I'm a major fan of Inoffensive Soccer Franchise FC!
I enjoyed a fun evening last night, and not just because a new episode of Terriers danced across my face at 10pm. Rather, it was my first real foray into Twitter meme-dom, and it was a raucous good time.
Within minutes of penning easily the worst idea of the lot and applying the now-exhausted tag, it scurried off through the intertubes like Paul Scholes chasing another unsuspecting victim around midfield. It took on a life of its own.
And so, after spending an hour laughing all over again at the orgy of creative quippery on Twitter last night, I rounded it down to 30 teams I think I’d like to see rampaging across American soccer at some point in the future. And you can bet Don “2.0″ Garber will be taking notes.
Without further ado, the list, the credits, some comments, and a vote on the Top 10:
I did rank these a little, but consider the order and placing of the 30 to be as haphazard as this idea was last night. With regard to ordering and ranking? That’s what the vote is for. Oh, and if I failed to find the originators of any of these, put ‘em in the comments so the record is straight.
ON THE BUBBLE
(Energie) Penobscottbus (@MassiveCityFFC)
ADO Den Hagerstown (@jc_verbatim)
Hearts of Oakland (@REOtten)
Hajduk Pitt(sburgh) (@sucka99)
Key West Ham United (@aaronstol)
GreenBayern Leversconsin (@aaroncampeau)
Stoke-lahoma City (@HouSports)
Cape Henlopeñarol (@aaronstol)
Feyenoord Dakota (@churchofsoccer)
TOP 25
25. FC Barceloneonta (@WeberKing)
24. Real Fargoza (@churchofsoccer)
23. Sao Palo Alto (@robertjonas)
22. Cheyenne-derlecht (@SoccerByIves)
21. FC Lokomotiv Chattanooga (@cdbarker)
20. Zenit St. Petersburg (FL) (@kevinmccauley)
19. Crewe Alexandria (VA) (@theBAtheory)
18. Bayonne Leverkusen (@qrysdonnell)
17. BSC Young Boise (@churchofsoccer, again!)
16. Aston Wasilla (@BeyondThePitch)
15. Tupelo-komotiv (@SoccerByIves)
14. Toms River Plate (@chriscann0n)
13. Racine Santander (@yankeeyiddos)
12. Savannahthinaikos (@zantetsuken76)
11. Boca Raton Juniors (@thebstardsback)
10. Moose Jawventus (@viperRBNY)
9. Dayton Orient (@AbuZilif)
8. Minneapolis-St. Pauli (@runofplay)
7. Niagara Grampus Eight (@napoliblogger)
6. Oklahoma City Sounders (@Dev151) - easily the most cruel of the bunch
5. Kansaslautern (@jc_verbatim)
4. Galatallahassee (@WeberKing)
3. Aspen Villa (@HDsnob)
2. West Bromwich Albany (@MFUSA)
1. Newell’s Old Boise (@jayhipps)
Honorable mention for being an MLS/Euro/NFL mashup: Go Ahead Philadelphia Eagles (@MattF15)
And to think the best I could do was “Borussia Kansasgladbach.”
Vote for your favourites, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll devise some way to get this to Don Garber (@thesoccerdon, which is one of the neatest, most ominous Twitter handles ever), just so he knows that we’re all a little steamed about the “Sporting KC” effort but that he has plenty more options if he chooses to keep MLS heading in this general direction.
What spawned from a bit of fun does have a serious kernel hidden in it somewhere: the MLS deserves its own identity and its own icons. The need to forever hitch its wagon to any passing Euro tradition—team name, color scheme, David Beckham—is less urgent in 2010, and with the league steering well into respectability, it’s about time more credence was paid to preserving it instead of co-opting from further afield and calling it your own.
We’ve had our laughs and flexed our cerebral muscles, but tomorrow, we’ll still wake up and find that KC Sporting is the real name of something. Then, we’ll need a new hashtag to liven us all back up again. Any suggestions?
No Phoenix Wellington? Shame.
I’m fond of FC Galatasaraleigh-Durham. (not my creation)
No Orlando Pirates?
Boca Seniors > *
Thanks for the hastag last night – that was some of the most fun I have had on Twitter in a long time. Unfortunately I couldn’t explain the jokes to my wife because she just wouldn’t get it – inside joke, so to speak! :)
WOOO OTHER!
My favorite late-comer was Crystal Dallas
Partizan Belle Plaines. Also Desportivo Moines. Ypsilantispor. And maybe my fave: Racine Santander.
Also, West Palmeiras Beach.
