Fan protests are alive and well across the NFL (we're looking at you, Cleveland & Washington), but they’re hardly a modern phenomenon. Here's a look back at a variety of sports protests through the years.]]> In Washington, DC, Redskins fans are mailing “Fan Cards” to team headquarters and local media outlets, renouncing their fandom as a result of the actions of owner Daniel Snyder. In Cleveland, legendary fan “Dawg Pound Mike” is encouraging Browns fans to stay out of their seats for the opening kickoff of the team’s Monday night game against the Ravens next week. And in Oakland, it’s only a matter of time before Raiders fans think of a creative way to protest the dreadful state of the Silver and Black. Fan protests are alive and well across the NFL, but they’re hardly a modern phenomenon. Take a look back at a variety of history’s sports protests and then share your own additions in the comments.

1. Who Needs Tickets? The Mayor, For One

For more than a century, ticket scalpers have drawn the ire of fans hoping to attend a game for a price somewhere close to face value. In 1908, scalpers almost put a stop to the World Series. In Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era, Steven Riess writes that Chicago Mayor Fred Busse was so angry that he hadn’t received tickets to the Fall Classic between the Cubs and Tigers that he threatened to dispatch police officers to prevent fans from entering Chicago’s West Side Park because of alleged building code violations. A league-wide World Series policy prevented teams from selling tickets to individual games, so Cubs officials had sold the tickets to scalpers before making them available to the general public.

Busse eventually secured some tickets, but some equally annoyed Cubs fans boycotted the games in Chicago. Given that the Cubs haven’t won a World Series since, some of those protesters might regret their decision.

2. The Aints

The Saints joined the NFL in 1967 and went 20 years before finishing with a winning record. The team was the laughingstock of the league, even in New Orleans. In 1980, the Saints started the year 0-9, prompting fan Robert LeCompte to produce 5,000 paper bags for fans to wear to home games. LeCompte’s bags, which provided some anonymity for Saints supporters who were too embarrassed to be associated with such a sorry team, were decorated in black and gold and labeled “Aints.” The team’s ugly record was listed below the eye holes, which naturally featured painted-on tears.

“It’s sort of a humorous protest,” LeCompte told reporters in 1980. “If anyone wants to go to the game, but doesn’t want his friends to know it, he can go with the bag over his head.”

According to the New York Times, Derland Moore, who played nose tackle for the Saints from 1973 to 1985, could’ve used one of LeCompte’s paper bags when he went out in public. “We were the league’s doormats,” Moore once said. “When I went out and people would ask me if I played for the Saints, I would say no.”

3. Giants Fans Decide They’ve Had Enough

The 1978 New York Giants started the season 5-3 and were within a game of the division lead when things began to fall apart, just as they always seemed to for the G-Men at the time. New York hadn’t had a winning season since 1972, so it was no surprise that fans’ frustrations bubbled over after the Giants slipped to 5-7 with a loss to division rival Philadelphia. Following that game, an ad appeared in the Newark Star-Ledger prompting disgruntled Giants fans to call a phone number. Those who did were invited to a meeting to decide how Giants fans could best exhibit their frustration with the team’s ownership. “We wanted to do something that would truly get the Giants’ ownership to take notice,” Giants fan Peter Valentine recalled in a 1987 New York Times article. “Burning a ticket? Not enough. Staying away? There are a lot of no-shows late in the season when the weather is bad. What could we do that would really get attention?”

Valentine and his fellow fed-up fans chartered a plane to fly over Giants Stadium during a December game against St. Louis. The plane pulled a banner with the message, “15 Yrs. Of Lousy Football—We’ve Had Enough.” The second part of the message was a reference to Howard Beale’s famous line in Network, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore,” which was released in 1977. The Giants wouldn’t win another championship until the 1986-87 season.

4. Pirates Protest Falls Flat

In 2007, the Pittsburgh Pirates were in the midst of yet another losing season, their 15th in a row. A group of fans who were tired of the team’s hapless performance organized a pre-game rally outside of PNC Park to protest the team’s ownership. The organizers encouraged fans to attend that night’s game against the Washington Nationals and to walk out in protest after the third inning. According to newspaper accounts, only a few thousand fans of the crowd of 26,959 were seen leaving their seats after the third inning and only an estimated 100 actually left the ballpark, some of them to boos from other Pirates fans. “I totally understand the fans’ frustration,” Pirates owner Bob Nutting said during the game. “I respect the people who are trying to make a statement.” An unusual offensive outburst from the Pirates in the form of a six-run second inning may have persuaded some fans to remain in their seats.

5. The Old-Fashioned Protest: A Letter to the Editor

In August 1989, Yankees fan Nicholas D. DeCurtis wrote a letter to the editor of Newsday. His message? Boycott the Yankees. “Realistically, the only way that baseball can perhaps rid itself of this mean-spirited, greedy, egomaniac is if we fans boycott all future games at Yankee Stadium and send the Boss a message—loud and clear—that we are not returning until he unloads the Bronx Bombers, a once-proud and great franchise.” The Boss, of course, was George Steinbrenner, longtime meddlesome owner of the Yankees. Twenty years later, the Steinbrenner family still runs baseball’s proudest franchise and the Yankees have added five more World Series titles to their legacy. Now, more often than not, it’s the fans of other teams who write the letters protesting New York’s free-spending owners.

