Bears (熊)

I’ve always wondered what goes in to nicknaming sports teams……you got a variety of names for a variety of sports franchises, many of them very generic fan names that the public can get behind. The vast majority of professional sports teams are animals, which makes sense because it leaves a lot of room for logos, mascots, and different marketing ideas. For example, the Chicago Bears and the Philadelphia Eagles played on Monday night football at Soldier Field in Chicago tonight…….bears and eagles, fit the paradigm for sports teams perfectly. The Bears are now 0-2 and really out of it to be relevant in the NFC……shy, such a shame especially since the Cubs and Blackhawks are putting Chicago on the map in terms of relevant sports cities.

My favorite pro sports names:

1.)    Seahawks (not just sucking up to my girlfriend who loves Seattle, this perfectly captures the tone of the city, is a clever play on words, and they have cool logos.

2.)    Blazers: something about Pacific northwest and creative team jerseys/ ideas, the Oregon Ducks come to mind as having very progressive ideas about sports team names. Blazers is the embodiment of the Manifest Destiny eyes of  colonial America settling in the West Coast

3.)    Brewers: for a sport that lacks creativity both in game design and team names, the traditional MLB alongs for a pretty cool theme with Milwaukee’s “Brew Guy” Bernie Brewer sliding down the pole after each home run and allows for a “Sausage Race” during each home game.

My favorite dodgeball team names (the main dodgeball organization requires teams to have just one name or 2 names, identifiable words :

1.)    DOOM: also happens to be the premiere franchise in dodgeball, even their name strikes fear in the hearts of opponents.  

2.)    Tune Squad: excellent reference to the Space Jam Looney Tunes basketball team.

3.)    Team Awesome: a very unique name that allows for lots of positivity and team slogans. (something/someone is awesome! Comes to mind)

4.)    TC Boosh: Boosh apparently the sound a ball makes when hitting someone, I also seem to like names that have the “oooo” sound and you could say it with an extra Oomph.

This weekend, my girlfriend visited yet another city! (San Antonio, Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville, Portland, New York, New Orleans, we’re coming to a city near you!) of Denver, Colorado (great weather this time of year) to visit our friend who lived in the mountains, and he described bears occasionally coming into his backyard. I’ve never seen a bear up close, but something about bears has a mythical feel to it, just the sheer mass of a bear (multiple hundreds of pounds) but also the agility to move large distances quickly, as well as the sheer power to maul humans, makes me and I’m sure others interested. In many ways, I identify with bears: you never see too many bears together at once, they’re kind of loners, they’re just trying to get a fish once in a while by reaching into the river, and they sleep anywhere without being bothered………a sort of nomad that’s high enough in the food chain to go (almost) wherever it pleases without being bothered. Although, I think it’d be effected by the high altitude of the Denver as well and try to find flatter ground, the only damper on the weekend for me was a slight headache from having such thin air.

Anyways, Red Rocks did not fail to impress……still ranks as one of the best locations to have live music for me, and there’s even a view of downtown Denver that I forgot to mention. 

Fantasize on, 

Robert Yan