gee thanks, you know I read that entire article and totally missed those three sentences. Imust have a mental block.
no I spell lousy cause I don't give a flying ******** about spelling. I instead care about my ability to read the game, knowing what I am talking about, and being able to articulate that knowledge.
Yeah, because Hoops has never been done before. No, actually it isn't. Wrong. Plenty of people already know what it means, but think Hoops is not good. And everyone has a different crowd. Nearly all of the people I deal with....with varying levels of attendence (many fringe FCD/soccer fans), including my wife who has went to most of the games I've went to.....had the reaction to the effect of "Hoops is just what their jerseys look like?; that's stupid." when it was explained to them. Confused is not good. Confusion many times pushes people towards not liking or resenting things. Like ignorance.
Rocket's synopsis is pretty accurate. There was some mention and support of Hoops, but it was, at the best, definately not definitive. Once FCD used it in articles, press releases, and giveaways/merchandise, in addition to giving the team a mascot, thereby limiting naming options (should've been a generic shield/logo if a generic, unimaginative name), there were no other options. We've had these discussions, but I haven't seen this proof of which you speak that contradicts this. Agree completely and one of the better reasons, among a few, why the Hoops moniker isn't that good.
I'm at the point of not giving a big flying eff what other sportswriters in his department think. Hoops might refer to the jerseys but that is what defines a team. You instantly recognize a team by their jersey and having Hoops makes us stand out against the rest of the MLS. I am sure the people to the south don't give a flying eff either what we call ourselves. While I agree that articles should be calling them FCD, the fans I know in 116 love calling the team Hoops. Has anyone seen the movie North Dallas 40? Well the nickname of their team was the Bulls so technically we would be stealing from a movie if we called the team Toros.
I just realized something. There's no way Hoops could have become associated with the team in the days/weeks after the unveiling. They unveiled the logo, not the jerseys that night.As I recall, the immmediate reactions were to use names like 96ers or Dallas 96. We didn't much care for the bull iconography, and when people threw up hook'em horns our allied Aggies were visibly upset. However, not long after the unveiling Buzz posted some ideas of what he hoped the new uniform design would be. A uniform design that became almost precisely the 2005 combo. Discussion started out with us wanting or not wanting a hoops jersey and, once official, morphed into Infernites and other fans calling the team Hoops. I'm not going to delve through the BS archives to find who started the discussion and when but I can guarantee that it preceded anything from the FO. Ah, who am I kidding? I am going to delve through the archives. First mention of hoops in the Dallas forums comes from Buzz in 2002, expressing a hope to see red and black hoops. First full thread on the Hoops topic is also from Buzz and predates the unveiling. For the record, Mud, Zen, Nick, Kev, and Scippy are vocal in support of hoops and nobody fails to understand what hoops means. Also, and full props for this one, Rocket is opposed to hoops, but for the reason that it's "too rugby." I'm glad Rocket is sticking to his guns, but my buddy Ralph thinks a foolish consistency is the hobgobling of little minds. Rocket's thread in the days after the rebrand has many people using Toros, but again this is before there was a jersey. First application of Hoops to the team in general is dated November 2004. By May of 2005, Super Hoops was in steady use when referring to the team, especially for titling pre-, in-, and post-game threads. And, most importantly, during the 24-hour tailgate at the opening of PHP, we came up with the "Sweet Super Hoops" song. Toros has been tried but hasn't caught on with us Anglos. 96ers was popular but has fallen out of favor. Hoops is used and liked, so people who use it will like it and people who like it will use it. Personally, I rarely use Hoops, preferring FCD in writing and in conversation. These thigs change with time. Does anybody still call the Home Depot Center "victoria Street"? Has any nickname (the Oven, The Slice) gained any traction for PHP? I am therefore, going to say this one last time. IF YOU DON'T LIKE "HOOPS", DON'T USE "HOOPS"!!!!! Nobody's forcing you to call this team anything you don't want to call it. If you want to use Toros or 96ers or something else, go ahead. If people don't understand you, that ain't my fault. But DO NOT tell me what I should or should not call my team, especially when it's a name that most people who are fans of the team know it an like it. As for people who don't understand what FC stands for or who think the Hoops are a basketball team, fuck 'em. My target demo does not include the ridiculously ignorant.
Ignorant is thinking that any of the stuff you just said actually is a reason why Hoops is no good but Toros, or anything else, is. Try to come up with some particular reason why it's going to hurt the team. If not, its simply a matter of taste, and it appears, just based on the posts here ,that the name, which pretty much is catching on anyway, is no worse than anything else you can come up with. I mean, do you seriously contend that the name Hoops is pushing people away?