6. MLBFanStrike.com Strikes Out

Facing the prospects of baseball strike in 2002, less than a decade after baseball’s last work stoppage, a group of fans across the county organized a National Fan Boycott on July 11, the day that the league resumed play after the All-Star Break. Web sites, including mlbfanstrike.com, were launched to promote the boycott, which urged fans to refrain from going to games, watching games, and purchasing MLB merchandise. “It’s time for the fans to take back the game,” Don Wadewitz, one of the organizers, told reporters. “If baseball stops again, a lot of fans aren’t coming back this time. We are fed up.” The protest was perhaps the most organized in the history of baseball, thanks to the advent of the Internet, but the boycott didn’t exactly go as planned. As one reporter wrote in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, “…attendance around the majors was affected. It jumped by 2,000 per game. So much for replacing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ with The Funeral March.”

7. Europeans Show Us How It’s Done

Some of the most effective sports protests take place across the pond among fans of European soccer teams. Recently, fans of the Halesowen Town FC promised to stay away from home matches until Morrell Maison and Kelly Gentles relinquished control of the team. It’s one thing to boycott a dreadful team and quite another to boycott a winner. Halesowen fans continued the boycott despite the club’s strong start to the season, helping put the club in a debt of more than 400,000 pounds. “People are still adamant they won’t support the club until Maison is gone,” said Gary Willets, one of the leaders of the boycott. “It’s a shame because we’re doing well and it would be nice to watch the team. But everyone is looking at the big picture right now.” The boycott was lifted in October after two groups made bids to purchase the club.

8. Eagles Fans Are Good at Booing, Not Boycotting

Sometimes a team has to be torn down before it can be good again. That’s what Philadelphia football fan Frank Sheppard thought of the hometown Eagles in 1968. “The really loyal fans of the Eagles do hope for a bad day,” said Sheppard, who helped organize a fan boycott for a home game against New Orleans after the Eagles started the season 1-11. Sheppard and other fans had grown so frustrated with team owner Jerry Wolman and coach-general manager Joe Kuharich that they took out ads in the local newspapers calling for their dismissal. “To hope for a loss is the best thing an Eagles’ fan could do,” Sheppard said before the game against the Saints. The boycott was a flop—57, 128 fans showed up—and the Eagles won, taking them out of the running to finish with the league’s worst record and the right to the No. 1 draft pick, which Buffalo would use to select O.J. Simpson.

9. Mercury Rising in Support of Brandy Reed

Without fail, when All-Star teams are announced, fans, coaches, and sportswriters will clamor that someone was snubbed. In the case of the 2000 WNBA season, that someone was Phoenix Mercury center Brandy Reed. Mercury fans threatened to boycott the All-Star Game, which was being held in Phoenix, while Phoenix head coach Cheryl Miller grabbed a microphone following the final game before the All-Star break to encourage fans to go to the All-Star Game wearing black shirts in protest. WNBA president Val Ackerman stepped in and added Reed, who was sixth in the league in scoring, to the West’s roster. Crisis averted. If only it worked that way in baseball.

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The Hornets were supposed to be the Spirit, while the Grizzlies were almost named the Mounties. Why is a team in Los Angeles nicknamed the Lakers, and what’s a team called the Jazz doing in Utah? As the NBA season tips off, here’s the story behind the nicknames of all 30 teams. ]]> The Hornets were supposed to be the Spirit, while the Grizzlies were almost named the Mounties. Why is a team in Los Angeles nicknamed the Lakers, and what’s a team called the Jazz doing in Utah? As the NBA season tips off tonight, here’s the story behind the nicknames of all 30 teams.

Atlanta Hawks
In 1948, the cities of Moline and Rock Island, IL, and Davenport, IA—collectively known as the Tri-Cities at the time—were awarded a team in the National Basketball League. The team was nicknamed the Blackhawks, who, like Chicago’s hockey team, were named after the Sauk Indian Chief Black Hawk. When the team moved to Milwaukee in 1951, the nickname was shortened to Hawks. The franchise retained the shortened moniker for subsequent moves to St. Louis and finally Atlanta in 1968.

Boston Celtics
Team owner Walter Brown personally chose Celtics over Whirlwinds, Olympians, and Unicorns (yes, Unicorns) as the nickname for Boston’s Basketball Association of America team in 1946. Despite the warnings of one of his publicity staffers, who told Brown, “No team with an Irish name has ever won a damned thing in Boston,” Brown liked the winning tradition of the nickname; the New York Celtics were a successful franchise during the 1920s.

Charlotte Bobcats
The three finalists in the name-the-team contest for Charlotte’s 2004 expansion franchise were Bobcats, Dragons, and Flight. Owner Bob Johnson was admittedly fond of the winning name—if his first name was Dragon, he might not have been so happy—while some of the league’s players were less than impressed. “It sounds like a girls’ softball team to me,” Steve Kerr told reporters. “I guess it shows there aren’t many good nicknames left to be had.” Bobcats CEO Ed Tapscott defended the decision: “I think the athleticism of the feline species plays well with the NBA concept,” he said. “Bobcats are indigenous to western North Carolina. It has not been used in a pro-sports environment. And, I guess there’s one additional connection people might talk about.” Charlotte had also considered Cougars, the nickname of Carolina’s ABA team in the 1970s.

Chicago Bulls
According to the Chicago Bulls Encyclopedia, team owner Richard Klein was brainstorming nicknames for his new franchise in 1966 and wanted a name that portrayed Chicago’s status as the meat capital of the world. Klein was considering Matadors and Toreadors when his young son exclaimed, “Dad, that’s a bunch of bull!” The rest is somewhat dubious history.

