September 9, 2021 • 39 mins
In this episode of the NFL explained. podcast, Aditi and Mike take a chronological journey through the history of the NFL to reveal the stories behind every AFC team’s name.
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(01:09):
We're playing the name game sort of Welcome to NFL Explained.
It's the podcast that answers your questions about the game
that we all absolutely love. Every single week, we're going
to be diving into a topic that needs some explain.
In our first episode, we actually rolled into some NFC names.
This week, we're all about the A f C. I'm
Mike Yam, She's a D D King, Kabala, Hi d D.
(01:31):
What's good? We obviously right. That is actually a good
way of describing our episode this week, A D D.
You and I are going to be diving into some
topics that will last for a while. So if you
miss the NFC Show, it's all good. It's available right
now and until the end of time. Because basically, you
may be playing a game of bar trivia. You may
(01:54):
just be trying to impress your family around the Thanksgiving
dinner table with the minutia that you know, people may
say at some point, Hey, you know, I always wondered
how did the Steelers get their name? Because the Steelers
are actually the oldest team in the American Football Conference.
They were founded in nineteen thirty three, which is the
same year as the Eagles, which we talked about in
(02:15):
our first episode, and we also talked about the fact
that many, many, many football teams derived their names from
baseball teams, So the Steelers were initially named after the
city's baseball team, they were the Pittsburgh Pirates. But we
already went through this, Mike I said, I don't like
when two teams from the same city playing different sports
(02:37):
have the same name, like the New York Giants. Very confusing,
and we did learn on episode number one with the
NFC this actually happened a whole lot. I think we're
just in a different era of sports and fandom that
I don't think fans nowadays would be okay with it.
Like once again, you're going like and thirties and forties, right,
And I'll tell you this. One thing that is very
(02:58):
unique about the city of Pittsburgh is that all three
professional franchises, the Pittsburgh Pirates which play baseball, the Pittsburgh Penguins,
which play hockey, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, who play football,
of course, share the same colors. So this is the
black and yellow city. Actually it's black and gold. I
say black and yellow because of that was Khalifa song.
But it really is officially black and gold, black and yellow,
(03:19):
black and yellow, black and yellow, right, it shouldn't be
black and yellow. I'm corrected every time I say that.
But anyway, moving on, the Pittsburgh Pirates were indeed the
Pittsburgh Pirates, but they had to be called something because
otherwise you didn't know are you talking about the Pittsburgh
Pirates baseball team or were you talking about the Pittsburgh
Pirates football team. They were called the rooney Man after
team owner Arn't Rooney, and then in nineteen forty they
(03:42):
became the Pittsburgh Steelers, and that is because, of course
Pittsburgh is the steel City. But there's another little known fact.
The Steelers had a brief name change in nineteen forty three,
and that is because during World War Two, the Steelers
and the Eagles had to send many of their players
(04:02):
off to fight. They combined and they be came the Stiegels.
One of my all time favorite stories is Jane Goodell,
who of course is married to Commissioner Roger Goodell, or
is the better half of Commissioner Roger Goodell, and he
will be one of our episodes in the future. And
what he does, they're a tease right there for you.
(04:23):
In any case, Jane Goodell made a fabulous film a
few years ago called A Lifetime of Sundays, and she
sat down with the four Matriarchs of football that of
course is Norma Hunt, Martha Ford, Virginia McCaskey, and now
the late Pat Rooney, who we here in Pittsburgh lost
earlier this year. Well, Pat Rooney was sitting down and
(04:43):
she was talking about the era of the Stiegels and
the Eagles had just come off winning that amazing Super
Bowl behind Nick Foles, and Pat Rooney says on stage that,
you know, she felt as if it was almost like
the Steelers won again when the Eagles won because of
that Stiegel's history, and Virginia mccoskey looks at her and says, Pat,
(05:05):
you have enough trophies, and beautiful Mrs Rooney looks back
at Virginia and says, there's always room for one more,
which tells you everything you need to know about the
Pittsburgh Steelers. Get that competitive competitive juice is going, you know,
like that's that age old question. Is your TV too big? No?
That your TV can never be too big, especially on Sundays,
(05:27):
So I'm with you always that might be a guy question.
I'm sorry, Mike, I've never asked myself that question ever.
Okay I have, And the answer is, how about this one?
Do you make too much money? No? No, that you
can always make more money. That's more maybe a universal theme.
I thought the TV thing was. You're now pointing that out.
It's not necessarily universal thing. The money thing might be
part of that. Maybe because we are both on television,
(05:49):
and now that you know you have these four k
a k ultra high def t V s, I don't
need my face to be any bigger in anybody's living
room than it already is. Look, I say this all
the time. I am such a great looking dude in
the dark that just unfortunately, moving on, moving on, moving on.
We were talking about rivalry these earlier. You know, before
you embarrass yourself, Mike, come here to help you out.
(06:09):
We're talking about rivalries, and I did make a mistake.
I said, this tells you all you need to know
about the Pittsburgh Steelers and how competitive they are. No,
you also need to know that the Pittsburgh Steelers fans
absolutely completely totally despise the fans of which franchise. That
would be the Cleveland Browns, ding Ding, ding ding Ding.
(06:31):
I was waiting for you, my friend, but I guess
living out in the Northwest, you don't really know how
beautiful rivalries in the A f c north are Here's
Royals on the punt, gets the kick away, driving metcalf
all the way back to the twenty five head to
the thirty outside of the thirty five, to the forty,
to the forty five of the fifty to the Steelers
territory at the forty thirty text in Believa. There you've
(06:59):
never seen it better the time of man Eric Metcalfer's part,
the study to its feet, it's palace the So the
Cleveland Browns joined the NFL after a nineteen fifty merger
with the All America Football Conference, and two other teams
(07:20):
joined the league at this time. That was the Baltimore
Colts and the San Francisco forty Niners. Now the Browns,
besides being hated and despised by any and all fans
of the Pittsburgh Steelers, have one other distinction, and that
is that they are named after a person. The Browns
are named after Paul Brown, who was the first general
(07:41):
manager and head coach. So you think it's a team
named after our color, but it's actually not. Was unaware,
certainly think it's really cool to have that much say
and push, to be able to say no, I got
a team, and it's named after me, So I will
take that and I like it. Of course you like it? Yeah,
I mean because well, I just can you imagine a
team the Ammers. It's a pretty good team name. I think.
(08:03):
I don't know who would sign up to play on
my roster and be a part of my organization. But
there's a room on the train. Remember when we talked
about the Packers. You could start a little league team
called the Yammers, and you could sponsor your little league
team and you could put Yammers on the front of jerseys.
I like where your head's at now. I just need
to figure out how to go and get that done. Um.
You know. One of the really cool things about the
NFL is you see franchise movement. You see teams and
(08:25):
organizations pop up, and sometimes you see some similarities in
terms of some team names and checking in. When number
three on our list is the Indianapolis Colts the Cults.
Of course, they moved to Indie from Baltimore in four
There were actually two different Baltimore Cults franchises. So here's
a little bit of a history lesson. Stick with me here,
all right. You got the Miami Seahawks of the All
(08:46):
America Football Conference, which d D you mentioned a little
bit earlier. They relocated to Baltimore in nineteen forty seven,
the Baltimore Colts. Where that name came from, well what
else a fan contest, and that's been a kind of
a major theme throughout the course of this episode. But
the name was meant to showcase Baltimore's area, just that
the knack that they have for horse breeding. Now, that
(09:08):
Colts team joined the NFL in nineteen fifty but only
lasted a season before financial issues forced them to disband.
