Slavery, Cultural Appropriation, Satan: Professional Sports Teams Liable to Be Bullied Into a Name Change (Part 2)

When I first decided to embark on the necessary journey of identifying every professional sports organization we should become offended by, I thought I might struggle to come up with a full list. I thought by the year 2025, we would have fully purged professional sports of any and all nicknames that could conceivably be of offense. I couldn’t have been more wrong. In the end, I had to dial my list back. Partially due to the fact that lots of teams have similar nicknames, and I can only say "Pirates are bad" in so many ways. And for any team nickname that references a group of people/occupation that precedes the 20th century, you can pretty much assume those people did some of the same things. Things people would consider not-so-chill in 2025. I can only make that joke so many times. By the end of Part 2, I'm pretty sure I'll have milked it for all it's worth. 

Minnesota Vikings

Star Tribune via Getty Images. Getty Images.

In Part 1 we cancelled the Pittsburgh Pirates. Vikings are the blonde haired plundering pirates of the north. Despite the Minnesota Vikings having purple as their primary color, vikings are less often associated with homosexuality than pirates. That's neither here nor there, but you never hear someone called a butt viking. Although I may start using that moving forward. 

According to my “vikings vs pirates” Google searches, it seems I may have been a bit unfair to pirates in Part 1. I accused them of pillaging cities, murdering families, the big R, basically everything bad a person can do. But from what I gather, pirates were more likely to fly under the radar with their looting. Like thieves in the night, a respectable pirate crew would stealthily enter a city, take them for all their riches, and sail off to sea. Vikings on the other hand set out to conquest cities through brute force. If pirates were masters of deception, vikings were masters of bashing you over the head with the broad side of an axe, stealing your valuables, and burning down your house while you lay unconscious inside. If you had to choose which group of people you'd rather run through your hometown like a cheap hooker, you'd be wise to choose pirates. 

Like pirates, now that Vikings are no longer a threat, their horrific crimes aren’t fresh in mind. Nobody is triggered by Vikings, so nobody is gravely offended by the nickname. They might as well not be real. There would have to be a resurgence of Vikings for Minnesota to ever be pressured into a rebrand. Which seems like a silly thought, but I have to imagine the unincorporated communities along the shores of Lake Superior are fairly exposed. I'm sure they don't have their guard up for Viking crime. All it would take is a one group of blonde drug addicts with a boat who are looking to make a quick buck. Just one headline that reads, "WISCONSIN TOWN PLUNDERED BY VIKINGS", and suddenly Vikings are real again. People start looking into Viking history. They start talking about what Vikings were really like. It could happen so fast. 

San Francisco 49ers 

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The San Francisco 49ers are named for the “brave” men who made the pilgrimage west to strike it rich during the California Gold Rush in 1849. Since the men who mined for gold are covered head-to-toe in dirt in the black & white pictures we have from that time, we tend to see them as hard-working, blue-collar people. But in reality, the 49ers were nothing more than degenerate gamblers who blew off their responsibilities, abandoned their families, and moved to California to play 1849’s version of the Mega Millions. They skipped town to chase a fantastical pipe dream out in beautiful, sunny California. The settlements they lived in were TikTok houses with more cholera. On top of that, the 49ers were violent. Here is an artist's rendering of "Gold Rush California 1848-1854: Members of youth gang, the 'Hounds` attacking Chinese contract labourers."

ullstein bild Dtl.. Getty Images.

The 49ers who brought their families along with them would uproot their lives, sell their homes (along with everything they own) just to fund their exceptionally dangerous journey. Wives and children were subjected to deadly disease, harsh conditions, dangerous criminals, and being pummeled by avalanches on the Chilkoot Trail so that their failures of fathers could spend all day scratching lottery tickets (i.e. the side of a rock) hoping to get lucky one time so they’d never have to put in a real, honest day’s work for the rest their life. To celebrate the 49ers is to celebrate poor decision making, violence against the Chinese, and wildly irresponsible parenting. No wonder California is the treacherous liberal hellscape it is today, when those are the type of people who first populated the area.  

New Jersey Devils 

In 1982, after the NHL's Colorado Rockies moved to New Jersey, the franchise held a fan vote to rename their team to something the community could rally around. There were 12 names that received enough votes to be considered - Patriots, Americans, Colonials, Generals, Coastals, Meadowlanders, Meadowlarks, Blades, Jaguars, Lightning, Gulls, and Devils. 

In the end, The Prince of Darkness won out. New Jersey faced some backlash from religious groups, but there was enough lore behind the name to justify it. The Jersey Devil is a mythical creature said to reside in the forests of New Jersey. He was human at birth. Born the 13th child of a woman named Deborah Leeds, who was so fed up with how ridiculously fertile she was, she placed a curse on her child. I should also mention Deborah was a witch. As the child aged, he slowly morphed into something terrible. He grew the wings of a bat and large hooves for feet. His head turned into a goat’s head. He sprouted a long split tail. He started making loud defeating high-pitched shrieks. Eventually the Jersey Devil moved to forests of Pine Barrens, New Jersey. Legend has it his father was the devil himself. There have been reported sightings of the Jersey Devil in Pine Barrens dating all way back to the 1800's. 

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And one time in the 90's in New York City outside of Madison Square Garden.

What does it say about the liberal state of New Jersey that amongst so many strong patriotic nicknames, they voted to embrace Satan? If you don't think Donald Trump has it in his bag to Make America Great Again by demanding the sacrilegious New Jersey Devils change their name to something less sinful, I've got a wall to sell you. Christianity is coming back in a big way, and the Devils are in its crosshairs. As soon as Trump sends word up to heaven, Jesus taps Chris Kyle to shoot .30 calibers of The Lord all the way down to the Prudential Center. Right at center ice. His longest shot ever.