Oops. Racine made the list.
MMM Menlo Park was my morning favorite. Voting for Savannahthinaikos cause I thought of that one too, just 11 minutes later.
I’m still sticking with my “Boisektas”
I was also late on Hajduk Pitt, apparently.
OTHER SHOULD BE BANNED FROM THIS POLL. IT’S OBVIOUS THEY’RE RIGGING THE THING!
/EPL Talk’d
Hater.
Crap, I missed this contenst. I would’ve just gone for Bodymore-Murdaland FC.
@TSE: Wait, does this mean I should stop the bot I just programmed from autovoting my fav. to first?
where is Dayton Orient?!
As a former citizen of the sad, sad city of Albany, I had to vote for WBA
I’m sticking with my Atlantasaray. Of course whoever came up with Denverbahce gets a pat on the back.
@Chad
It’s in there! #9, and vote-able!
I’m wildly flattered to see my “Newell’s Old Boise” seeded at number one, but I have to pass along some other worthy names I saw on Twitter last night:
Oklahoma F. Marinos (@thfc_omg) (after the J-League Yokohama F. Marinos)
Tottenham Hot Springs (@jaf714)
Boca Juneau (@shambolics)
Trabzonsportland (@Brookhattan)
Tor Reno (@stevesirk) (works on two levels — “tor” is German for “goal”)
Akron Villa (@stevehoff)
Vitesse Anaheim (@narthuro)
JT: Bayonne Leverkusen was mine, was it not? Or did the other guy post it first?
Never mind; he did. Retracted.
Hajduk Pitt? I much preferred my offerings of: Cerro Portlando, Tallahassaray, Utahnese, Preston South Bend, or LOSC Louisville.
Some other good ones I saw were Jackson Villa, Steaua Baltimore, Red Star Bel Air, and Boca Seniors.
Great stuff tho – I can’t wait for the next hashtag game.
We had the hashtag wrong all night (added an s at the end), but here are the ones I did last night:
Dynamo KeyWest
FC Minneapolis-St. Pauli
Boston Wanderers
Boston Celtic
Ajaxonville FC
Yes, note to all based on that, Keith: I was careful in tracking back and checking every timestamp where names were claimed by multiple people. That said, if I got any incorrect or missed an earlier tweet of the name, let me know and I can fix.
Yellowstone National Park Rangers
BTW, this is the first I’ve seen the new Wiz crest. Good lord, it’s awful.
Port Vail, CO
Utahnese is brilliant.
@Keith: I just noticed that too. That’s hideous. I see what they’re trying to do, but it looks like an SC on the crest.
@LE: It looks like a “create-a-team” logo, or like it’s for that third-rate Summer Football League. Or the XFL.
You mean it’s not SC?
And if you were going to do a reference to The Wire, the correct answer was Ajax Hampsterdam
I was kind of fond of Savannah-thinaikos myself
(Seriously, what is it supposed to be if not “SC” on the badge? “FC” is the only logical think I can come up with, but no way does that look anything like an “F”).
Keith: Credit to Fake Sigi for pointing this out, but it is a blatant ripoff of the MLS Eastern Conference logo (I guess from an All Star game?)… scroll down the linked page.
http://soccer.fakesigi.com/sporting_kansas_city_sc.html
@Pups-it’s an intertwined U and tilde, turned 90 degrees. Duh.
I think where the top of the S crosses the top of the C, it’s supposed to become an F leaning backwards. Which is just fucking stupid.
@Keith
It’s wretched, isn’t it? Kinda like you need to burn it with fire
Oh, it’s supposed to be an SC, I thought the new name was FC. I’m retarded. But the logo is still bad.
Especially since it says Sporting above the SC. So, what, it’s Kansas City Sporting Sporting Club?
I think Kansas City Sporting Club Sporting, or maybe Sporting of Kansas City Sporting Club.
“Kinda like you need to burn it with fire.”
I see what you did there. Burn… Fire…
@ LE: Was thinking it was Sporting KC Soccer Club. I think the Chicago Fire’s name is Chicago Fire S.C., w/the SC standing for Soccer Club, since we don’t call them football clubs in the US
@Jacob — that’s it. Ajax Hampsterdam wins.
And its supporters group would be called the New Deal Co-Op.
Why don’t these people ask for input when they do things like this – look at all the creativity spawned over the past day alone.
Or did they ask for help?
Loving Newell’s Old Boise. That is excellent.
It’s sort of hilarious that no one knows what their name is supposed to be after this momentous “rebranding”.