But in nineteen fifty three, Baltimore won't. They got another
NFL franchise, and that's the Colts team of today. And
this is actually pretty cool here. The players were given
the opportunity to name this team, and they chose to
pay homage to the previous Colts team by sticking with
(09:31):
that name. So here we go. We got three teams,
the Steelers, the Browns, and the Cults, the only current
a f C teams that existed before the American Football
League came about in nineteen sixty and with that a
d D eight brand new teams were born, and one
of them was the Tennessee Titans of course, before they
were the Titans, they were actually the Houston Oilers and
(09:55):
quite successful. They won the first two a f L
championships and four division titles before the NFL merger in
nineteen seventy. But it was in nineteen seven that they
moved out of Houston to Tennessee. Now, they kept the
Oiler's name for two years. They played their first season
in Memphis, so they were, you know, the Oilers out
of Memphis, and then they went to the Vanderbilt campus
(10:17):
in Nashville, and they were the Oilers out of the
Vandy campus. And then they held a naming contest and
they got all sorts of submissions, things like the Tornadoes
and the copper Heads and the South Stars, which sounds
like a romance novel, and the Wranglers, but they settled
on the Tennessee Titans, and Mike, since I know you
love alliteration, I feel like that's a good one, definitely
(10:39):
a strong one. But like I was saying, the Titans
are not actually an original name. No they are not,
because Jets fans are like screaming, Yo, that's us, that's us,
And you're right, it's really just kind of the old
school old heads that remember the New York Titans, which
then ended up becoming the Jets. Because we'll stick with
this a f L theme here, the Jets were actually
a charter member of the a f L. The Jets
(11:02):
originally known as the Titans from nineteen sixty to nineteen
sixty three, but then change their name to the Jets.
This goes back to our NFC episode The Giants, named
after the skyscrapers in New York City. The Jets became
the Jets because they were playing at Chase Stadium. Flashback
to my childhood as a Mets fan and all the
games that I used to attend there, the proximity to
(11:22):
Lagaria Airport. If you've ever been to the old Shase Stadium,
the planes which just sort of hover and fly over
the stadium during their games. Mike, that was totally a
game that we played as kids when we went to
Shaye Stadium. It was calling out what airline it was
that was flying above Shae Stadium. Were you a Mets fan? No,
That's part of why I was looking at the planes.
That's a low blow I do miss. Everyone used to
(11:44):
say it's just like not a great place, but I
enjoyed it. You know, and City Field was gorgeous. But
I remember the first time that I went to City Field,
I was like, Okay, it's pretty. And Shae Stadium was
a dump, but you know what, it was our dump
and it had character. I actually love City Field, and
I think it's better than the New Yankee Stadium. There
I said it yankum a little sterile for me. I
know the tweets at Mike underscore Yeam, I'm sure I'll
(12:04):
get some negative one to my way. And yes, it
is partly because I am a Mets fan, but the
Jets as a football team, there were some other names
that were considered. In fact, the Dodgers were one of them.
The Gotham's, the Burroughs. You're like the Boroughs. If you're
from New York, you get at the Boroughs of New
York City. Um. But at the end of the day,
I am all about the Jets and the team name
(12:26):
because of the Shade Stadium connection, which to me, a
d D just felt really fitting. And I think that's
one of the other cool things about some of the
history of the names that we continue to unveil on
this podcast, what they mean to the specific regions. At
times just kind of a cool connection that they're able
to establish. But we're gonna keep on going in the Northeast.
(12:47):
We're gonna give it to history behind some team names
in the a f C. As we continue to roll
on this podcast, will corral heard of Buffalo and we'll
get to a proposed team name that was so bad
the NFL had to step in. America's most reliable network
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here comes Kelly. What a finish and this crowd goes wild.
(14:34):
Kelly and the shotgun. Last play of the game, back
the throw and He's gonna run any guys for the touchdown?
The game is over. The Bills have one a In
one of the most dramatic finishes in Buffalo Bills football history.
Jim Kelly ran for the touchdown. What an unbelievable finish.
(14:55):
The Bills have won it on the final play of
the game. It is the NFL Explained podcast. Mike gam
In d D. Kika Bala with you. We are going
through team names and the history behind those names. Were
sticking with the a f C. If you're an NFC fan,
believe me, you still got an opportunity to hear our
first episode still available for listen because they're always available
(15:20):
because their podcast. But A D D. The Buffalo Bills.
I think it's kind of obvious, isn't it, Like we're
just in that area of the country. So back in
the day, they were just buffaloes all over the place, right, Uh,
not quite about the Buffaloes. But Mike, I know that.
I told you the Browns were the only team named
after a person, Paul Brown. But the Buffalo Bills were
kind of sort of named after a person to see.
(15:43):
William Frederick Cody was an American soldier and a bison
hunter and a performer, and his nickname was the Buffalo Bills.
So when Buffalo had an All America Football Conference team,
they named it the Buffalo Bills. I actually just thought
there'd be a little bit more behind it. I don't know,
(16:03):
like a fan deal. I'm just imagining a herd of
wild buffalo stampeding through and kind of hanging out, and
I'm struggling. I'm generally a creative person, but I'm not
seeing it. Creativity is actually part of how the Patriots
got their name, which is sort of odd here. So
originally they were the Boston Patriots. In VY one, that
(16:24):
Patriots name came Yeah, you guessed another team naming contest.
Pat Patriot, which is the team's logo of a minute
man sort of snapping a football, was actually designed by
a Boston Globe reporter, Phil Bissell. He's the one that
sort of sketched that deal. What's interesting to me, when
I was growing up as a kid, we would have
NFL pencils, so you get your favorite team and the
(16:46):
logos and the whole deal. And I remember seeing Pat
Patriot all over these pencils that a couple of the
kids in my class would have, so it always just
sort of resonates with me. But the Patriots actually referred
to the columnists of the Thirteen Colonies, who rebeled obviously
against the British during the American Revolution. So knowing this,
I sort of feel there's some war time ties that
(17:07):
we can come up with. But I look this up
at d D and I thought it was pretty cool.
When the NFL and the a f L merger back
in nine seventy went down, the Patriots replaced in the
a f C East and seventy one, they moved to Foxborough.
When they went and made the move, they wanted to
change the name. They announced they were going to change
their name to the Boston Patriots to the Base State Patriots,
(17:30):
after the state of Massachusetts. How about this, like, how
bad does your team name have to be where the
NFL goes? No, no, no no, no, that's not happening, because
that's what happened in this instance. The NFL actually rejected
it and they settled on just naming the team after
the region. So that's how we get the New England
Patriots the base state. How many people do you think
(17:51):
in America right now could identify the base state. I mean,
I get thrown off when I hear like, you know here,
base state. The first thing I think of is the
Bay area. But yeah, the base No, I'm with the
New England thing. I mean, I may I don't must
think of the Chesapeake Bay before I thought of the
Bay in Massachusetts, because I guess that tells you how
little I know about state nicknames. Hey, it could have
(18:13):
been worse. They could have been named after some sort
of like t situation and going on, like the tea
party kind of thing. I mentioned the the a f L,
and I think what's sort of interesting about the merger.
The Chargers kind of get thrown into the mix here
because they were actually a charter member of the a
f L. They started playing in Los Angeles sixty that
lasted a whopping one campaign before they decided on San Diego.
(18:38):
But they became part of the NFL with that nineteen
seventy merger. Team owner Baron Hilton he liked charge you
know that bugle cry, so the team was actually named
the Chargers. They stayed in San Diego till obviously moved
back to Los Angeles. But random as a guy who
actually covered the Pack twelve for almost ten years, for me,
(18:59):
it's kind of cool. You got Dan Fouts resurrecting the
franchise back in the seventies, sort of a duck guy,
and now it's just an Herbert coming on like Gangbusters.
Of feels like he could potentially do the same type
of thing. So some West Coast connections there as we
focus in on this Chargers team, I do still struggle.