I will not call them the Toros because that was the name of the team that played the Bears in the seminal movie of the 70's, "The Bad News Bears II, soemthing about training or whatever" ........anyhow, the Toros tried to keep the Bears from playing in the Astrodome even though Jackie Earl Haley met his dad and Scott Baio's squatty brother learned how to pitch. That's just fascism and the toro name equals fascism like "Dynamo", or "Lazio", or "According to Jim"............I can't get behind that. In the immortal words of Bob Watson....."Let Them PLAY" Ummm.....what?
Thank you for pointing this out so I didn't have to. again. "Breaking Training" was the title. Toros is a Houston name. Toros is a Houston name. Toros is a Houston name. Apply directly to the forehead. "Baaaaad news for the Toros!" C'mon, didn't anybody study history? Geez, those kids stole a van to get here! The stuff about "Dallas Hoops" is probably a little disingenuous too. Nobody calls them that, even the people who like the Hoops nick. It's just one of those weird football nicknames to confuse the squares and outsiders, like Magpies or Canaries or Addicks, etc.. Or when Frank Luksa and Carlton Stowers and all those sportswriter cats back in the day referred to the Cowboys in affectionate shorthand as "the Pokes"...not the "Dallas Pokes", mind you. Izzz jus' for decoration, thass all. Hoops...you know...for kids. I don't think it's really meant to be a full-fledged replacement for a Traditional US Sports Nickname... ...and that's where a good deal of the problem is, most likely. "What does FC stand for" and all that. People are conditioned to expect sports teams called City+Name of Totem Animal--the Dallas Rottweilers or whatever. As long as there is unease about that (and a few dedicated cranks), we're likely to see a lot of this kind of debate.
nothing actually. DO you want me to go look up all the studies for you about it? It's a clinical fact that people read words as little pictures and misspelled or reversed letters doesn't change the comprehension. give it a try...
Having Hoops as a nickname doesn't hurt the team, but it doesn't really help them that much either. I'd like to see Hoops as our team's second nickname -- kind of like Everton's nicknames are the Toffees (primary nickname) and the Blues (secondary nickname). It's a fact that the newspapers have yet to call the team the Hoops, and probably never will. So at least from a media standpoint, it would be nice for the team to have a nickname that could be regularly used in print. Perhaps "FCD" will end up being the primary nickname used by the fans and media -- that's what I refer to the team as most of the time. But "Toros" wouldn't be bad either, considering it seems to be catching on with the Spanish media, and is traditional type nickname (unlike Fusion, Burn, etc)
in terms of a story on the team in the main stream media, a writer, editor, or paper will only call the team by the AP standard name. FC Dallas... or maybe FCD as the officially approved AP abbreviation of the name. only in a column will a reporter use something slang like Hoops or Toros.
...and dammit...If we going to borrow Hoops from Europe, we can always borrow Rayados from Monterrey.
I think I would like 96ers the best except for the fact that a lot of the teams were founded in 1996.
Umm, I wasn't quoting you. I think you've misread/misunderstood. And either way, my point in that post was that it unlikely, that while a bunch of us think a bunch of different names are best, I seriously doubt anyone is offended by the names we're discussing (Hoops, Toros, 96ers, Stripes, etc). It's really weird/strange if they are.
I think Rocket summed up some of my thoughts: But I will add a little.... I don't think Hoops helps, but the main thing is that I think not having a real nickname hurts. Hoops is inadequate as a primary name, especially for the newspaper/basketball angle. Maybe additional reasons would be that it could be seen as europosing and/or people considering it stupid to name the team after the style of shirt....I mean should "Halves", "Sashes", and the such be used for team names too? Unimaginative at BEST. And as I said many times, I'm really dissapointed that since they were going with a generic name, they limited options by putting a bull on the logo. Toros works for many of the reasons above, especially the fact that it fits the norm in the US and can be adapted by the media for their uses, unlike Hoops. I'm fine as well with hoops as a second "pet name" for the Inferno and whoever else wants to use it, but I think a real nickname is needed. (Red) Bulls was one of the two or three names, along with Hoops & 96ers, that was seriously considered after the uniforms were unveiled is out with the NYRB investment and FCD usage of Hoops in its releases. Toros was bandied about in that argument as an easy translation of Bulls, so it is a nice alternative. Additionally, Toros is already accepted by some of the Spanish-speaking fanbase apparently, and as seen by some media with ToLo. And further it is that American-style nickname that can be accepted and understood by the general (sporting) public (even if spanish...Padres work)...so I'm happy to go with that.
Yeah, naming the team after what they're wearing is absurd. How can MLS have done something so stupid. You'd never catch another pro sports team in the USA doing something so ludicrous. That is, of course, with the sole exceptions of the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, and Cincinnati Reds (and to a lesser extent the Orioles, Tigers, and Cardinals). And surely great confusion abounds when somebody refers to a team as the Burnt Orange or the Maize and Blue.