Edmonton Oilers

While "Just Stop Oil" protestors were busy spray painting greens at the Travelers Championship, defacing the most important pile of rocks in all of England (Stonehenge), and sending their most menacing goons to desecrate the Magna Carta.

Up in Edmonton, an NHL hockey team who openly celebrates the one thing they stand against was making a run at the Stanley Cup. Honestly it was an embarrassing oversight by the fine people of Just Stop Oil. There were multiple Just Stop Oil protests thatcmade the news (sort of) around that time, and each time I thought, "Do they even know the Edmonton Oilers exist? And are on TV every night? Why aren't they doing anything? I know Just Stop Oil is technically a UK thing, but Canada is basically England. They have the Queen on their money. That should be a layup."

If the King of England refuses to sign Just Stop Oil's Fossil Fuel treaty by 2030, our oceans will disappear. The closer we get to that date, the more aggressive Just Stop Oil will get. Surely they'll realize the Edmonton Oilers exist sometime within the next 5 years. If they can manage to get seats along the glass at an Oilers game, and use their patented orange spray paint that washes off with water to paint a random number on the glass that nobody bothers looking up what it stands for. That will finally be the protest that sticks. They'll convince the Edmonton Oilers to change their name, and in turn, will save the world.

P.S. If anybody from Just Stop Oil is reading this. You gotta stop using the washable spray paint. I personally don't want to see golf courses or historical monuments be ruined. So I'm glad you use it. But for your sake….. that's just so weak. You don't even have the balls to go through with a real defacing for your cause? You so desperately want to STOP OIL, but when it comes down to it, "we don't want to make anybody too mad…" and "we might actually have to serve real jail time if we permanently deface something important". Jesus Christ guys. There's a 0% chance you stop oil with that attitude. Nobody will ever take your protests seriously if all they result in are viral videos (where everybody just laughs at you), and a few hours of scrubbing to completely erase the fact that you were ever there. The only people benefiting from your protest are shitty internet bloggers like me, because you give us an easy target to write about. It's embarrassing guys. 

Utah Jazz 

Getty Images.

When Sam Bettistone and Larry Hatfield relocated their basketball team from New Orleans to Utah, and decided to take the Jazz nickname with them, they stole a piece of New Orleans culture. They told Louis Armstrong to take his trumpet and shove it up his ass. But then take it out and give it to us because we're taking it to Salt Lake City. 

It would be one thing to take the Jazz from New Orleans and move them to New York, or Chicago, or Kansas City, or anywhere jazz has a presence. Or anywhere African-American's exist. But Utah… Utah is known for 2 things. Creepy Mormon dudes being married to multiple women at a time, and being super racist toward black players at basketball games. Utah fans were famously such pieces of shit to Houston Rockets' player Vernon Maxwell, he's dedicated his entire life to getting back at them.

It's despicable that Utah of all places gets to be the Jazz. And worst of all, since they have selfishly retained the nickname all these years, New Orleans' NBA team is forced to call themselves the Pelicans. Pelicans are birds of trash. They take over beaches and harass innocent civilians for food. They're the homeless of the sky. But sadly, Pelicans was the only nickname option New Orleans had left. If Utah is known for Mormons & racism, New Orleans is known for jazz & trash. It's high time New Orleans led a campaign to take back their name from the terrible state of Utah, and return it to the terrible state of Louisiana where it rightfully belongs. 

Philadelphia 76ers

Justin Ford. Getty Images.

All signs point to the Philadelphia 76ers being safe for at minimum the next four years. But if history tells us anything, the pendulum is always liable to swing back the opposite direction. Sometimes even harder. What better counter to a politically forced rename of the New Jersey Devils (for religious purposes), than a politically forced rename of the Philadelphia 76ers (for the founding fathers owned slaves purposes). The way things are trending, considering what we've now deemed to be critical societal issues in our country (i.e. number of genders you can select from on forms), I see no reason politics couldn't completely devolve into a battle of who can save America by renaming the most professional sports teams. 

Los Angeles Kings

Getty Images.

Kings are almost always bad. Take King Leopold II of Belgium for example. By international agreement, he obtained the free state of the Congo. The Congo Free State was meant to be a model of a freedom and prosperity. But King Leopold used it as his own personal gold mine of torture. Congolese men worked slave labor. When they didn't hit their quotas, his men mutilated the body parts of their loved ones. King Ivan The Terrible of Russia fed people to dogs. King Joffery in Game of Thrones was a sadistic, sex worker-murdering rapist before he hit puberty. Pretty much every King of England up until the 1900's was having sex with his sister. Unless you are one of the Original Kings of Comedy, you most likely are not a person to be idolized.

But consider Queens. Until she was brutally sabotaged by abhorrent, lazy writers (probably men) in Season 8, Queen Khalissi was the greatest ruler to ever sit on the Iron Throne. In real life, Queen Elizabeth II was Queen of England for 70 years, and didn't make a single decision detrimental to the UK. Melania Trump is poised to be the first Queen of America. You have Queen Latifah, Queens of the Stoneage, Freddie Mercury, every woman to ever post a video dancing on TikTok. All  queens deserving of praise. All worthy of having an NHL franchise named after them. 

I thought about writing a Part 3, but it felt like a stretch. Just because the Cleveland Browns are made up primarily of African-American players, doesn't mean it's ok to name your team…. Things of that nature. I think you could make a case for all 124 major professional sports teams if you wanted to. The main takeaway is that when you go into anything with the attitude of, "What is wrong with this?", you're always going to find something. You don't even have to try that hard. Maybe if I'm struggling to find a blog topic soon, I'll dive into college teams. I'd imagine I could get at minimum 3 more blogs out of that. Stay woke out there.