The Charger part is not hard for me. The San
Diego l A part is hard for me. I have
(19:20):
been known to say San Diego Chargers when I should
have said Los Angeles Chargers. Enough time has passed, I
feel like I should. Yeah, But it's like the attachment,
right Like, as much as team names come to fruition
as we're discussing them on this podcast, like their city
is also part of that identity. Like can you imagine
if the Steelers were not in Pittsburgh right Like, it
(19:40):
wouldn't feel necessarily right, It wouldn't be the Steelers. Yeah,
you have this vibe around it, So I'm with you.
I can understand why you still associate city and team name,
which is why when the Browns moved to Baltimore they
did change their name. But we'll get to that in
just a little bit. Before then, as we were talking
about how teams are affiliated with their cities and have
(20:00):
a connection, it's the perfect segue, my friend to the
Kansas City Chiefs. Now, originally the Kansas City Chiefs were
in Dallas, and they weren't the Chiefs. They were the Texans.
But then in nineteen sixty three, the Dallas Texans moved
to Kansas City, and you certainly weren't going to call
a team from Kansas City the Texans, were you. I mean,
that seems a little ridiculous. To the team's owner, who
(20:21):
was Lamar Hunt, considered other names, and you know, being
in Kansas City, he thought maybe the Royals, only there's
already a baseball team called the Kansas City Royals. He
thought about the Stars, he thought about the Mules, the
Kansas City Mules. But he settled on the Chiefs for
one main reason, and that's because there was a very
(20:41):
large Native American population in the area. But it's also
because the mayor of Kansas City at the time, who
was very instrumental in luring that team from Dallas to
Kansas City. One guest, Mike, what was his nickname? The Chief?
Ding Ding ding ming Ning. Good job, Mike. Are you
(21:02):
the type of person to do that's good with names
in general? Like people's names? I try to be, But
now we need to know so many names that I
feel context matters. It does. I just hear the Chief
and I automatically start thinking about if you don't know
someone's name and you say, oh, thanks, chief, Like it
kind of has that vibe to it, doesn't it. Have
you ever called someone chief not knowing their name. No,
(21:24):
But remember I live in Pittsburgh and the original owner
of the Steelers, Art Rooney, was the Chief. So when
I hear someone say the chief, I inevitably think of
Art Rooney. I've never called anybody chief. I've called people bud,
like hey, Bud, Hey, buddy. But now I sound like
John Dorsey, who have called everybody buddy boy, Yeah, Bud, Bud. Yeah,
(21:45):
I've used buddy before. I call my son buddy. I
also call him Mr. Sometimes that means let me right along.
Do you have something about Mr? Davis? Uh? Yeah? Actually
kind of cool and random. The Oakland Raiders, they were
almost named the Signors. I mean that to me is
really weird because it leads a little bit to the
original Spanish settles that were in California. And yeah, once
(22:08):
again another naming contest. It was submission that was in
the Oakland Tribune. Locally, people actually thought a d D
that the results were fixed, and people just weren't a
huge fan of it, so they were teasing the name
the Raiders eventually decided to be the Raiders and chose
that name over the Lakers. That would have been a
weird vibe to think about the basketball team and then
(22:29):
think about the football team. But wait, wait, the l
A Lakers are named the Lakers because they started in Minneapolis,
where there are so many lakes. Why would an Oakland
football team be called the Lakers? What are the lakes? Yeah,
I don't know what you got? The got the bay
that's not really a lake, but that's not a lake. Yeah,
I don't Okay, anyway, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.
I mean, it's a good thing that didn't choose it
(22:51):
because it really makes absolutely zero sense, the Oakland Lakers,
where there are no lakes. That would not have been good.
But the team actually did play in l A two
back to Oakland and then obviously moved to Vegas. And
I know every time I watched NFL Network and Maurice
Jones Drew is talking about the stadium, he tells everyone
to go find the brick outside of the stadium with
(23:12):
his name on it, so that will be one of
my new adventures the next time I am in Vegas.
But I do know that we're all about team names.
But when I was doing some research, I actually found
something kind of cool about their history. I was thinking, well,
why Oakland, Like, to me, that's kind of random. Well,
it turns out a d D that the Chargers owner,
as Barren Hilton, was so upset that his team was
(23:32):
on an island on the West coast in the a
f L, he actually threatened to forfeit his franchise unless
they put another team out on the West coast. So
there wasn't actually even a stadium in Oakland ready for football.
The a f L was just like, Yo, Oakland, that's
all you guys. They became the eighth a f L team.
Even more wild to me, cal you see Berkeley, they
(23:54):
refused to let the Raiders play at Memorial Stadium. At
one point the team was actually playing in San Francisco
at Candlestick Park. Now, I've been to a ton of
AL football games over the last few years in Berkeley,
it was just wild to me that we could have
been talking about the Raiders at some point in the
history of their team playing at Memorial Stadium. Well, Mike,
I love that you just use the word wild, because
(24:18):
the Denver Broncos, we're thinking all about Denver's wild West heritage.
When they picked their name, they also had a team
naming contest, and the winning entry in nineteen sixty when
they had their brand new Denver AFL franchise was the Broncos,
(24:39):
and that, of course is because of the idea that
a Bronco is an untamed horse and a wild horse,
and this was the idea of what sort of football
team it should be is you know, wild and untamed,
and they were known actually as the Wild Broncos and
not just the Broncos locally. Originally, to me, that doesn't
(25:03):
really capture that whole region, like you know, we have
the Miami Heat and basketball, like I feel like Denver
could have been like the Blizzards or something along those lines,
while Broncos just doesn't have that same ring to it.
But again, that goes back to weather, and I thought
we established that team is named after weather events. Feels
a little bit weird. So you said that I didn't
agree with it. That's why I said if we went
(25:23):
down that path, I would have been okay with it.
I don't think there's any more weather events for the
rest of this podcast, but there are plenty of teams
in the a f C still remaining on our list
coming up a d D. The team megan the Stallion
would have actually been a huge fan of if things
actually played out a certain way. If that's not a
tease that I need to pay off, I don't know
(25:44):
in the history of that podcast what needs to be
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an NFL breath that has got to be the out
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by a bun of people. Welcome back to the NFL
Explained podcast. Mi cam in to d D Kinkawaila with you.
We continue to go through some names in the a
f C. If you missed her n FC conversation and
(27:54):
history behind those team names. All you have to do
is check out our feed and you can download subscribe
to this podcast and we'll have you covered on every
single question regarding the NFL that needs a further x
BLA nation. The Miami Dolphins d D next up on
our list. Nineteen sixty six, that as well, before I
was ever born, which also happens to be the same
year as the first Super Bowl Packers. They beat the
(28:15):
Chief thirty five to ten. That's one of the Miami
Dolphins actually became a thing. The name was popular in
a naming contest among fans since dolphins and I did
not know this, but they are the smartest and the
fastest creatures of the sea. Jason Momoa, He's gotta be
thinking like Aquaman, like are you kidding me? Like I'm
fast to the Aquaman would know? Would that have been
(28:37):
a decent name? I kind of feel like that would
have been sort of relatively cool. Um, we told you
a little bit earlier. But just to revisit this and
to bring it full circle, Miami once did have a
team before the Miami Dolphins, and that was in the
All American Football Conference. That team was named the Seahawks
in six and then I went through that history. They
became the first edition of the Baltimore Colts, because yes,
(29:00):
there was a second edition of that team add You know,
growing up, I feel like they were so many Dolphins
fans simply because they loved those colors and that logo.
There was something about that teal and orange that appealed
to little kids in elementary school. Yeah, and Dan Marino
just as cool. You think two is going to be
(29:20):
like Dan Marino? Is he going to have just as
much of a cult following? You know, our NFL research
team does a tremendous job and sent some stats on
some comparisons between TWA and Marino in the rookie seasons.
