I wonder where we went wrong, as a society.

I see these proposed team names for the Utah team and I'm just like, "What has become of our sick, sad society?" The Fury? The Blast? The Squall? The Powder? These are real suggestions you're comfortable calling a team you paid $1.2 billion to acquire?

I'm happy to accept that a lot of these might be stalking horses or whatever (I will never learn what "stalking horse" actually means), just names that are really there to direct people to the ones you actually want them to pick, like the Mountaineers or Outlaws. But what if the Venom wins? God.

I guess this probably started in, like, the '80s. The Miami Heat is an unbelievably bad team name. Basically every original MLS team name is absolute garbage. Don't even get me started on WNBA teams. But you gotta hand it to the NHL: They picked up the ball and ran with it, Forrest Gump-style, 108 yards and then right out of the stadium. Even in the '90s, when someone thought "Mighty Ducks of Anaheim" was an acceptable team name, things weren't going great, but then they added the "Blue Jackets" and "Wild" and then, almost a quarter-century later, the "Kraken." What are we doing here? Is this league trying to be taken seriously, or not?

As usual, a great solution would have been for them to simply ask me. I would have given them a bunch of cool names to pick from. The Scorpions. The Rattlesnakes. The Eagles (there is a distinct lack of bird-based team names in this league). That's three. Very easy for me to come up with them, and then if I could draw at all, I could even do some pretty sick logos for you. It's so straightforward. But these focus-grouped ideas from Utah are just nothing, honed down from any interesting ideas to the point they mean so little to anyone they're basically transparent.

You paid 10 figures for this team and you're gonna be happy with Frost? What are you, a sports drink? Get lost.

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