Ontopic Sports thread
- Thread starter Floptical
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New Orleans is a football town. There’s no way around it. Despite some of the excitement that came with a star player like Chris Paul, the New Orleans Hornets have always played in both the literal and figurative shadow of the Saints.
The Hornets might get a little bump in popularity after being purchased by Saints owner Tom Bensen, but they still struggle with gaining a cultural foothold in the Big Easy. Between being the second worst team in the league and never having found a comfortable home in New Orleans, the team has a hard time getting the city at large to care about basketball.
I talked to Robbie Vitrano, head of an advertising agency contracted to help re-brand the Hornets. Amongst other things, he’s trying to get a new name for the team starting in the 2013 season – or maybe an old one.
It’s one of the long-running jokes in the sports world that the Jazz currently live in one of America’s least Jazzy cities: Salt Lake City, Utah. In New Orleans, which lost the Jazz in 1979, they are treated as one of those remembered fragments of a golden past – in some neighborhoods, old Jazz T-shirts are almost as common as new Hornets ones.
So Vitrano thought – how could New Orleans get the Jazz back? One idea was to change the Hornets to “The Mormons” in an effort to force Utah’s hand and trade them for the team name.
“If you asked the average person in the city, I think they’d want that name back,” says Vitrano. “And they might be interested in something like actually taking the name and forcing the trade. We have the inspired opportunity to have some energy towards localizing this, whether it’s with a crazy idea or a shrewd idea.”
For him, whether the process of renaming the team is something ridiculous or something a little closer to the ground, it should be a way to give a New Orleans basketball team a sense of identity with the city.
“The naming shouldn’t be a pedestrian process. It should be something to get people excited.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/04/16/new-orleans-new-basketball-team-the-mormons/
The Hornets might get a little bump in popularity after being purchased by Saints owner Tom Bensen, but they still struggle with gaining a cultural foothold in the Big Easy. Between being the second worst team in the league and never having found a comfortable home in New Orleans, the team has a hard time getting the city at large to care about basketball.
I talked to Robbie Vitrano, head of an advertising agency contracted to help re-brand the Hornets. Amongst other things, he’s trying to get a new name for the team starting in the 2013 season – or maybe an old one.
It’s one of the long-running jokes in the sports world that the Jazz currently live in one of America’s least Jazzy cities: Salt Lake City, Utah. In New Orleans, which lost the Jazz in 1979, they are treated as one of those remembered fragments of a golden past – in some neighborhoods, old Jazz T-shirts are almost as common as new Hornets ones.
So Vitrano thought – how could New Orleans get the Jazz back? One idea was to change the Hornets to “The Mormons” in an effort to force Utah’s hand and trade them for the team name.
“If you asked the average person in the city, I think they’d want that name back,” says Vitrano. “And they might be interested in something like actually taking the name and forcing the trade. We have the inspired opportunity to have some energy towards localizing this, whether it’s with a crazy idea or a shrewd idea.”
For him, whether the process of renaming the team is something ridiculous or something a little closer to the ground, it should be a way to give a New Orleans basketball team a sense of identity with the city.
“The naming shouldn’t be a pedestrian process. It should be something to get people excited.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/04/16/new-orleans-new-basketball-team-the-mormons/
I need to go to an mls game. We worked on the new stadium for our team and as a result alot of my coworkers have been to games and everyone has absolutely loved it, a few guys even bought season tickets for this year.
They renamed to "Sporting KC"
I went to a lot of Comets games when I was really young and they still existed. My buddy said it's just as good if not better than a Chiefs game, I just don't see how it's possible but he has season tickets to both now so I'm really curious to go see.Certainly you aren't talking about the best-of-7 series format, so you must be referring to the 1-plays-8, 2-plays-7, etc. seeding format.
I dislike the seeding format - specifically ranking division leaders 1-2-3 regardless of where they sit in the standings. Otherwise, it's a great playoff system.
terrible joke
There’s a good chance that Rutgers wide receiver Mohamed Sanu will be off the board by the end of Friday night, but for a brief moment he thought he was a first-round draft pick.
Sanu was watching the draft with his family on Thursday night when his phone rang. The Bengals were on the clock for the 27th pick, and the voice on the phone said that he was from the Bengals and that they would be selecting Sanu. As you might imagine, Sanu’s draft party exploded in joy that stopped just long enough for them to watch Roger Goodell announce the pick.
Which was Kevin Zeitler, an offensive lineman from Wisconsin.
“This is a great kid, I guarantee you, and someone played a cruel joke on him,” Sanu’s agent Mike McCartney, who tweeted that Sanu would be a Bengal before the true pick was known, told Peter King of SI.com. “It is unreal that someone would do that, but it happened.”
Per McCartney, Sanu’s in good spirits despite the prank and excited to join a team that does want him. He’s probably going to be asking for a little more background information from callers on Friday night, though.
There’s a good chance that Rutgers wide receiver Mohamed Sanu will be off the board by the end of Friday night, but for a brief moment he thought he was a first-round draft pick.
Sanu was watching the draft with his family on Thursday night when his phone rang. The Bengals were on the clock for the 27th pick, and the voice on the phone said that he was from the Bengals and that they would be selecting Sanu. As you might imagine, Sanu’s draft party exploded in joy that stopped just long enough for them to watch Roger Goodell announce the pick.
Which was Kevin Zeitler, an offensive lineman from Wisconsin.
“This is a great kid, I guarantee you, and someone played a cruel joke on him,” Sanu’s agent Mike McCartney, who tweeted that Sanu would be a Bengal before the true pick was known, told Peter King of SI.com. “It is unreal that someone would do that, but it happened.”
Per McCartney, Sanu’s in good spirits despite the prank and excited to join a team that does want him. He’s probably going to be asking for a little more background information from callers on Friday night, though.