Oddly very similar numbers. I think I even saw that
graphic on NFL now cross promotion. Baby. I was on
a plane with Dan Marino recently and it was quite interesting.
(29:40):
There was a police officer who was there to make
sure that nobody bothered him while we were waiting at
the gate to get on the plane. And let me
tell you this is such a like classic Pittsburgh story.
One Dan Marino got on the plane, there were all
these other passengers who went to go talk to the
police officer like it was a contact. High. Wow, you
were close to Dan Marino, so let me talk to
you anyway. I died speaking that also means add what
(30:04):
she left out the story is that it was a
private jet, that that's how it gets around. So it
just happened to be at the gate where, not even
in my dreams. But speaking of larger than life figures,
let's go back to a gentleman we talked about earlier,
Paul Brown. Paul Brown, of course, is the reason that
the Cleveland Browns are named the Cleveland Browns. The Cleveland
(30:26):
Browns are the only team that are named after a
person who is Paul Brown. But even though the Cleveland
Browns named themselves after Paul Brown, they had a very
acrimonious split. Art Model came in as an owner of
the Browns. He and Paul Brown had some friction over control.
The players of the Cleveland brown started feeling like maybe
(30:47):
Paul Brown was no longer meant to be their coach,
and Paul Brown left town. He left town and Cincinnati
decided to launch a new franchise. Paul Brown became an
investor in the franchise in Cincinnati. He became the general
manager and the coach, and he got power over what
(31:08):
he should name his team. And there were again fans
that wanted input. The most popular suggestion at the time
was the buck Eyes. Of course, you know they Ohio
State buck Eyes. Yes, but Paul Brown, in honor of
a football team that had played in Cincinnati in the
late nineteen thirties, said no, no, no, we are going
(31:28):
to be the Cincinnati Bengals, And that name, unfortunately, conjures
up things that I don't think Paul Brown or his
son Mike Brown, who was still in Cincinnati, really would
like at the moment. But it may be a new
day in Cincinnati with Joe Burrow back healthy and you know,
doing all sorts of interesting things. Oh, there's some weapons
for Joe Burrow. Maybe not as much protection up front Penassill,
(31:50):
although Detroit fans probably smiling ear to ear with regard
to that selection. But we'll just move on to the
team names. I don't want to be second guessing organizations here.
The Jacksonville Jags came into existence same year as the Panthers,
part of that expansion, but the name was actually the result.
Oh my god, I'm almost getting like weirded out about
the amount of naming contests that have taken place to
(32:14):
name so many of these franchises. But I love it. Look,
you talked about this earlier Mike, fans say, yes, fans
are the ones that are going to be buying the
team gear, buying the jerseys. They should have a say
in what name they want across the front of their shirt,
and they have. And we have gone through this theme
a lot as we've named some of these teams. I
(32:35):
just think sometimes it almost becomes less creative of a
process if it's just sort of a contest. But nonetheless,
this is where we net out with a lot of
these teams. But the original logo had to be changed
because of the resemblance that they had to be. Jaguar
Car Company, by the way, I would love an F type.
I would love an F type. They say to speak
(32:56):
things that you want into existence, So I'm going to
do that a couple more times during this podcast. We've
now established that Mike loves TVs, he loves fast cards,
and he's you know, not playing against type at all.
I just I'm like simple minded like that, like cool gadgets, cars,
wine and some sports like and I am a very
happy human being. The Ford Motor Company, by the way,
(33:17):
at one time talk about history lessons, here was the
parents company of Jaguar, and they actually were the ones
who are like, no, no, no, dude, like that logo
is too close to our logo. What is awesome about
this story? And I hope many facets of our society
learned from this. No lawsuit was brought to trial both
of these two parties. They negotiated an agreement. Jaguar actually
(33:39):
became the official car of the Jaguars football team. Team
actually redesigned the uniforms. Everyone lives happily ever after, and
we didn't get the crazy lawsuit. Like to me, like,
that's just a huge one. It is just a huge win.
And now all of a sudden, there's pressure on this
team to sort of get out of a little bit
of a funk because they're one of just four franchises
never to be in a Super Bowl. Trevor Yo pressures
(34:02):
on Buddy. Honestly, I feel like the pressure is on
producer Kurt right now because my takeaway from that entire
story is the whole idea of an official car. I mean,
why can't the NFL Explained podcast have an official car? Kurt?
Can you get on that? Maybe F type? I want
an F type. I have an F type Speaking into existence, Mike,
(34:23):
you mentioned wine somebody else who really enjoys his wine
is Ravens current owner Steve Bashotti. But the Ravens actually
came into existence under the previous owner, and that is
art Model. Remember art Model from my story about Paul
Brown and the Bengals are Model. Paul Brown didn't get
along so well. Well, the city of Cleveland decided it
(34:44):
doesn't really love Art Model either, because one night, in
the middle of the night, he decided to spirit his
team away from Cleveland and take it to Baltimore. Now,
it was decided that that club in Baltimore would be
considered a new franchise and therefore needed a new name.
Art Model thought, hey, maybe I can buy the Colts
(35:04):
name back. But the Olds who you spoke about earlier
had moved on to Indianapolis, and Indianapolis didn't want to
let go of its name the Colts. So our Model
turned to what Mike literature And by the way, this
is one of the coolest naming stories that we have.
I actually love this connection. It was actually a naming contest,
(35:26):
and the submission that one was indeed from literature, and
that is the Raven. And the Raven was inspired by,
of course Edgar Allen pose, the raven It beat out
the Baltimore Americans, It beat out the Marauders. You think
about who the Baltimore Ravens have been since their inception,
(35:47):
I mean, you go back to the days of coach
Brian Billick and Jonathan Ogden and Ray Lewis to who
they are now under John Harbaugh, and again, can't think
of a more fitting name, a more fitting logo, a
more fitting mascot. They are absolutely the Ravens. Yeah, and
I love that literature aspect. Although outside of the raven
(36:07):
I don't know if I could recite or name another
Edgar Allan Poe work. The point is I know that one,
and it works really well for that football team, The
Houston Texans, all right, a little bit more of a
history lesson for a younger audience that might not be
super familiar. Texans approved in two thousands to the Houston Oilers,
moved to Nashville became the Titans. As a DV told
(36:29):
us a little bit earlier here at the Texans were
actually added to the league to make up the same
thirty two team league that we actually have and love today.
The team's owner, Bob McNair actually chose that name over
the Apollos, And here's the payoff of my making the
Stallion tease. The Stallions was one of those names that
(36:50):
they actually consider now. I don't know how savage welcome
to the play and the pun uh that would have
been for this team, But the point is the Houston
Texans sort of net out with I think a fitting
name for their organization. The Apollos would have been cooled,
the Stallions would have been really cool, but they become
the six pro team to ever use that name, which
(37:10):
to me is also kind of a cool little nugget there.
You know what would be interesting and we should have
done this actually is what was the success rate of
the previous five Texans teams? I mean, was that a
good name? Is that a lucky name? Is the Texans
a lucky name? I don't know the answer to that.
I hope that this Texans team finds some luck in
the very near future, because they haven't had it seems
(37:32):
like a ton of that add name game. Officially, now
in the books, we have gone through the NFC, we
have gone through the a f C. We're just scratching
the surface here on NFL Explain you are on Twitter.
I am on Twitter at Mike underscore yam. You feel
free to d m me. You can at me if
you are passionate when you just you just lost a
(37:53):
trivia contests add will of course have the answer for
you and she will get back to you right away.
To me add sometimes I'm a little slow on the
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(38:17):
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(01:09):
We're playing the name game sort of Welcome to NFL Explained.
