One of the greatest traditions of fantasy sports, besides the further proliferation of acceptable meta-gambling, is the practice of giving your team a funny name. And yet look around your online leagues and check out the names. Probably nothing more than a lot of lame half-attempts amounting to handles like “SuperXMiami” and “SoUThSidE THugS” and “Beantown whatever” because everyone from Boston or from within 100 mile radius of Boston are legally required use the word Beantown in their fantasy names.
Do you want this to be you? No, of course not, those team names make their owners sound like uncreative dweebs. So what should you name your team? Well, I think a fear of not knowing what to do when naming their team makes most people not bother to try. You sign up for a league online and immediately have this team form thrust into your face to fill out. Assuming someone has even told you about the naming traditions of fantasy sports, you probably haven’t thought of any good names yet. And fear of failure and an inability to suddenly improvise something funny on the spot means you just fill in whatever and then forget it.
Well enough of that. You’re about to get a quick and easy primer to coming up with your own fantasy team names, worthy of bragging about. It’s not all a bunch of bad puns and sexual inneundos either. Your team name doesn’t have to be a silly joke. It just shouldn’t suck.
#1. Punny Team Name – The classic name is based on punning a player’s last name. You want to take the name and put it into a recognizable phrase. Examples include : Flacco Seagulls, Forgetting Brandon Marshall, Romosexual Tendencies, Favre Dollar Footlong, or Ted Ginn and Juice. Just look over famous player names and see if anything pops to mind. It’s okay to think of a phrase and see if anyone matches. ESPN has every player’s name listed for you in their fantasy football section. Sometimes it’s even better when you can incorporate two players names, as in Peyton Makes It Wayne or Feely My Breaston.
Oh, don’t forget about the coaches too. A lot of them have interesting names you can work into something, like I Dream of Mangini, Singletary and Loving It, Dungyons and Dragons, or (a personal favorite) The Sparanos. And you pretty much can’t go wrong with anything combining Ditka and Butkis.
#2. A Topical Name – A name that uses recent events to make its point. You don’t have to focus on just football players here, any sports related personality or angle is good. Just think of some infamous recent news stories and spitball a few out. Here are some of the best recent examples : Erin Andrews’ Favorite Peephole, Kibbles and Vick, Gary Glitter’s U-16s, the BP Oilers, Big Ben’s Ineligible Receiver, and (horribly) Steve McNair’s Shotgun Offense.
I like these types of names as they present the greatest opportunity for laugh out loud funniness. Clearly most of these skew a little dark. But hey, you and your team don’t gotta worry about PR, so what do you care?
#3. An Inventive Regular Name – Like I said, you don’t have to name all your teams with bad puns. One good type of non-pun is naming your team like a real team but with a twist. Take the name of a city you like, or perhaps even live in, and then make their mascot something witty. For example, The Raleigh Cheeseburgers, the Philadelphia D-Batteries, or the Las Vegas Call Girls. The Cleveland Steamers has been pretty well used, but fantasy team names don’t have to be original. Certainly you can use a city nickname like Beantown here, but it makes you about as interesting as those people who rave about being Irish on their myspace pages.
#4. Funny Sports Phrases – Perhaps a purer way to make crude sexual jokes than using player names. This type of team name takes words and phrases from the sport and makes jokes out of them. The only problem here is that there isn’t that much room for innovation. With so few actual football specific phrases most of the worthwhile ones are overused. But then again, any of these is better than some regular bland internet name featuring repeated 69s and poor spelling. Some examples here include : Touchdown My Pants, Show Me Your TDs!, Backfield Penetration, or Multiple Scorgasms. Funny stuff. Funny is good.
So ends the lesson. Now get out there and name your teams something worth annoying usenet over! Remember, given the state of team names on the internet, you cannot fail. And you can make it a name appropriate to your personality. Joking about a recent murder may be too much for you, but a little pun like Pacman Jonesing For Cherries is adorable. Suit it to yourself. Get out there, and good luck!