Cleveland Cavaliers
Fans voted Cavaliers the team nickname in 1970 in a poll conducted by the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. The other finalists included Jays, Foresters, Towers, and Presidents. The Presidents nickname was presumably an allusion to the fact that seven former U.S. Presidents were born in Ohio, second only to Virginia. Jerry Tomko, who suggested Cavaliers in the contest, wrote, “Cavaliers represent a group of daring fearless men, whose life pact was never surrender, no matter what the odds.” (Tomko’s son, Brett, has been a big league pitcher since 1997.)

Dallas Mavericks
A Dallas radio station sponsored a name-the-team contest and recommended the finalists to team owner Donald Carter, who ultimately chose Mavericks over Wranglers and Express. The 41 fans who suggested Mavericks each won a pair of tickets to the season opener and one of those fans, Carla Springer, won a drawing for season tickets. Springer, a freelance writer, said the nickname “represents the independent, flamboyant style of the Dallas people.” That’s certainly an apt description for current team owner Mark Cuban.

Denver Nuggets
Denver’s ABA team was originally known as the Rockets. When the team was preparing to move to the NBA in 1974, they needed a new nickname, as Rockets was already claimed by the franchise in Houston. Nuggets, an allusion to the city’s mining tradition and the Colorado Gold Rush during the late 1850s, was chosen via a name-the-team contest.

Detroit Pistons
The Pistons trace their roots to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where they were known as the Zollner Pistons. What’s a Zollner Piston? A piston manufactured by then-team owner Fred Zollner, who named the club after his personal business. When the team moved to Detroit in 1957, Zollner dropped his name from the nickname but retained Pistons. The name was fitting for the Motor City.

Golden State Warriors
The Philadelphia Warriors won the championship in the inaugural 1946-47 season of the Basketball Association of America. The Warriors moved from Philadelphia to San Francisco after the 1961-62 season and retained their nickname. When the team relocated across the Bay to Oakland in 1971, they were renamed the Golden State Warriors.

Houston Rockets
The Houston Rockets originally called San Diego home. Rockets was chosen via a name-the-team contest and was a reference to the city’s theme, “A City In Motion.” Liquid-fuel Atlas rockets were also being manufactured in San Diego. When the team moved to Houston in 1971, it made perfectly good sense to keep the name, as Houston was home to a NASA space center.

Indiana Pacers
According to Michael Leo Donovan’s book on team nicknames, Yankees to Fighting Irish: What’s Behind Your Favorite Team’s Name, the Pacers’ nickname was decided upon in 1967 by the team’s original investors, including attorney Richard Tinkham. The nickname is a reference to Indiana’s rich harness and auto racing history. Pacing describes one of the main gaits for harness racing, while pace cars are used for auto races, such as the Indianapolis 500.

L.A. Clippers
When the NBA’s Buffalo Braves moved to San Diego in 1978, the owners wanted to rebrand the team with a new nickname. They settled on Clippers, a popular type of ship during the 19th century. San Diego had been home to the Conquistadors and the Sails of the ABA during the 1970s. Donald Sterling bought the Clippers during the 1981-82 season and relocated them to his native Los Angeles in 1984. He lost all respect in San Diego but kept the Clippers name.

L.A. Lakers
How many natural lakes are there in Los Angeles? The short answer: Less than 10,000. When a pair of investors relocated the Detroit Gems of the National Basketball League to Minneapolis before the 1947 season, they sought a name that would ring true with the team’s new home. Given that Minnesota is “The Land of 10,000 Lakes,” they settled on Lakers. When the Lakers moved to Los Angeles before the 1960 season, their nickname was retained, in part because of the tradition the team had established in Minnesota.

Memphis Grizzlies
When Vancouver was awarded an expansion franchise in 1994 to begin play the following season, the team’s owners had tentative plans to name the team the Mounties. The Royal Mounted Canadian Police and fans alike objected, so team officials resumed their search for a name. The local newspaper sponsored a name-the-team contest, which club officials monitored before choosing Grizzlies, an indigenous species to the area, over Ravens. When the team relocated to Memphis before the 2002-03 season, FedEx was prepared to offer the Grizzlies $120 million to rename the team the Express, but the NBA rejected the proposal.

Miami Heat
In October 1986, the owners of Miami’s expansion franchise selected Stephanie Freed’s Heat submission from more than 20,000 entries, which also included Sharks, Tornadoes, Beaches, and Barracudas.

Milwaukee Bucks
Given the hunting tradition in Wisconsin, it’s no surprise that Bucks was the leading vote-getter in the team’s name-the-team contest in 1968. For an animal, fans could’ve chosen much worse: Skunks was among the other entries.

Minnesota Timberwolves
The ownership group for Minnesota’s prospective franchise chose Timberwolves through a name-the-team contest in 1986. The nickname beat out Polars by a 2-1 margin in the final vote, which was conducted in 333 of the state’s 842 city councils. Tim Pope, who was one of the first fans to nominate Timberwolves, won a trip to the NBA All-Star Game. Pope submitted 10 nicknames in all, including Gun Flints. “I thought a two-word name would win,” he told a reporter. The most popular entry in the contest was Blizzard, but the team wanted a nickname that was more unique to its home state. “Minnesota is the only state in the lower 48 with free-roaming packs of timber wolves,” a team official said.