It's the podcast that answers your questions about the game
that we all absolutely love. Every single week, we're going
to be diving into a topic that needs some explain.
In our first episode, we actually rolled into some NFC names.
This week, we're all about the A f C. I'm
Mike Yam, She's a D D King, Kabala, Hi d D.
(01:31):
What's good? We obviously right. That is actually a good
way of describing our episode this week, A D D.
You and I are going to be diving into some
topics that will last for a while. So if you
miss the NFC Show, it's all good. It's available right
now and until the end of time. Because basically, you
may be playing a game of bar trivia. You may
(01:54):
just be trying to impress your family around the Thanksgiving
dinner table with the minutia that you know, people may
say at some point, Hey, you know, I always wondered
how did the Steelers get their name? Because the Steelers
are actually the oldest team in the American Football Conference.
They were founded in nineteen thirty three, which is the
same year as the Eagles, which we talked about in
(02:15):
our first episode, and we also talked about the fact
that many, many, many football teams derived their names from
baseball teams, So the Steelers were initially named after the
city's baseball team, they were the Pittsburgh Pirates. But we
already went through this, Mike I said, I don't like
when two teams from the same city playing different sports
(02:37):
have the same name, like the New York Giants. Very confusing,
and we did learn on episode number one with the
NFC this actually happened a whole lot. I think we're
just in a different era of sports and fandom that
I don't think fans nowadays would be okay with it.
Like once again, you're going like and thirties and forties, right,
And I'll tell you this. One thing that is very
(02:58):
unique about the city of Pittsburgh is that all three
professional franchises, the Pittsburgh Pirates which play baseball, the Pittsburgh Penguins,
which play hockey, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, who play football,
of course, share the same colors. So this is the
black and yellow city. Actually it's black and gold. I
say black and yellow because of that was Khalifa song.
But it really is officially black and gold, black and yellow,
(03:19):
black and yellow, black and yellow, right, it shouldn't be
black and yellow. I'm corrected every time I say that.
But anyway, moving on, the Pittsburgh Pirates were indeed the
Pittsburgh Pirates, but they had to be called something because
otherwise you didn't know are you talking about the Pittsburgh
Pirates baseball team or were you talking about the Pittsburgh
Pirates football team. They were called the rooney Man after
team owner Arn't Rooney, and then in nineteen forty they
(03:42):
became the Pittsburgh Steelers, and that is because, of course
Pittsburgh is the steel City. But there's another little known fact.
The Steelers had a brief name change in nineteen forty three,
and that is because during World War Two, the Steelers
and the Eagles had to send many of their players
(04:02):
off to fight. They combined and they be came the Stiegels.
One of my all time favorite stories is Jane Goodell,
who of course is married to Commissioner Roger Goodell, or
is the better half of Commissioner Roger Goodell, and he
will be one of our episodes in the future. And
what he does, they're a tease right there for you.
(04:23):
In any case, Jane Goodell made a fabulous film a
few years ago called A Lifetime of Sundays, and she
sat down with the four Matriarchs of football that of
course is Norma Hunt, Martha Ford, Virginia McCaskey, and now
the late Pat Rooney, who we here in Pittsburgh lost
earlier this year. Well, Pat Rooney was sitting down and
(04:43):
she was talking about the era of the Stiegels and
the Eagles had just come off winning that amazing Super
Bowl behind Nick Foles, and Pat Rooney says on stage that,
you know, she felt as if it was almost like
the Steelers won again when the Eagles won because of
that Stiegel's history, and Virginia mccoskey looks at her and says, Pat,
(05:05):
you have enough trophies, and beautiful Mrs Rooney looks back
at Virginia and says, there's always room for one more,
which tells you everything you need to know about the
Pittsburgh Steelers. Get that competitive competitive juice is going, you know,
like that's that age old question. Is your TV too big? No?
That your TV can never be too big, especially on Sundays,
(05:27):
So I'm with you always that might be a guy question.
I'm sorry, Mike, I've never asked myself that question ever.
Okay I have, And the answer is, how about this one?
Do you make too much money? No? No, that you
can always make more money. That's more maybe a universal theme.
I thought the TV thing was. You're now pointing that out.
It's not necessarily universal thing. The money thing might be
part of that. Maybe because we are both on television,
(05:49):
and now that you know you have these four k
a k ultra high def t V s, I don't
need my face to be any bigger in anybody's living
room than it already is. Look, I say this all
the time. I am such a great looking dude in
the dark that just unfortunately, moving on, moving on, moving on.
We were talking about rivalry these earlier. You know, before
you embarrass yourself, Mike, come here to help you out.
(06:09):
We're talking about rivalries, and I did make a mistake.
I said, this tells you all you need to know
about the Pittsburgh Steelers and how competitive they are. No,
you also need to know that the Pittsburgh Steelers fans
absolutely completely totally despise the fans of which franchise. That
would be the Cleveland Browns, ding Ding, ding ding Ding.
(06:31):
I was waiting for you, my friend, but I guess
living out in the Northwest, you don't really know how
beautiful rivalries in the A f c north are Here's
Royals on the punt, gets the kick away, driving metcalf
all the way back to the twenty five head to
the thirty outside of the thirty five, to the forty,
to the forty five of the fifty to the Steelers
territory at the forty thirty text in Believa. There you've
(06:59):
never seen it better the time of man Eric Metcalfer's part,
the study to its feet, it's palace the So the
Cleveland Browns joined the NFL after a nineteen fifty merger
with the All America Football Conference, and two other teams
(07:20):
joined the league at this time. That was the Baltimore
Colts and the San Francisco forty Niners. Now the Browns,
besides being hated and despised by any and all fans
of the Pittsburgh Steelers, have one other distinction, and that
is that they are named after a person. The Browns
are named after Paul Brown, who was the first general
(07:41):
manager and head coach. So you think it's a team
named after our color, but it's actually not. Was unaware,
certainly think it's really cool to have that much say
and push, to be able to say no, I got
a team, and it's named after me, So I will
take that and I like it. Of course you like it? Yeah,
I mean because well, I just can you imagine a
team the Ammers. It's a pretty good team name. I think.
(08:03):
I don't know who would sign up to play on
my roster and be a part of my organization. But
there's a room on the train. Remember when we talked
about the Packers. You could start a little league team
called the Yammers, and you could sponsor your little league
team and you could put Yammers on the front of jerseys.
I like where your head's at now. I just need
to figure out how to go and get that done. Um.
You know. One of the really cool things about the
NFL is you see franchise movement. You see teams and
(08:25):
organizations pop up, and sometimes you see some similarities in
terms of some team names and checking in. When number
three on our list is the Indianapolis Colts the Cults.
Of course, they moved to Indie from Baltimore in four
There were actually two different Baltimore Cults franchises. So here's
a little bit of a history lesson. Stick with me here,
all right. You got the Miami Seahawks of the All
(08:46):
America Football Conference, which d D you mentioned a little
bit earlier. They relocated to Baltimore in nineteen forty seven,
the Baltimore Colts. Where that name came from, well what
else a fan contest, and that's been a kind of
a major theme throughout the course of this episode. But
the name was meant to showcase Baltimore's area, just that
the knack that they have for horse breeding. Now, that
(09:08):
Colts team joined the NFL in nineteen fifty but only
lasted a season before financial issues forced them to disband.
