mineral? Even a valuable one? Denver’s NBA team did. It’s only marginally better than the Denver Gold from the old USFL. Free tip: Inanimate objects make bad team names, especially when they remind you of an item from the McDonald’s menu. To be fair, this team went through a couple of other names first. They started out in the ABA as the Larks (Colorado’s state bird), which was pretty lame, then became the Rockets — which would have been fine if Houston’s NBA team wasn’t using the name, too. So, they borrowed the name of an extraordinarily bad team that played just one season in the NBA before going belly up. How inspiring!

17

Los Angeles Clippers (NBA)

When the Boston Braves moved to San Diego, they renamed themselves the Clippers, which I suppose isn’t the worst name in the world for a team in San Diego. Not too long before that, the ABA had a team called the San Diego Sails, which played off the same nautical theme. But “Clippers” doesn’t really translate as well to Los Angeles, and my first thoughts aren’t of ships, but hair clippers and hedge clippers. Of course, it’s easier to make fun of a team when it hasn’t made the NBA Finals in 50 years of existence and isn’t as lovable as, say, the Chicago Cubs. 

16

Oakland A’s (MLB)

The full name is Athletics, which was originally short for Athletic Club of Philadelphia. That’s the organization that fielded the team when it was founded, back in 1860. But the team is no longer affiliated with that club and doesn’t even play in Philadelphia. Heck, it moved to Kansas City before it wound up in Oakland. “A” is just a letter of the alphabet, albeit the most prestigious, being the first and the top grade you can receive in school. But this name is still nonsensical, anachronistic, and grammatically suspect. The team plays just one athletic event (baseball), so making the name plural and applying it to the team members is an exercise in absurdity.

15

Columbus Crew Soccer Club (MLS)

I’m not sure whether it’s a good thing that this team uses SC rather than FC. On the one hand, almost no one calls this sport “soccer” except Americans. On the other, FC is a blatant wannabe ripoff of European clubs. The Crew isn’t the first pirate-oriented nickname, but it’s easily the worst. Pirates, Buccaneers, and Raiders are all far cooler. What does a crew do but swab the decks? Besides, if you say the team’s full name real fast, it sounds like you’re saying Columba Screw, which sounds even less flattering. This name deserves to walk the plank.

14

Houston Texans (NFL)

They couldn’t come up with anything better than this? Really? It’s not the first time a team has fallen back on a state name after failing to come up with anything original. Miami’s short-lived ABA team was the Floridians, and the WFL team in Honolulu was the Hawaiians. But at least those teams weren’t competing against other teams in their own state. Are the Dallas Cowboys not Texans, every bit as much as the Houston team? How insulting! (The Kansas City Chiefs even started out as the Dallas Texans.) This name is so unoriginal it’s even been used before, by the WFL’s Texans, who were based in Houston for 11 games before fleeing for neighboring Louisiana. At least they had the good sense to change their name at that point.

13

Buffalo Bills (NFL)

This team is named after Buffalo Bill Cody, the guy with the Wild West Show. But there was only one of him, so pluralizing the name doesn’t make much sense. When you speak about “Bills” in plural, you’re generally talking about currency, not Wild West showmen. Or is every player on this team named Bill? I don’t think so. To make matters worse, the logo on the team’s helmet isn’t a portrait of Buffalo Bill, but a bison, which isn’t even technically a buffalo. At least the current logo shows the bison leaping through the air, unlike the original version, which looked like a satanic cow with a beard and a penis, just standing there.

12

Minnesota Wild (NHL)

I want so badly to call this team the Oscar Wildes or the Olivia Wildes, but there’s no “E” in this name. Sometimes, singular names DO work: the Oklahoma City Thunder, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Colorado Avalanche come to mind. But sometimes they don’t, and this is one of them. It’s ancient history now, but there was a time when teams always had plural names. That changed with the World Football League, which adopted singular (and mostly silly) team names of inanimate objects: The Southern California Sun, Shreveport Steamer, and the ridiculous Philadelphia Bell. The Minnesota Wild falls into this category. It’s either a synonym for “wilderness” or an adjective. Never choose a team name that’s an adjective.

11

Chicago Sky (WNBA)

The WNBA has gone all-in on singular nicknames, which aren’t new to the city of Chicago. The WFL had the Chicago Fire, which was named after one of the most devasting disasters ever to hit a major city: not exactly uplifting. The sky doesn’t belong to Chicago more than any other city, so the name is something of a head-scratcher. Presumably, it refers to the Chicago skyline. So why not call the team the Skyliners? (That was actually the name of a minor-league basketball team.) Probably because that’s not a singular nickname, and the WNBA has decided it loves those even more than the WFL did. Another one that nearly made this list: Indiana Fever. Do people with a fever play basketball well? Shouldn’t they be home in bed with thermometers in their mouths?

10

Cleveland Browns (NFL)

The Browns were named after their first head coach, Paul Brown, who deserved such an honor as much as anyone. The Browns won league championships in each of their first five seasons and seven of their first 10. But that would be kind of like naming Boston’s NBA team the Auerbachs. Yeah, it’s also a color, and there’s precedent for that: the Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Blues (who are actually named after a song), the old Montreal Maroons, etc. But Brown is a pretty boring color, which the Browns seem to recognize, since they use orange helmets. The only other team called the Browns — a baseball team in St. Louis— was pathetic. Since their early run of championships, the Cleveland Browns have been, too.

