How To Name Your Fantasy Football Team

 

It's time to get signed up for your fantasy draft. And there's only one thing MORE important than studying for your fantasy draft: picking a team name! Why more important? Well, ya simply have to pick a team name when you register. Them's the rules, see?

As this annual late summer / early fall ritual approaches, Maximum Fantasy Sports thought it'd be a good idea to run down some of the many unwritten rules of fantasy football team names. We'll start with the common mistakes:

CLEAR DON’Ts

1. Naming after the kid:

It's always a bad idea to name your squad after your son or daughter. No matter how cute, please don't call your fearsome group of competitors "Lil' Benji's Boys." Heck, don't even name your kid Benji unless you're trying out some sort of "Boy-Named-Sue" crap in a home experiment. It was just a song, man.

2. For that matter, strange symbols:

I messed up a buddy's fantasy football draft software one year because I thought it'd be cute to stuff a trademark symbol into my team name. You know, the little TM symbol? Clever, right? It wasn't so clever when the draft bombed out and I got blamed for the whole deal. Skip the non-standard characters. This brings on...

3. ...emoticons:

Honest-to-god, you should know this already. But here goes if you don't: you know when nobody's looking and you type that cute text symbol for winking with the semicolon and a dash and a parenthesis and you send it to your woman (ladies, think "guy" here)? Please don't try anything that cute in a fantasy football name. You'll be branded with a short word that rhymes with "fay" and starts with a "g." Don't even think about testing this theory.

4. Four-letter words:

I'm not talking "Rams" or "Jets" here, though those words have pissed off many a fantasy owner in recent years. I'm talking about words you wouldn't be able to say in public without looking to see if the cops were around. Don't do it. Stick with "$%#'ing Detroit Lions" instead. We'll get the drift.

5. Actual team names:

Don't use actual team names. You are simply the most boring human alive if you cannot come up with something better than simply copying the name "Arizona Cardinals." Even if "Jaguars," sounds cool, come up with some kind of play on that name. And please don't use team names from other sports either.

6. Changing your name:

All right, this one doesn't actually apply to coming up with a name as much as it does changing that name every couple weeks because you came up with such a putrid placeholder of a name in the first place. If you end up changing your team name every couple freaking weeks in response to every fantasy sports injury or news item that crosses your mind, you'll piss off plenty of other team owners who might even be your friends just because you're so freakingly annoying. Most of us don't have enough brain cells left to remember our own team names, never mind your chameleon squad. Pick a name and stick with it. Unless of course it breaks one of the 5 rules above. In that case, change it, and fast.

SOME Do’s:

1. Alliteration:

Yep: a grammar term. Alliteration-the art of using words that all start with the same letter-is very frequently cool. As a matter of fact, it's so cool, most of the best professional squads have some form of alliteration in their names or nicknames. Take the "Bronx Bombers" or the "Mississippi Mud Hens." And the "Monsters of the Midway" should ring a few bells, not to mention the "Seattle Seahawks" and the "Jacksonville Jaguars." Alliteration just sounds better. Which reminds me...?

2. ...rhyming:

It's not just bad rappers and Baptist preachers that come off sounding smarter when things rhyme: you can too. Why do you think people call themselves "Packer Backers," or-in my personal taste-"Packer Smackers?" Or how about the "Freaky Deakies?" While not an actual team name (yet), the "Throbbin' Robbins" might do well for bird-oriented teams. Or pervs.

3. One-off metaphors:

We all think we're cool when we come up with a metaphor, don't we? Like...using a rock band name, or an obscure cultural reference. But don't be pleased with your handiwork if the Cowboys fan in you simply calls your football squad the "Lone Stars." Try to get creative with your metaphor, something one-off, like the "Marion's Scissors." (If you don't get this one, try studying your pre-draft rankings.) The year Emmitt Smith broke Walter Payton's record, my squad was named "Tripping Emmitt." I'm not braggin', mind you-he broke the freakin' record after all-but I'm just saying, get creative.

4. Adding geography:

You live in a different area than most of the other team owners? How about throwing in something relevant about where you're from. The "Des Moines Dung Beetles" is a nice image, isn't it? Or the "Springfield Sackers" is the start of a brainstorm. Worth noting is that this leads into another cool team name concept...

5. ...Famous names in fake pop culture:

The longest running sitcom on the planet has the "Springfield Isotopes," and we've all heard of the Bad News Bears. While it's not particularly clever to completely co-opt a famous pop-culture reference, it's not a bad start for a combined metaphor. Something along the lines of the "Springfield Isotoners" or the "Dirty Harry's Dirty Carries."

6. Using foreign designations:

Although simple in concept, I'm a big fan of pulling in elements from afar. Like a fellow in a league I'm in who decided to pull the "FC" from a European "football club" (I know, they only use their feet...what's the old saying...If god wanted us to play soccer, he wouldn't have given us hands?) to create the "FC (team name)." Simple, clever, don't have to worry about needing to change it throughout the year. And there's plenty more out there where that came from.