But in nineteen fifty three, Baltimore won't. They got another
NFL franchise, and that's the Colts team of today. And
this is actually pretty cool here. The players were given
the opportunity to name this team, and they chose to
pay homage to the previous Colts team by sticking with
(09:31):
that name. So here we go. We got three teams,
the Steelers, the Browns, and the Cults, the only current
a f C teams that existed before the American Football
League came about in nineteen sixty and with that a
d D eight brand new teams were born, and one
of them was the Tennessee Titans of course, before they
were the Titans, they were actually the Houston Oilers and
(09:55):
quite successful. They won the first two a f L
championships and four division titles before the NFL merger in
nineteen seventy. But it was in nineteen seven that they
moved out of Houston to Tennessee. Now, they kept the
Oiler's name for two years. They played their first season
in Memphis, so they were, you know, the Oilers out
of Memphis, and then they went to the Vanderbilt campus
(10:17):
in Nashville, and they were the Oilers out of the
Vandy campus. And then they held a naming contest and
they got all sorts of submissions, things like the Tornadoes
and the copper Heads and the South Stars, which sounds
like a romance novel, and the Wranglers, but they settled
on the Tennessee Titans, and Mike, since I know you
love alliteration, I feel like that's a good one, definitely
(10:39):
a strong one. But like I was saying, the Titans
are not actually an original name. No they are not,
because Jets fans are like screaming, Yo, that's us, that's us,
And you're right, it's really just kind of the old
school old heads that remember the New York Titans, which
then ended up becoming the Jets. Because we'll stick with
this a f L theme here, the Jets were actually
a charter member of the a f L. The Jets
(11:02):
originally known as the Titans from nineteen sixty to nineteen
sixty three, but then change their name to the Jets.
This goes back to our NFC episode The Giants, named
after the skyscrapers in New York City. The Jets became
the Jets because they were playing at Chase Stadium. Flashback
to my childhood as a Mets fan and all the
games that I used to attend there, the proximity to
(11:22):
Lagaria Airport. If you've ever been to the old Shase Stadium,
the planes which just sort of hover and fly over
the stadium during their games. Mike, that was totally a
game that we played as kids when we went to
Shaye Stadium. It was calling out what airline it was
that was flying above Shae Stadium. Were you a Mets fan? No,
That's part of why I was looking at the planes.
That's a low blow I do miss. Everyone used to
(11:44):
say it's just like not a great place, but I
enjoyed it. You know, and City Field was gorgeous. But
I remember the first time that I went to City Field,
I was like, Okay, it's pretty. And Shae Stadium was
a dump, but you know what, it was our dump
and it had character. I actually love City Field, and
I think it's better than the New Yankee Stadium. There
I said it yankum a little sterile for me. I
know the tweets at Mike underscore Yeam, I'm sure I'll
(12:04):
get some negative one to my way. And yes, it
is partly because I am a Mets fan, but the
Jets as a football team, there were some other names
that were considered. In fact, the Dodgers were one of them.
The Gotham's, the Burroughs. You're like the Boroughs. If you're
from New York, you get at the Boroughs of New
York City. Um. But at the end of the day,
I am all about the Jets and the team name
(12:26):
because of the Shade Stadium connection, which to me, a
d D just felt really fitting. And I think that's
one of the other cool things about some of the
history of the names that we continue to unveil on
this podcast, what they mean to the specific regions. At
times just kind of a cool connection that they're able
to establish. But we're gonna keep on going in the Northeast.
(12:47):
We're gonna give it to history behind some team names
in the a f C. As we continue to roll
on this podcast, will corral heard of Buffalo and we'll
get to a proposed team name that was so bad
the NFL had to step in. America's most reliable network
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(13:50):
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(14:11):
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here comes Kelly. What a finish and this crowd goes wild.
(14:34):
Kelly and the shotgun. Last play of the game, back
the throw and He's gonna run any guys for the touchdown?
The game is over. The Bills have one a In
one of the most dramatic finishes in Buffalo Bills football history.
Jim Kelly ran for the touchdown. What an unbelievable finish.
(14:55):
The Bills have won it on the final play of
the game. It is the NFL Explained podcast. Mike gam
In d D. Kika Bala with you. We are going
through team names and the history behind those names. Were
sticking with the a f C. If you're an NFC fan,
believe me, you still got an opportunity to hear our
first episode still available for listen because they're always available
(15:20):
because their podcast. But A D D. The Buffalo Bills.
I think it's kind of obvious, isn't it, Like we're
just in that area of the country. So back in
the day, they were just buffaloes all over the place, right, Uh,
not quite about the Buffaloes. But Mike, I know that.
I told you the Browns were the only team named
after a person, Paul Brown. But the Buffalo Bills were
kind of sort of named after a person to see.
(15:43):
William Frederick Cody was an American soldier and a bison
hunter and a performer, and his nickname was the Buffalo Bills.
So when Buffalo had an All America Football Conference team,
they named it the Buffalo Bills. I actually just thought
there'd be a little bit more behind it. I don't know,
(16:03):
like a fan deal. I'm just imagining a herd of
wild buffalo stampeding through and kind of hanging out, and
I'm struggling. I'm generally a creative person, but I'm not
seeing it. Creativity is actually part of how the Patriots
got their name, which is sort of odd here. So
originally they were the Boston Patriots. In VY one, that
(16:24):
Patriots name came Yeah, you guessed another team naming contest.
Pat Patriot, which is the team's logo of a minute
man sort of snapping a football, was actually designed by
a Boston Globe reporter, Phil Bissell. He's the one that
sort of sketched that deal. What's interesting to me, when
I was growing up as a kid, we would have
NFL pencils, so you get your favorite team and the
(16:46):
logos and the whole deal. And I remember seeing Pat
Patriot all over these pencils that a couple of the
kids in my class would have, so it always just
sort of resonates with me. But the Patriots actually referred
to the columnists of the Thirteen Colonies, who rebeled obviously
against the British during the American Revolution. So knowing this,
I sort of feel there's some war time ties that
(17:07):
we can come up with. But I look this up
at d D and I thought it was pretty cool.
When the NFL and the a f L merger back
in nine seventy went down, the Patriots replaced in the
a f C East and seventy one, they moved to Foxborough.
When they went and made the move, they wanted to
change the name. They announced they were going to change
their name to the Boston Patriots to the Base State Patriots,
(17:30):
after the state of Massachusetts. How about this, like, how
bad does your team name have to be where the
NFL goes? No, no, no no, no, that's not happening, because
that's what happened in this instance. The NFL actually rejected
it and they settled on just naming the team after
the region. So that's how we get the New England
Patriots the base state. How many people do you think
(17:51):
in America right now could identify the base state. I mean,
I get thrown off when I hear like, you know here,
base state. The first thing I think of is the
Bay area. But yeah, the base No, I'm with the
New England thing. I mean, I may I don't must
think of the Chesapeake Bay before I thought of the
Bay in Massachusetts, because I guess that tells you how
little I know about state nicknames. Hey, it could have
(18:13):
been worse. They could have been named after some sort
of like t situation and going on, like the tea
party kind of thing. I mentioned the the a f L,
and I think what's sort of interesting about the merger.
The Chargers kind of get thrown into the mix here
because they were actually a charter member of the a
f L. They started playing in Los Angeles sixty that
lasted a whopping one campaign before they decided on San Diego.
(18:38):
But they became part of the NFL with that nineteen
seventy merger. Team owner Baron Hilton he liked charge you
know that bugle cry, so the team was actually named
the Chargers. They stayed in San Diego till obviously moved
back to Los Angeles. But random as a guy who
actually covered the Pack twelve for almost ten years, for me,
(18:59):
it's kind of cool. You got Dan Fouts resurrecting the
franchise back in the seventies, sort of a duck guy,
and now it's just an Herbert coming on like Gangbusters.
Of feels like he could potentially do the same type
of thing. So some West Coast connections there as we
focus in on this Chargers team, I do still struggle.