New Jersey Nets
The New Jersey Americans joined the American Basketball Association in 1967 and moved to New York the following season. The team was renamed the New York Nets, which conveniently rhymed with Jets and Mets, two of the Big Apple’s other professional franchises. Before the 1977-78 season, the team returned to New Jersey but kept its nickname. In 1994, the Nets were reportedly considering changing their nickname to the Swamp Dragons or Fire Dragons to boost its marketing efforts.

New Orleans Hornets
Most NBA fans know that the New Orleans Hornets originated in Charlotte and have also spent some time in Oklahoma City. Fewer people know that the Hornets were originally going to be called the Spirit. When George Shinn and his ownership group announced that Spirit would be the nickname of Charlotte’s prospective expansion franchise in 1987, the fans voiced their displeasure. It didn’t help that some fans associated the nickname with the PTL Club, a Charlotte-based evangelical Christian television program that was the subject of an investigative report by the Charlotte Observer for its fraudulent fundraising activities. Shinn decided to sponsor another name-the-team contest and had fans vote on six finalists. More than 9,000 ballots were cast and Hornets won by a landslide, beating out Knights, Cougars, Spirit, Crowns, and Stars. Afterwards, Shinn noted that the nickname had some historical significance; during the Revolutionary War, a British commander reportedly referred to the area around Charlotte as a nest of hornets.

New York Knicks
The term “Knickerbockers” referred specifically to pants rolled up just below the knee by Dutch settlers in the New World during the 1600s. Many of these settlers found homes in and around New York City, where a cartoon drawing of Father Knickerbocker became a prominent symbol of the city. In 1845, baseball’s first organized team was nicknamed the Knickerbocker Nine and the name was evoked again in 1946 when New York was granted a franchise in the Basketball Association of America. Team founder Ned Irish reportedly made the decision to call the team the Knickerbockers.

Oklahoma City Thunder
When the Seattle SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City after the 2007-08 season, fans voted on potential nicknames from an original list of 64 possibilities. Thunder was chosen over Renegades, Twisters, and Barons, and the name was extremely well received. The team set sales records for the first day after the nickname was revealed. “There’s just all kinds of good thunder images and thoughts, and the in-game experience of Thunder,” team chairman Clay Bennett told reporters. The SuperSonics had been named for an airplane called the SuperSonic Transport. The plane was to be built by Boeing, which had a large plant in the Seattle area.

Orlando Magic
When the Orlando Sentinel sponsored a name-the-team contest for Orlando’s prospective expansion franchise, Challengers—an allusion to the space shuttle that crashed in 1986—was the most popular suggestion. Other entries included Floridians, Juice, Orbits, Astronauts, Aquamen, and Sentinels, but the panel of judges, including Orlando team officials who reviewed the suggestions, decided to go with Magic. The name is an obvious nod to the tourism-rich city’s main attraction, Disney World.

Philadelphia 76ers
The Syracuse Nationals were relocated to the City of Brotherly Love in 1963 and the team was renamed the 76ers, an allusion to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776.

Phoenix Suns
General manager Jerry Colangelo, only 28 at the time, settled on a name for his expansion franchise using a name-the-team contest in 1968. Colangelo chose Suns over Scorpions, Rattlers, and Thunderbirds, among the other suggestions included in the 28,000 entries. One lucky fan won $1,000 and season tickets as part of the contest, which included such obscure entries as White Wing Doves, Sun Lovers, Poobahs, Dudes, and Cactus Giants.

Portland Trail Blazers
In 1970, Portland was granted an expansion franchise in the NBA and team officials announced a name-the-team contest. Of the more than 10,000 entries, Pioneers was the most popular, but was ruled out because nearby Lewis & Clark College was already using the nickname. Another popular entry was Trail Blazers, whose logo is supposed to represent five players on one team playing against five players from another team.

Sacramento Kings
The Kings’ royal lineage stretches all the way back to the founding of the National Basketball League’s Rochester Royals in 1945. The Royals retained their nickname after a move to Cincinnati in 1957 and became the Kansas City-Omaha Kings through a name-the-team contest in 1972. The name remained unchanged when the franchise relocated to California in 1985.

San Antonio Spurs
A group of San Antonio investors purchased the Dallas Chaparrals from the American Basketball Association in 1973 and promptly changed the team name to the San Antonio Gunslingers. Before the Gunslingers played their first game in their new home, the ownership group renamed the team the Spurs. Some accounts indicate that the name was voted upon in a name-the-team contest. It may have just been a coincidence that one of the team’s main investors, Red McCombs, was born in Spur, Texas.

Toronto Raptors
The ownership group of Toronto’s prospective expansion team conducted extensive marketing research across Canada in 1994 and held a nationwide vote that helped team officials come up with a list of potential nicknames. Raptors, which Jurassic Park helped popularize the year before, was eventually chosen over runners-up Bobcats and Dragons.

Utah Jazz
No, Utah isn’t known for its Jazz. The team originated in New Orleans in 1974 and club officials decided to keep the name after relocating to Salt Lake City in 1979. The Jazz nickname was originally chosen through a name-the-team contest, which produced seven other finalists: Dukes, Crescents, Pilots, Cajuns, Blues, Deltas, and Knights. Deltas would’ve translated to Salt Lake City rather well (the airline of the same name has a hub there), while Cajuns may have been even worse than Jazz.