Where the hell’s Deportivo La Corona!?
I just had to vote for OK Sounders, because it was just so funnily cruel.
But I, for one, think Sporting Kansas City Sporting Club is a fantastic name.
@TLL: I preferred Deportivo La Corona del Mar
/because I wrote it
Couldn’t agree more, sucka99. We’re not just mouth-breathing fans.
I liked Boca Seniors a lot, too.
Slightly disappointed my “FC Hawaii 50″ didn’t make the cut/case of the sads
@OM: If we don’t believe in ‘football clubs’ then what’s wrong with FC Dallas? And the “Sporting” in Sporting Lisbon is because they are the Sporting Club of Portugal. So, likewise, KC should be a Sporting Club as well. And if we’re really following Euro naming conventions Sporting KC should technically be the Sporting Club of Kansas.
@LE: Or Missouri!
@JT: Speak for yourself, sir. Some of us are just mouth-breathing fans.
@ LE: Agree–think the FC Dallas name is a bit odd, but no worse than “the Burn.” As for KC, I’m just guessing what the extra SC is for, if it is an extra SC. Just sounds goofy to me overall. I voted for Sporting Club of Kansas City, KS Not Kansas City, MO United Club of Sports
Those of you hating on the logo clearly haven’t had it explained to you with flowery language and an explanation of the symbolism yet.
http://www.insightkc.com/sportingbrand/index.html
Arizona Bayern Munich
@OM: They should make it SC The Dot
/only people in Wyandotte County will get it.
Gee, if I had only known it was inspired by the rod of Asclepius and the statue of Winged Victory, I would never have been this cynical about it.
Good job, fake Bill Hicks
Crystal Palisades, duh.
Fake Bill Hicks… That took a minute.
“We believe a change in identify for the club was necessary to effectively live and breathe this vision.”
@Anonsters
Glorious copy, right? Almost as empty as the logo.
Not least because they couldn’t bother to edit (“identity”, not “identify”) their meaningless drivel before making it public.
The “State line” portion is just. . . ugh.
Green-Bayern Leverconsin got robbed.
Because if there’s one thing I look for when trying to fuse my social, cultural, and athletic interactions into one dynamic, enriching experience, it’s the vertical alignment of sports and entertainment properties.
Well the truth would have been: “We saw this other logo and thought it was pretty cool, so we ripped it off and kind of went all drop shadowy and gave it a cool 3D look and we probably overpaid a professional design house by a factor of 9 what we could have gotten a good design student with a pirated copy of photoshop to do it for, but really, if we’re going to co-opt identity from someplace else shouldn’t we also borrow ideas for the logo?”
And that’s not really as good of a story.
So they live and breathe their DNA every day? That’s intense.
At this point I’m half expecting them to come out tomorrow and say “Surprise! We’re really keeping ‘Wizards’ this was actually all just performance art. Thanks for playing along.”
@PR: Nah, that would actually be a relief at this point. This, my friend, is a nightmare that doesn’t end.
(Oh, and another point about the DNA thing: it turns out that if DNA remains constant, that means there’s no mutation or change, which means there’s no evolution, which means that survival value is going to be rather low. OOPS.)
.
Ok, I’m done picking apart their terrible branding blather.
Really, all they did was rip off the logos for the Eastern and Western conferences for MLS. That’s what I first thought when I saw the logo.
F**k OKC Sounders, right in it’s Okey face.
Ives had a great one: BarceloNebraska
I was proud of Bristol Palin Rovers and Aston Villinois
Sporting Kansas City Sporting Club of Missouri: A Tradition of Heritage
My Ohio-based contribution: Akronton Stanley
So glad the Union nailed their logo and branding! That logo for KC is just plain dumb.
Tremendous work to all – that is some really funny, clever stuff.
-
Re: the Kansas City logo – the thing on the right looks like an avant garde caduceus.
Crystal Palace Baltimore…
OH WAIT
Is it ok if I pretend the SC stands for Soccer Club?
@WNF
Lol
pretending for a second that the name just isn’t completely f**king stupid, marking spin and blather aside, isn’t the main function and goal of a corporate/sports/brand logo that it clearly communicate the corporate/sports/brand name?
i mean seriously. that is like marketing/design 101. show that logo to 100 people and 100 people are going to tell you they think the name is Kansas City Sporting SC. that is a pretty giant fail from step one. your logo doesn’t even clearly communicate the name of your team. congratulations you just got ripped of by the least competent designer/branding person on the planet.
Racine Santander is GOLD