The Charger part is not hard for me. The San
Diego l A part is hard for me. I have
(19:20):
been known to say San Diego Chargers when I should
have said Los Angeles Chargers. Enough time has passed, I
feel like I should. Yeah, But it's like the attachment,
right Like, as much as team names come to fruition
as we're discussing them on this podcast, like their city
is also part of that identity. Like can you imagine
if the Steelers were not in Pittsburgh right Like, it
(19:40):
wouldn't feel necessarily right, It wouldn't be the Steelers. Yeah,
you have this vibe around it, So I'm with you.
I can understand why you still associate city and team name,
which is why when the Browns moved to Baltimore they
did change their name. But we'll get to that in
just a little bit. Before then, as we were talking
about how teams are affiliated with their cities and have
(20:00):
a connection, it's the perfect segue, my friend to the
Kansas City Chiefs. Now, originally the Kansas City Chiefs were
in Dallas, and they weren't the Chiefs. They were the Texans.
But then in nineteen sixty three, the Dallas Texans moved
to Kansas City, and you certainly weren't going to call
a team from Kansas City the Texans, were you. I mean,
that seems a little ridiculous. To the team's owner, who
(20:21):
was Lamar Hunt, considered other names, and you know, being
in Kansas City, he thought maybe the Royals, only there's
already a baseball team called the Kansas City Royals. He
thought about the Stars, he thought about the Mules, the
Kansas City Mules. But he settled on the Chiefs for
one main reason, and that's because there was a very
(20:41):
large Native American population in the area. But it's also
because the mayor of Kansas City at the time, who
was very instrumental in luring that team from Dallas to
Kansas City. One guest, Mike, what was his nickname? The Chief?
Ding Ding ding ming Ning. Good job, Mike. Are you
(21:02):
the type of person to do that's good with names
in general? Like people's names? I try to be, But
now we need to know so many names that I
feel context matters. It does. I just hear the Chief
and I automatically start thinking about if you don't know
someone's name and you say, oh, thanks, chief, Like it
kind of has that vibe to it, doesn't it. Have
you ever called someone chief not knowing their name. No,
(21:24):
But remember I live in Pittsburgh and the original owner
of the Steelers, Art Rooney, was the Chief. So when
I hear someone say the chief, I inevitably think of
Art Rooney. I've never called anybody chief. I've called people bud,
like hey, Bud, Hey, buddy. But now I sound like
John Dorsey, who have called everybody buddy boy, Yeah, Bud, Bud. Yeah,
(21:45):
I've used buddy before. I call my son buddy. I
also call him Mr. Sometimes that means let me right along.
Do you have something about Mr? Davis? Uh? Yeah? Actually
kind of cool and random. The Oakland Raiders, they were
almost named the Signors. I mean that to me is
really weird because it leads a little bit to the
original Spanish settles that were in California. And yeah, once
(22:08):
again another naming contest. It was submission that was in
the Oakland Tribune. Locally, people actually thought a d D
that the results were fixed, and people just weren't a
huge fan of it, so they were teasing the name
the Raiders eventually decided to be the Raiders and chose
that name over the Lakers. That would have been a
weird vibe to think about the basketball team and then
(22:29):
think about the football team. But wait, wait, the l
A Lakers are named the Lakers because they started in Minneapolis,
where there are so many lakes. Why would an Oakland
football team be called the Lakers? What are the lakes? Yeah,
I don't know what you got? The got the bay
that's not really a lake, but that's not a lake. Yeah,
I don't Okay, anyway, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to.
I mean, it's a good thing that didn't choose it
(22:51):
because it really makes absolutely zero sense, the Oakland Lakers,
where there are no lakes. That would not have been good.
But the team actually did play in l A two
back to Oakland and then obviously moved to Vegas. And
I know every time I watched NFL Network and Maurice
Jones Drew is talking about the stadium, he tells everyone
to go find the brick outside of the stadium with
(23:12):
his name on it, so that will be one of
my new adventures the next time I am in Vegas.
But I do know that we're all about team names.
But when I was doing some research, I actually found
something kind of cool about their history. I was thinking, well,
why Oakland, Like, to me, that's kind of random. Well,
it turns out a d D that the Chargers owner,
as Barren Hilton, was so upset that his team was
(23:32):
on an island on the West coast in the a
f L, he actually threatened to forfeit his franchise unless
they put another team out on the West coast. So
there wasn't actually even a stadium in Oakland ready for football.
The a f L was just like, Yo, Oakland, that's
all you guys. They became the eighth a f L team.
Even more wild to me, cal you see Berkeley, they
(23:54):
refused to let the Raiders play at Memorial Stadium. At
one point the team was actually playing in San Francisco
at Candlestick Park. Now, I've been to a ton of
AL football games over the last few years in Berkeley,
it was just wild to me that we could have
been talking about the Raiders at some point in the
history of their team playing at Memorial Stadium. Well, Mike,
I love that you just use the word wild, because
(24:18):
the Denver Broncos, we're thinking all about Denver's wild West heritage.
When they picked their name, they also had a team
naming contest, and the winning entry in nineteen sixty when
they had their brand new Denver AFL franchise was the Broncos,
(24:39):
and that, of course is because of the idea that
a Bronco is an untamed horse and a wild horse,
and this was the idea of what sort of football
team it should be is you know, wild and untamed,
and they were known actually as the Wild Broncos and
not just the Broncos locally. Originally, to me, that doesn't
(25:03):
really capture that whole region, like you know, we have
the Miami Heat and basketball, like I feel like Denver
could have been like the Blizzards or something along those lines,
while Broncos just doesn't have that same ring to it.
But again, that goes back to weather, and I thought
we established that team is named after weather events. Feels
a little bit weird. So you said that I didn't
agree with it. That's why I said if we went
(25:23):
down that path, I would have been okay with it.
I don't think there's any more weather events for the
rest of this podcast, but there are plenty of teams
in the a f C still remaining on our list
coming up a d D. The team megan the Stallion
would have actually been a huge fan of if things
actually played out a certain way. If that's not a
tease that I need to pay off, I don't know
(25:44):
in the history of that podcast what needs to be
paid off more than that. This podcast is sponsored by Kindrel.
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Super Bowl up the play of the greater thing than
(27:33):
an NFL breath that has got to be the out
of the ball game. A light hacker jup come out
by a bun of people. Welcome back to the NFL
Explained podcast. Mi cam in to d D Kinkawaila with you.
We continue to go through some names in the a
f C. If you missed her n FC conversation and
(27:54):
history behind those team names. All you have to do
is check out our feed and you can download subscribe
to this podcast and we'll have you covered on every
single question regarding the NFL that needs a further x
BLA nation. The Miami Dolphins d D next up on
our list. Nineteen sixty six, that as well, before I
was ever born, which also happens to be the same
year as the first Super Bowl Packers. They beat the
(28:15):
Chief thirty five to ten. That's one of the Miami
Dolphins actually became a thing. The name was popular in
a naming contest among fans since dolphins and I did
not know this, but they are the smartest and the
fastest creatures of the sea. Jason Momoa, He's gotta be
thinking like Aquaman, like are you kidding me? Like I'm
fast to the Aquaman would know? Would that have been
(28:37):
a decent name? I kind of feel like that would
have been sort of relatively cool. Um, we told you
a little bit earlier. But just to revisit this and
to bring it full circle, Miami once did have a
team before the Miami Dolphins, and that was in the
All American Football Conference. That team was named the Seahawks
in six and then I went through that history. They
became the first edition of the Baltimore Colts, because yes,
(29:00):
there was a second edition of that team add You know,
growing up, I feel like they were so many Dolphins
fans simply because they loved those colors and that logo.
There was something about that teal and orange that appealed
to little kids in elementary school. Yeah, and Dan Marino
just as cool. You think two is going to be
(29:20):
like Dan Marino? Is he going to have just as
much of a cult following? You know, our NFL research
team does a tremendous job and sent some stats on
some comparisons between TWA and Marino in the rookie seasons.