Washington Wizards
In the early 1990s, Washington Bullets owner Abe Pollin was becoming frustrated with the association of his team’s nickname and gun violence. After Pollin’s friend, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated, Pollin decided to take action and announced his plans to rename the team. A name-the-team contest was held and fans voted on a list of finalists that included Wizards, Dragons, Express, Stallions, and Sea Dogs. Not long after Wizards was announced as the winning name before the 1997-98 season, the local NAACP chapter president complained that the nickname carried Ku Klux Klan associations. Previous nicknames for the franchise include Packers and Zephyrs.

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What’s With Those Uniforms? The Stories Behind the AFL Throwbacks

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the American Football League's launch, here are the stories behind the nicknames and uniforms of the AFL’s Original Eight. ]]> The eight charter members of the American Football League are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the league’s launch by wearing throwback uniforms for select NFL games this season. At various times before the AFL merged with the NFL in 1970, the Titans played in New York, Tennessee and Kansas City’s current franchises were in Houston and Dallas, respectively, and a penny-pinching—and possibly colorblind—general manager in Denver told everyone who would listen that his team’s mustard- and brown-colored uniforms were actually gold and copper. Here are the stories behind the nicknames and uniforms of the AFL’s Original Eight.

Denver Broncos

All throwbacks are not created equal, as the Denver UPS Deliverymen, er, Broncos can attest. It’s a wonder that Kyle Orton and Co. have managed to play so well—they’re one of four undefeated teams entering Week 7—while looking so heinous. At their best, the Broncos’ throwbacks are charming; at their worst, they are “perhaps the ugliest uniforms of all time,” according to New York Times columnist Lynn Zinser.

There’s a perfectly good explanation for this. Operating on a tight budget, Denver’s first general manager, Dean Griffing, purchased the team’s original uniforms from a defunct college football All-Star game, the Copper Bowl. The vertically striped socks, which Griffing claimed made his players look taller, were purchased for cheap from a sporting goods store and only made his players look ridiculous. “They certainly didn’t build confidence,” former player Frank Bernardi told former Broncos announcer Larry Zimmer. To make matters worse, the uniforms didn’t fit. “I used to cut the armpits of them so I could raise my arm to pass,” Denver quarterback Frank Tripucka said. As Ed Gruver recalls in The American Football League, when Denver hired its second coach, Jack Faulkner, the Broncos declared “There’s Lots New in ’62!” Mercifully, that included the uniforms. Faulkner invited players to burn the vertically striped socks at the intrasquad game and designed the team’s new uniforms, which introduced the orange and blue color scheme that Denver has maintained to this day. [Image credit: Eric Lars Bakke/DenverBroncos.com.]

New England Patriots (Boston Patriots)

The Patriots are celebrating their AFL heritage by sporting the uniforms that they began wearing in 1961, including helmets featuring legendary Pat Patriot. The logo, which was designed by Boston Globe cartoonist Phil Bissell adorned the Patriots’ helmets until 1993, when a more modern-looking design, since dubbed Flying Elvis, was introduced.

While Pat Patriot remains an iconic representation of New England’s football history, the Patriots wore an entirely different, often forgotten logo on their helmets for their inaugural season in the AFL. After Patriots was selected as the team’s nickname from among more than 1,000 entries in a public contest, railroad conductor Walter J. Pingree submitted four designs for the team’s logo to owner Billy Sullivan, all of them variations of a three-cornered hat. Sullivan ultimately chose this design and rewarded Pingree with lifetime season tickets and invitations to private team functions. The team switched to Bissell’s design at the end of the 1960 season and, rather than purchasing new helmets, scraped off Pingree’s original tricorne logo. [Image credit: BuffaloBills.com; Boston Magazine.]

Tennessee Titans (Houston Oilers)

Houston, we have a problem, and it’s not the Tennessee Titans’ throwback digs. The Houston Oilers-turned-Tennessee Titans are winless this season, though they’ve managed to look pretty sharp in defeat, thanks to owner Bud Adams’ decision to make Columbia blue his team’s primary color in 1960. Adams, who made his money from oil, said that he selected the nickname Oilers “for sentimental and social reasons.” The Oilers’ red, white, and blue color scheme and the oil derrick on their helmets were staples of Houston’s uniforms until the team left for Tennessee in 1997. The franchise remained the Oilers for two seasons before becoming the Titans. The NFL retired the Oilers nickname after the 1998 season. [Image credit: TitansOnline.com.]

Kansas City Chiefs (Dallas Texans)

Any non-football fans who happened upon the game between the Chiefs and Cowboys earlier this month would have assumed that the Cowboys were the team in red. After all, they were the ones with the silhouette of Texas on their helmets. Before they moved to Kansas City and were rebranded in 1963, the Chiefs were the Dallas Texans. Owner Lamar Hunt, who along with Adams was the driving force behind the creation of the AFL, reportedly wanted his team’s colors to be Columbia blue and orange. Adams beat him to the punch and claimed Columbia blue for his Oilers. Hunt was forced to settle for red and gold, which remain the Chiefs’ colors today.

The Texans enjoyed two successful seasons in Dallas, winning the AFL Championship in 1962, but struggled to compete for fans with the NFL’s Cowboys. Hunt began looking for a new home for his team and found a welcoming suitor in Kansas City. The Chiefs nickname is derived from the nickname of Kansas City mayor H. Roe Bartle, who promised Hunt attendance of at least 25,000 fans per game if he moved the Texans to his city. [Image credit: DallasCowboys.com.]

