How to Decide on a School or Community Sports Team Name

When you start a sports organization, on any level whether it is high school, college or community sports, you have to pick the name for the team. Now you can go in a couple of different directions with a team name. You may decide to pick the name of a profession sports team like the Yankees, Lakers or Cowboys. You might also decide to make the sound financial decision and get a business to sponsor a team and put that business sponsorship name on the back of the team jersey and call your team that name such as "Mike's Hardware store."

Finally, the third option is come up with a team name yourself that says something about your team. You might decide to pick an animal name which strikes fear into your opponent's heart or you can make up a name that represents your team's athletic ability like the Giants, or something perhaps about your team uniform like the Red Sox or White Sox.

A popular choice has become animal names like the Bears, Tigers, Dolphins, Bearcats, Panthers, Alligators or Falcons. Animal names are usually chosen because they are safe choices to appeal to fans and sound like fierce names. For example, you don't hear sports teams named the "Pigeons" or do you?

A great bit of advice would be to form a research and marketing committee to see what name for the team the fans and players would like the most. A team name is very important to the community and if fans don't like something as simple as a team name, they won't come out to team games.

Sometimes a sports team name can raise a controversy like with the Washington Redskins or the St. Johns Redmen who have since changed their name to the St. Johns Redstorm. The Redskins also faced much public adversity because of the Native American reference but that conflict has since passed.

For professional and college teams, athletic directors and owners have to be conscious of the fact that they don't want their team to be named something extremely popular and get lost in the shuffle of teams.

You might also want to consider calling your team something based on your geographical region like the Patriots have done since the New England region was the location for the Revolutionary War and signing of the Declaration of Independence. The San Francisco 49ers picked their team name because it was the site of the gold rush during that year.