If you ever looked up “athlete” in the dictionary, you would never see my name or face there. Even at high school I was never “lettered,” as it were, unless you consider “C-” a letter. No, if I ever made a career out of any sports enterprise, it would be somewhere in administration, say, an assistant general manager, maybe even a colour commentator.
The dream job, for me, would to be working somewhere in the Canadian Hockey League in the front office, unless it was in someplace that rhymed with Prince Albert. While I know next to nothing about the game as a player, I do know a few things about administration.
And within that jurisdiction, there would be two tasks at hand: One, putting a quality product on the ice; and two, putting quantitative seats on the seats. Uh, that means good-sized crowds, not good-sized derrieres. (And Maurice, that would actually include the rest of the body, too.)
I have always had a flair for team colours, logos, and names—observing them, designing them, or, as in today's column, assessing them. It never fails to amaze me that so many teams choose black as a road colour, or red, white and blue as the overall all colour combination. It has baffled me for years why there isn't more burgundy, gold, silver, and green in the mix. Even certain shades of brown would look good.
In addition to colours, logos are a hot topic for discussion. Generally, there is some history for the logo style of most teams, which is meaningful, though too many CHL teams have very lame logos. (Adds a twist to the term “ugly history.”) A good rule of thumb is as follows: The higher the ranking teams (read = the more professional), the classier the logo.
Take the Canucks...please. Some of their logos over the years have ranged from stupid to okay to classy. The multi-coloured “V” would fall into the stupid category, the present orca leaping out of the styled “C” is okay, and the hockey rink, with the inverted stick, is classy—at least in my opinion.
But it's the team names that I want to direct your thoughts to. I haven't done a poll, but I suspect that names like Eagles and Lions are the most popular at any level. And only in the Canadian Football League would you have found two out of eight teams carrying the same moniker—the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the (now-defunct) Ottawa Rough Riders. The latter has re-invented itself as the RedBlacks—a name that I just hope has some historical meaning to it.
Teams that live in regions with some cultural tradition often have a particular history behind the name. In the CFL, the Stampeders honour the Calgary Stampede; the Lions honoured a geographical outcropping on Vancouver's North Shore (I kid you not); and the Ti-cats are an amalgam of two semi-professional teams from the area.
Only the Lord above knows what Argonauts have to do with Toronto, or Eskimos with Edmonton.
Hockey seems to be very sensitive to the cost of tradition--or would it be tradition of cost? What's so “Flames” about Calgary, unless it was cheaper to keep the name when they moved from Atlanta? Canucks, as you well know, is imbued with Canadian history. (Maurice, Canuck is to Canada as Yankee is to the USA) And still on the Canadian angle, the Toronto Maple Laughs, er, Male Leafs, are truly as Canadian as they come--even if it's in name only.
Montreal Canadiens are either bad spellers or good historians, in their quest to keep the French tradition alive. Even their nickname, the “Habs,” comes from the term les Habitants, something you learned in your Grade 8 Socials class.
I can live with the Hurricanes and Lightning, regional realities in the the Carolinas and Florida, respectively. And Capitols and Senators have political angles the respective nations. However, where the Bruins, Flyers, Devils, and Rangers fit into this discussion, I cannot say.
I understand why no team I know of is called the Worms, the Rats, or the Chickens, though you might be surprised at the positive athletic qualities worms, rats, and chickens possess. Where I'm baffled is why there are not more Wolverines, Wolves, Badgers, and Cheetahs.
In the meantime, I am starting a petition to re-name the Calgary Flames: I think Lames or Dames would be a more appropriate fit.
No comments:
Post a Comment