Oakland Raiders

Chet Soda, Oakland’s first general manager, sponsored a name-the-team contest in 1960. Helen A. Davis, an Oakland policewoman, submitted the winning entry, Señors, and was rewarded with a trip to the Bahamas. The nickname, an allusion to the old Spanish settlers of northern California, was ridiculed in the weeks that followed, and fans also claimed that the contest was fixed. It was well known that Soda greeted people as “Señor.”

Scotty Stirling, a sportswriter for the Oakland Tribune who would later become the team’s general manager, provided another reason to abandon the nickname. “That’s no good,” Stirling said. “We don’t have the accent mark for the n in our headline type.” Responding to the backlash, Soda and the team’s other investors decided to change the team’s nickname to Raiders, which was a finalist in the contest along with Lakers.

There’s some dispute over who designed the Raiders’ logo, a helmeted pirate with an eye patch and a pair of crossed swords behind him. According to former Raider Jim Otto’s autobiography, a high school teacher in Oakland claimed that one of his students designed it, while a man in Hawaii claimed that he modeled the pirate after actor Randolph Scott. [Image credit: Chargers.com.]

New York Jets (New York Titans)

Before they were the Jets, New York’s AFL team was known as the Titans. The nickname was chosen by egomaniacal owner Harry Wismer, because, as he put it, “Titans are larger than Giants.” (The New York Giants were already an established team in the NFL.) Wismer, who was a former broadcaster at Notre Dame, reportedly designed the Titans’ navy blue and gold uniforms to resemble the Fighting Irish’s uniforms.

The Titans’ uniforms weren’t exactly easy on the eyes, but they were less garish than the Broncos’ original threads, which is supposedly why fullback Joe Pagliei signed with New York instead of Denver. Wismer ran the Titans into the ground financially and the team required a $40,000 bailout from the rest of the league to survive the 1962 season. An ownership group led by Sonny Werblin purchased the franchise in 1963, moved home games to Shea Stadium in 1964, and renamed the team the Jets. The team’s new colors, green and white, were symbolic of Werblin’s birthday—Saint Patrick’s Day. [Image credit: NewYorkJets.com.]

San Diego Chargers (Los Angeles Chargers)

Team owner Barron Hilton sponsored a name-the-team contest and promised a trip to Mexico City to the winner. Gerald Courtney submitted “Chargers” and Hilton reportedly liked the name so much that he didn’t open another letter. There are varying accounts as to why Hilton chose Chargers. According to one story, Hilton liked the name, in part, for its affiliation with his new Carte Blanche credit card. The owner also told reporters that he was fond of the “Charge!” bugle cry at the University of Southern California’s Coliseum. The Chargers’ original logo featured both the jagged lightning bolts that remain on the team’s uniforms today and a charging horse. Hilton unveiled the Chargers’ uniforms, which his wife Marilyn had approved, at a cocktail party in Santa Monica in 1960. [Image credit: Chargers.com.]

Buffalo Bills

Owner Ralph Wilson solicited potential nicknames from fans for his new franchise and chose Bills over several other worthy suggestions, including Nickels and Bison. Bills, a reference to the American frontiersman Buffalo Bill Cody, had been the nickname of Buffalo’s football team in the defunct All-America Football Conference. That team began play in 1946 as the Bison and was renamed the Bills in 1947.

Buffalo’s original AFL uniforms were silver and blue and styled after the NFL’s Detroit Lions. In 1962, the Bills underwent a makeover. The team ditched the silver and blue color scheme, as head coach Lou Saban added red and white shoulder stripes to the uniforms. The team also introduced a new logo, a standing red buffalo on a white helmet. In Rockin’ the Rockpile: The Buffalo Bills of the American Football League, authors Jeffrey J. Miller and Billy Shaw describe the logo as “remarkable in its simplicity—a perfect symbol for the no-nonsense, blue-collar city the team represented.” [Image credit: BuffaloBills.com.]

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Goodyear blimps travel more than 100,000 miles each year to cover more than 80 sporting events. Here’s a brief history of how the popular airships have evolved.]]> If you tuned in to Game 1 of the National League Championship Series last night, you were treated to spectacular aerial views of Dodger Stadium and greater Los Angeles courtesy of one of Goodyear’s blimps. America’s most recognizable airships, the tire and rubber company’s “Aerial Ambassadors,” travel more than 100,000 miles each year to cover more than 80 sporting events. Here’s a brief history of how Goodyear’s blimps have evolved.

What’s a Blimp?

A blimp is simply a balloon filled with nonflammable helium and propelled by an engine. Goodyear blimps are powered by two aircraft engines. Lt. A.D. Cunningham of Great Britain’s Royal Navy Air Service is often credited with coining the term “blimp.” As the story goes, Cunningham, who commanded an air station in England during World War I, plucked the material of His Majesty’s Airship SS-12 and it made a strange sound. “Blimp,” is how Cunningham supposedly described it.

The Goodyear Blimp’s Origins

Goodyear has manufactured over 300 airships since the company was founded in 1898. In March 1917, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels awarded contracts to four American firms for the construction of 16 non-rigid airships, of which nine were to be produced by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Two years later, a Goodyear-owned airship being tested for future passenger service caught fire and crashed through the glass roof of a Chicago building, killing 11 people. Determined to maintain its position as America’s leading manufacturer of airships, Goodyear purchased the rights and patents to build zeppelin-style airships in 1924. One year later, Goodyear launched the Pilgrim, the first commercial non-rigid airship flown using helium.