Oddly very similar numbers. I think I even saw that
graphic on NFL now cross promotion. Baby. I was on
a plane with Dan Marino recently and it was quite interesting.
(29:40):
There was a police officer who was there to make
sure that nobody bothered him while we were waiting at
the gate to get on the plane. And let me
tell you this is such a like classic Pittsburgh story.
One Dan Marino got on the plane, there were all
these other passengers who went to go talk to the
police officer like it was a contact. High. Wow, you
were close to Dan Marino, so let me talk to
you anyway. I died speaking that also means add what
(30:04):
she left out the story is that it was a
private jet, that that's how it gets around. So it
just happened to be at the gate where, not even
in my dreams. But speaking of larger than life figures,
let's go back to a gentleman we talked about earlier,
Paul Brown. Paul Brown, of course, is the reason that
the Cleveland Browns are named the Cleveland Browns. The Cleveland
(30:26):
Browns are the only team that are named after a
person who is Paul Brown. But even though the Cleveland
Browns named themselves after Paul Brown, they had a very
acrimonious split. Art Model came in as an owner of
the Browns. He and Paul Brown had some friction over control.
The players of the Cleveland brown started feeling like maybe
(30:47):
Paul Brown was no longer meant to be their coach,
and Paul Brown left town. He left town and Cincinnati
decided to launch a new franchise. Paul Brown became an
investor in the franchise in Cincinnati. He became the general
manager and the coach, and he got power over what
(31:08):
he should name his team. And there were again fans
that wanted input. The most popular suggestion at the time
was the buck Eyes. Of course, you know they Ohio
State buck Eyes. Yes, but Paul Brown, in honor of
a football team that had played in Cincinnati in the
late nineteen thirties, said no, no, no, we are going
(31:28):
to be the Cincinnati Bengals, And that name, unfortunately, conjures
up things that I don't think Paul Brown or his
son Mike Brown, who was still in Cincinnati, really would
like at the moment. But it may be a new
day in Cincinnati with Joe Burrow back healthy and you know,
doing all sorts of interesting things. Oh, there's some weapons
for Joe Burrow. Maybe not as much protection up front Penassill,
(31:50):
although Detroit fans probably smiling ear to ear with regard
to that selection. But we'll just move on to the
team names. I don't want to be second guessing organizations here.
The Jacksonville Jags came into existence same year as the Panthers,
part of that expansion, but the name was actually the result.
Oh my god, I'm almost getting like weirded out about
the amount of naming contests that have taken place to
(32:14):
name so many of these franchises. But I love it. Look,
you talked about this earlier Mike, fans say, yes, fans
are the ones that are going to be buying the
team gear, buying the jerseys. They should have a say
in what name they want across the front of their shirt,
and they have. And we have gone through this theme
a lot as we've named some of these teams. I
(32:35):
just think sometimes it almost becomes less creative of a
process if it's just sort of a contest. But nonetheless,
this is where we net out with a lot of
these teams. But the original logo had to be changed
because of the resemblance that they had to be. Jaguar
Car Company, by the way, I would love an F type.
I would love an F type. They say to speak
(32:56):
things that you want into existence, So I'm going to
do that a couple more times during this podcast. We've
now established that Mike loves TVs, he loves fast cards,
and he's you know, not playing against type at all.
I just I'm like simple minded like that, like cool gadgets, cars,
wine and some sports like and I am a very
happy human being. The Ford Motor Company, by the way,
(33:17):
at one time talk about history lessons, here was the
parents company of Jaguar, and they actually were the ones
who are like, no, no, no, dude, like that logo
is too close to our logo. What is awesome about
this story? And I hope many facets of our society
learned from this. No lawsuit was brought to trial both
of these two parties. They negotiated an agreement. Jaguar actually
(33:39):
became the official car of the Jaguars football team. Team
actually redesigned the uniforms. Everyone lives happily ever after, and
we didn't get the crazy lawsuit. Like to me, like,
that's just a huge one. It is just a huge win.
And now all of a sudden, there's pressure on this
team to sort of get out of a little bit
of a funk because they're one of just four franchises
never to be in a Super Bowl. Trevor Yo pressures
(34:02):
on Buddy. Honestly, I feel like the pressure is on
producer Kurt right now because my takeaway from that entire
story is the whole idea of an official car. I mean,
why can't the NFL Explained podcast have an official car? Kurt?
Can you get on that? Maybe F type? I want
an F type. I have an F type Speaking into existence, Mike,
(34:23):
you mentioned wine somebody else who really enjoys his wine
is Ravens current owner Steve Bashotti. But the Ravens actually
came into existence under the previous owner, and that is
art Model. Remember art Model from my story about Paul
Brown and the Bengals are Model. Paul Brown didn't get
along so well. Well, the city of Cleveland decided it
(34:44):
doesn't really love Art Model either, because one night, in
the middle of the night, he decided to spirit his
team away from Cleveland and take it to Baltimore. Now,
it was decided that that club in Baltimore would be
considered a new franchise and therefore needed a new name.
Art Model thought, hey, maybe I can buy the Colts
(35:04):
name back. But the Olds who you spoke about earlier
had moved on to Indianapolis, and Indianapolis didn't want to
let go of its name the Colts. So our Model
turned to what Mike literature And by the way, this
is one of the coolest naming stories that we have.
I actually love this connection. It was actually a naming contest,
(35:26):
and the submission that one was indeed from literature, and
that is the Raven. And the Raven was inspired by,
of course Edgar Allen pose, the raven It beat out
the Baltimore Americans, It beat out the Marauders. You think
about who the Baltimore Ravens have been since their inception,
(35:47):
I mean, you go back to the days of coach
Brian Billick and Jonathan Ogden and Ray Lewis to who
they are now under John Harbaugh, and again, can't think
of a more fitting name, a more fitting logo, a
more fitting mascot. They are absolutely the Ravens. Yeah, and
I love that literature aspect. Although outside of the raven
(36:07):
I don't know if I could recite or name another
Edgar Allan Poe work. The point is I know that one,
and it works really well for that football team, The
Houston Texans, all right, a little bit more of a
history lesson for a younger audience that might not be
super familiar. Texans approved in two thousands to the Houston Oilers,
moved to Nashville became the Titans. As a DV told
(36:29):
us a little bit earlier here at the Texans were
actually added to the league to make up the same
thirty two team league that we actually have and love today.
The team's owner, Bob McNair actually chose that name over
the Apollos, And here's the payoff of my making the
Stallion tease. The Stallions was one of those names that
(36:50):
they actually consider now. I don't know how savage welcome
to the play and the pun uh that would have
been for this team, But the point is the Houston
Texans sort of net out with I think a fitting
name for their organization. The Apollos would have been cooled,
the Stallions would have been really cool, but they become
the six pro team to ever use that name, which
(37:10):
to me is also kind of a cool little nugget there.
You know what would be interesting and we should have
done this actually is what was the success rate of
the previous five Texans teams? I mean, was that a
good name? Is that a lucky name? Is the Texans
a lucky name? I don't know the answer to that.
I hope that this Texans team finds some luck in
the very near future, because they haven't had it seems
(37:32):
like a ton of that add name game. Officially, now
in the books, we have gone through the NFC, we
have gone through the a f C. We're just scratching
the surface here on NFL Explain you are on Twitter.
I am on Twitter at Mike underscore yam. You feel
free to d m me. You can at me if
you are passionate when you just you just lost a
(37:53):
trivia contests add will of course have the answer for
you and she will get back to you right away.
To me add sometimes I'm a little slow on the
response time at a king kabwala. I love engaging with
my Twitter fans. You, my friend, you are here for
answers to your questions. Send them to us and we'll
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(38:17):
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