The Athens Rock Lobsters and other appropriate names for sports teams

Our local baseball team here in the greater Daytona Beach area? The Tortugas.

Because, um, sure?

I know turtles live here, but is Daytona known for our turtles?

Orlando has the Magic, and that makes sense. See also the Houston Oilers, New Orleans Jazz or Pittsburgh Steelers. The Islanders? Totally makes sense. 

Why not the Daytona Speed, the High Banks or the Tri Ovals? The town is known for that little race track, right?

Athens, Ga., a town near and dear to my heart, just landed a hockey team: the Rock Lobsters.

Thank you, good people of Athens. 

And some totally OG footage.

There actually was a Daytona Speed indoor football team that played at the Ocean Center for a couple years. Great name, but not much community support.

I've always thought Seattle did a great job with all their pro teams: Seahawks, Supersonics, Kraken, Mariners, Storm, Sounders. Not a miss in the bunch.

Of course, the NFL whiffed when they added the Jaguars (Jacksonville, a place not particularly known for a Jaguar population), and Panthers (Carolina, which has no actual panther population while Florida does indeed have a notable and endangered state panther). Not as bad as the Utah Jazz somehow refusing to change their name after they left New Orleans, but at least NO has the Pelicans now.

Actually the current lineup of IFL teams has some solid names, including the Iowa Barnstormers and their amazing and goofy goggle helmets, the Quad City Steamwheelers, which I couldn't actually tell you what four cities they represent but I know for darn sure there's a river there, and the Tucson Sugar Skulls, who just fired the Day-of-the-Dead clip art cannon at their team and it all sort of worked out okay.

Wow, thinking more about it, the Jags really stand out as a miss in an otherwise fairly solid state of names, even for our major college programs. Marlins, Devil Rays, Magic, Heat, Dolphins, Buccaneers, Hurricanes, Lightning, Seminoles, Gators, and the NHL finally got the Panthers name after the NFL completely blew the easy layup.

Saint Paul Saints. AAA affiliate of the Minnesota Twins. 

My personal favorites will always be the Rocket City Trash Pandas and the Albequerque Isotopes. 

Georgia also had the best double-entendre minor league hockey team  back in the day: 

For current MiLB teams, Binghamton, NY went with their rich carousel history and adopted the... Rumble Ponies... 

JG Pasterjak said:

I've always thought Seattle did a great job with all their pro teams: Seahawks, Supersonics, Kraken, Mariners, Storm, Sounders. Not a miss in the bunch.

Oh wow Seattle also has the Seawolves (rugby), Reign (women's soccer) and Orcas (cricket). That's solid citywide thematics.

I'm no historian, but, here in Sanford, we used to have a minor league team called the Sanford Celeryfeds.

At the time, Sanford used to have a pretty sizable celery industry.

Poca High School in Poca, West Virginia.  Home of "The Dots" /end thread.

Locally, there is the Mars Area High School that are the "Fightin' Planets" - which honestly, they should have been the "Martians".  Then, Moon Township High School wasted an absolute opportunity to be the "Astronauts" but instead chose the "Tigers" - lame. 

Jacksonville did a better job with their minor league affiliate, the Jumbo Shrimp 

My high school team: Tornadoes. 

This was on Long Island. Way lame. 

In reply to Old_Town :

Some players from the Macon Whoopee came to my school...I have a signed packet of Oreos and a picture somewhere 😂

Our current hockey team is the Macon Mayhem

we also have a baseball team

But nothing will ever top our Whoopee!

With the demise of The Indians, Cleveland missed the opportunity to honor its long standing Great Lakes Maritime history and choose a name reflecting a type of vessel.

The Steamers.

Karacticus said:

My beer league hockey team played the Trash Pandas on Sunday :) Maybe not the same Trash Pandas, though.

I've always like the St. Louis Blues as a sports name. Montreal's pretty solid with the Expos (RIP) named after Expo 67 world fair, the Alouettes and of course, the Canadiens. 

Ottawa has managed to get all of their pro sports teams in the same red and black colour scheme, which is pretty cool. The Redblacks (not creative, but they do have a guy cut a biscuit out of a massive log with a chainsaw after every touchdown so who's gonna complain), the Senators, the BlackJacks, the Titans, the Fire (RIP) and the nameless PWHL team.
OK, I lied, the replacement for the Fire only uses red and white. Losers.

I have always liked the Amarillo Sod Poodles.

https://www.milb.com/amarillo

Surprisingly enough, my HS is still the Wando Warriors. 

I dig the Savannah Bananas for the rhyming scheme.

Florida Colleges are pretty on point, Gators, Seminoles, Hurricanes, Bulls is kinda...(Florida is 13th overall in cattle)

Lansing Lugnuts seems on point. 

Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, as a play on "pig iron" in reference to the steel-making industry

I also always loved Syracuse SkyChiefs, with their A-10 inspired baseball bat logo. You had the 174th Attack Wing stationed at the nearby Air National Guard base, so it made sense too, although the 174th never used A-10s. Sadly, kind of a short-lived names. They'd been the Chiefs since their inception in '34, became SkyChiefs in '97, then went back to Chiefs in '06, and then the New York Mets bought them in '19 and renamed them to Syracuse Mets (blah)

My high school team name was a mash up of the three primary towns it served:  Cardunal (Carpentersville, Dundee, Algonquin).  The mascot was indeed the state bird of Illinois, the cardinal.  Clever.

I have no problem with living in Texas.  Houston Texans (formerly Oilers), Dallas Cowboys, University of Texas Longhorns, Texas Rangers, Houston Astros...those fit.

South Harmon Institute of Technology

    Sandwiches

This thread has sent me down a rabbithole of team names from around the world, and I'm ready to declare that North America tends to do it the best. [city][moniker]. Simple and elegant, with the exception of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim who are screwing it up.

Most countries simply use the city or region as primary identifier, and while many of them have monikers, they're downplayed heavily.

Which also brings me to youth baseball. Say what you want about the increasing commercialization of pro sports, but when I was a kid, it wasn't the Pirates vs. the Astros, it was Gigi's Pizza vs Home Federal Savings and Loan. That seems like a lot of pressure for a bunch of nine year olds.

The Akron RubberDucks was always one for me that has good local flavor. .

Surely related to being the home of Goodyear.  

And for the more mellow fellows, there's always the Colorado Vibes:

Minor League baseball is so much fun.

Toledo Mud Hens, AAA MLB club named after the coots that live in the area. A coot isn't a duck but lives in the same water/swamp/land wilderness.

Made famous by Jamie Farr on MASH, for a long time it was one of the only AAA clubs that made a lot of money off clothes with their logo on it. The Durham Bulls were the other club after the movie Bull Durham came out.