World War II and Beyond

Goodyear provided at least two different types of airships for the Navy during World War II. The first airships were rigid and served as airborne aircraft carriers, but proved difficult to handle in certain conditions and were destroyed. Goodyear later provided non-rigid airships capable of aerial surveillance, which the Navy made use of until 1962. Today, Goodyear operates three non-rigid airships, or blimps: the Spirit of Goodyear (based in Akron, Ohio), the Spirit of America (Carson, Calif.), and the Spirit of Innovation (Pompano Beach, Fla.). The Spirit of Innovation, which was christened in 2006 and is filled with 20,000 cubic feet of helium, is the newest blimp in the fleet and the first to be named by the public in a “name-the-blimp” contest.

Goodyear Enters the Sports Arena

Two years before the Navy discontinued its blimp program, Goodyear pioneered the use of blimps to provide aerial coverage at sporting events.

In 1960, the first images from a camera installed on one of Goodyear’s blimps were broadcast on national television from Miami’s Orange Bowl.

The technology has improved dramatically since then, including the introduction of gyrostabilized camera mounts in 1984. All three blimps in Goodyear’s current fleet feature electronic sign technology and can display text, animation, and video. Cruising high above the action at Super Bowls, playoff games, NASCAR and horse races, and golf tournaments, the Goodyear blimp’s purpose is to see and be seen, and not only by the fans in attendance. If the Goodyear blimp is at an event that you’re watching on television, you’ll know it, and not only because of its distinctive shots. At some point during the game, the broadcasters will announce that aerial coverage has been provided by Goodyear, and they might even mention the name of the blimp’s pilot. The recognition accomplishes the same goal as a 30-second commercial for Goodyear, which will receive a lot of airtime in the coming weeks. “I’d say baseball is where we receive the most recognition,” Goodyear public relations manager Jerry Jenkins told FoxSportsBiz.com in 2000. “During the baseball playoffs in October, our fleet of three blimps can be on the air for as many as 12 to 15 days in the month.”

The Goodyear Blimp on the Big Screen

The tagline for John Frankenheimer’s 1977 film, Black Sunday, sounds like it’s straight out of Beyond Balderdash: “Members of the Black September terrorist group plot to kill thousands of Americans at the Super Bowl in Miami by using a specially designed dart-gun in a hijacked Goodyear blimp.”

The movie was based on Thomas Harris’s best-selling novel and filmed at the Orange Bowl before and during Super Bowl X between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys. An actual Goodyear blimp was used for some of the scenes, while the nose of a blimp was recreated and supported by a crane for the scene in which the blimp enters the stadium.

Other Blimps

While Goodyear’s are the most iconic, other companies, including Budweiser, Fuji Film and MetLife, have advertised with their own blimps over the years. MetLife has brought attention to itself since 1987 via the Snoopy One and Snoopy Two blimps, which provide aerial coverage of more than 60 events each year. Tomorrow, MetLife-owned blimps will hover above the Cotton Bowl for the Red River Shootout between Oklahoma and Texas, and be in South Bend, Ind., where Notre Dame plays host to USC. The Fuji Film blimp was used by the New York Police Department to assist in patrolling Madison Square Garden during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

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This week Carol Greider won a share of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Greider also joined Pierre Curie and Archer Martin among the handful of individuals with dyslexia who have won a Nobel Prize. In honor of Greider’s accomplishment and National Dyslexic Awareness Month, here’s a look at 11 other dyslexic celebrities. ]]> On Monday, molecular biologists Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn became the first two women to share the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Greider also joined Pierre Curie and Archer Martin among the handful of individuals with dyslexia who have won a Nobel Prize. In honor of Greider’s accomplishment and National Dyslexic Awareness Month, here’s a brief background on dyslexia and 11 other dyslexic celebrities.

Dyslexia in Brief

According to the International Dyslexia Association, dyslexia is a language-based learning disability (or difference, if you prefer) that may affect an individual’s ability to read, write, spell, and pronounce words. It is the most common learning disability. While the effects of dyslexia range from mild to severe, an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the population has some of the symptoms of dyslexia. It’s unclear what causes dyslexia, but imagery studies reveal that a dyslexic person’s brain develops differently than someone without symptoms of dyslexia. Contrary to popular belief, people with dyslexia do not read “backwards,” though many dyslexics do a variety of other interesting things, as you’ll read below.

1. Henry Winkler

With his greased hair, leather jacket, and jeans, Winkler was the epitome of cool during his decade-long run as Fonzie on Happy Days. If only Winkler, who was diagnosed with dyslexia when he was 35, knew how to ride the motorcycles that were as much a part of the Fonz’s character as his signature two thumbs up. “One of the effects was being unable to make my brain understand how to coordinate the clutch, throttle and brake on a motorcycle,” Winkler said of his dyslexia in 2008. “There was just no way I could figure it out, so I never got to ride that cool Harley-Davidson.” Instead, the motorcycle was mounted on a wood base with wheels for all of Winkler’s riding scenes. Winkler was ridiculed for his dyslexia as a child – his parents called him Dumb Dog – so it’s no surprise that he’s become an activist for others with dyslexia. Since 2003, he has published more than a dozen books about a fictional 10-year-old boy with dyslexia named Hank Zipzer. The books have sold more than 20 million copies.