9

Los Angeles Lakers (NBA)

This name is so iconic most people don’t even think about how nonsensical it is. Lakes are a thing in Minnesota (known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”), where the team was originally located. There is something called Lake Los Angeles, a dry lake in the middle of a desert an hour and a half away from the real L.A. Developers tried to fill it with water and make it into a suburb, but it never took off. Fortunately, no one associates the Lakers with this place, just like no one associates the real Los Angeles with lakes. This nickname’s one saving grace is its alliteration. It’s been around so long, and the team’s won so many championships, we’re stuck with it.

8

Boston Celtics (NBA)

The NBA’s most successful team was actually named after an earlier team from New York called, not surprisingly, the Original Celtics. In Celtic languages, the word is pronounced “Keltic,” with a hard K, but the team and its fans insist on pronouncing the C like an S. The Scottish Celtic Football Club, which was founded in the 19th century, pronounces it the same way. But at least in that case, “Celtic: is used as an adjective describing something else (the dreaded FC). The basketball team, by contrast, isn’t. By all rights, it ought to be the Celts — the noun — pronounced with a hard K sound. But they’ve won so many championships that it doesn’t really matter.

7

Sporting Kansas City (MLS)

The team used to be called the Wizards, like the NBA’s Washington Wizards, but without the alliteration. So, the owners changed it to this. Whenever I hear it, I picture some British character in an old movie declaring, “That’s mighty sporting of you, old chap.” The term is typically applied to a club that fields teams in multiple sports, something that doesn’t really happen much anymore, so it doesn’t really make much sense. It just sounds good. Except it doesn’t. It sounds like a British character in an old movie... you get the picture.

6

Connecticut Sun (WNBA)

Does the sun shine any brighter in Connecticut than, say, Phoenix or Southern California? Of course not. This nickname has nothing to do with geography and everything to do with, of all things, a casino. It’s named after the Mohegan Sun resort, which was developed by Sol Kerzner. Sol? Sun? Get it? This is the same guy who developed the Sun City resort and casino in South Africa during the apartheid era. “Sun” was a bad name for a team when it belonged to the WFL’s Southern California Sun, but it’s downright embarrassing here. It’s not even governed by the state of Connecticut, because it’s on the Mohegan reservation (the reservation system being the U.S. version of apartheid). But the Mohegan Nation owns it, so that’s a good thing.

5

Real Salt Lake (MLS)

As opposed to what? Fake Salt Lake? There is a real Salt Lake in the state of Utah; that much is true. But no one was suggesting it was imaginary. Actually, however, that’s not what it means. This turns out to be another MLSian European affectation. These U.S. soccer teams really have a lot of Euro envy going on, don’t they? This is “Real,” as in El Camino Real (Spanish for the King’s Road or Royal Highway). In other words, the name is Spanish for Salt Lake Royals. Now, Kansas City’s soccer team could have called itself the Kansas City Royals, like the baseball team, in which case it would have seemed even more like a “Sporting” club team. That would have been keeping it real. This is just pretentious nonsense.

4

Utah Jazz (NBA)

Teams that choose nicknames based on geography and local culture should leave them behind if they relocate. Jazz makes sense for New Orleans. For Utah? Not so much. Then again, it’s not the worst Jazz non sequitur ever to see the light of day. Queen put out an album in 1978 called Jazz that didn’t have a single jazz tune on it. A year later, the NBA Jazz moved from New Orleans to Salt Lake City after just five years, but didn’t bother to change their name. The universe has punished them by refusing to allow them to win a championship, even when they had Karl Malone and John Stockton on the roster.

3

Los Angeles Angels (MLB)

This is the most clearly redundant name in sports, because the word “angeles” in Spanish means “angels” in English. So, if you refer to “the Los Angeles Angels,” it translates as “the the angels angels.” To make matters worse, the team doesn’t even play in Los Angeles, and hasn’t since 1966. It plays in Anaheim, which it attempted to placate by changing its name first to the California Angels (in 1965), then to the Anaheim Angels (in 1997). In 2005, however, the owners decided to restore “Los Angeles” to the name, because it made the team sound more important. One sticking point: Under an agreement with the city of Anaheim, the team had to include “Anaheim” in its name. So it became “the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim,” which makes about as much since as, say, the New Orleans Jazz of Utah.

2

Cleveland Indians (MLB)

It’s not as bad as the R-word Washington just ditched, but calling yourself the Indians is like calling yourself the Bolivians or the Laotians or the Namibians... except that it’s not a reference to India, which makes it just plain stupid, not to mention insulting. At least Chiefs and Braves sound like they’re gonna kick your ass, like Vikings or Fighting Irish. Of course, neither of those groups had their lands stolen from them by conquerors who used their images for profit. There’s been talk of changing the name to Spiders, the name used by the 19th century Cleveland NL team. That would be really cool. Just imagine Spider-Man caps and uniforms. They’d be a real marvel.

1

Washington Football Team (NFL)

This may be the most nondescript name in the history of pro sports. It’s one thing for European soccer teams to call themselves the So-and-So Football Club, and pathetically unoriginal for MLS teams to copy them. But an American football team copying American soccer clubs that are copying European soccer clubs? That’s worse than hiring a new actor to play Spider-Man or Batman every third movie for no good reason. The Washington Football Team could be abbreviated as WFT, which would be easy to confuse with WTF — my reaction on seeing this idiotic name. It’s a franchise with a history of racism against Black Americans AND Native Americans, so I suppose it’s not the worst thing in the world. But it’s still, quite possibly, the worst name in pro sports.

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Featured photo by Stephanie Young Merzel, Creative Commons 2.0 license

Secondary photo: Houston Texans by Keith Allison, Creative Commons 2.0 license

Secondary photo: Mohegan Sun Arena by Pens Through My Lens, Creative Commons 2.0 license

Secondary photo: Cleveland Indians vs. Oakland A’s by Eric Drost, Creative Commons 2.0 license