2. Keira Knightley

Knightley, who starred alongside fellow dyslexic Orlando Bloom in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, has her dyslexia to thank for jumpstarting her acting career. Well, sort of. Knightley took an interest in acting at a very young age, but struggled to learn to read. When she was six years old, her mother bribed her with a promise to get her an agent if she practiced reading every day during the summer. “She felt so guilty at having made a six-year-old daughter do this that she had to get me an agent at the end of it,” Knightley recalled in 2003. Bizarrely, Knightley’s former school headmaster questioned the veracity of her claims that she was dyslexic in 2004, to which Knightley replied, “Of all the things you could lie about, I’m not quite sure you would lie about that one.”

3. Ingvar Kamprad

Ever wondered why IKEA products are named after Swedish places and things? Kamprad, the company’s wealthy founder, is dyslexic, and thought it would be easier to remember product names that way. The acronym IKEA is made up of the initials of his name, the family farm where he was born (Elmtaryd), and the nearby village of Agunnaryd.

4. Whoopi Goldberg

Goldberg dropped out of high school, became addicted to drugs, married her drug counselor, and had a child by the time she was 19. She wouldn’t be diagnosed with dyslexia until years later. “You don’t want to be retarded all your life,” Goldberg told Ebony magazine in 1991. “I was retarded for a good part of mine, according to all the paperwork, and I just couldn’t handle it.” Goldberg eventually got her life on track, catching her big break when Steven Spielberg, a dyslexic himself, cast her in The Color Purple. “I knew I wasn’t stupid, and I knew I wasn’t dumb,” Goldberg said in 1994. “…If you read to me, I could tell you everything that you read. They didn’t know what it was.”

5. Bruce Jenner

Jenner, who won a gold medal in the decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics and was diagnosed with dyslexia at a young age, has often described his dyslexia as his greatest gift. “If I hadn’t been dyslexic, I wouldn’t have won the Games because it made me special, being dyslexic,” he said in 2004. “If I would have been average like everybody else, I wouldn’t have needed sports at a young age.”

“I always tell dyslexic kids, ‘You may think of this as a big problem now. But it may be your greatest gift. It makes you special. Now your job is to find out what you’re good at and go for it.’”

Jenner has helped preach this message through his role as a motivational speaker and as the host of Demystifying Dyslexia, a documentary that describes modern learning tools for people with dyslexia.

6. Alyssa Milano

Milano, who will be starring in the upcoming ABC comedy Romantically Challenged, copes with her dyslexia on the big stage by following a tip she received from the late British actor Sir John Gielgud. Milano starred alongside Gielgud in the made-for-TV adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost in 1986. “When I asked him how he memorized his monologues, he said, ‘I write them down,’” Milano recalled in 2003. “I use that method to this day. It not only familiarizes me with my words, it makes them my own.”

7. Ozzy Osbourne

MTV’s hit reality show The Osbournes was originally slated to have sub-titles because nobody could understand what Ozzy was saying. “Even I couldn’t understand what the [expletive] I was talking about on television,” Osbourne told The Daily Telegraph. Osbourne grew up a severe dyslexic and dropped out of high school, turning to music, drugs, and alcohol to occupy his mind and time. During a 2007 interview with the London Evening Standard, Osbourne explained why he’s never read the Bible. “Have you ever tried to read that thing? I wouldn’t have wanted to be alive in those days, when Adam lived to be, like, 1,000 years old. I can’t do it, being dyslexic. By the time I finished page one, I’d be dead.”

8. Cher

Cher dropped out of high school before launching her successful career and wasn’t diagnosed as dyslexic until she was 30. The diagnosis came only after she arranged medical tests for her daughter, who was struggling in elementary school. “I’m a terrible reader,” Cher said in 1985. “I don’t write letters. Numbers and I have absolutely no relationship. I can dial a phone OK, as long as it’s not long-distance. I write the first letter of the word, and my mind races to the last letter. I see words and jumble them together. I see great billboards, billboards no one has ever invented.”

9. Jay Leno

The former host of The Tonight Show attributed the drive and perseverance he needed to succeed in comedy to his dyslexia. Leno, who received poor grades throughout elementary school, has said that one of his favorite career moments was calling up his fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Simon, 40 years after getting a C- on a paper about astronaut John Glenn and asking him to watch him interview Glenn. “I had Glenn sign a thing for Mr. Simon and I got my paper upgraded from a C- to an A,” said Leno, who received a B.A. in speech therapy from Emerson University.

10. Agatha Christie

A number of accomplished writers are believed to have had dyslexia, including Hans Christian Anderson, Lewis Carroll, W.B. Yeats, and Christie, the British mystery author and playwright. “I, myself, was always recognized…as the ‘slow one’ in the family,” Christie reportedly once said. “It was quite true, and I knew it and accepted it. Writing and spelling were always terribly difficult for me. My letters were without originality. I was…an extraordinarily bad speller and have remained so until this day.”

11. Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab prefers oral communication to the written word, which is perhaps one of the reasons his firm’s marketing campaign suggests that you “Talk to Chuck” rather than write to him. Schwab, who wasn’t officially diagnosed with dyslexia until he was 40, graduated with a degree in economics from Stanford in 1959. “The first two years [at Stanford] I struggled because there were so many subjects,” said Schwab, who read the comic-book versions of classic books to get by. “I flunked English twice. They just passed me through the third time. I got an F in French. I had a tough enough time with the first language. When I came out of public high school I thought I could charm my teachers. I found out in college I couldn’t.” Schwab persevered and, in 1971, founded the brokerage firm that still bears his name.
* * * * *
Indeed, this list could have gone to 100. Share your stories of other famous people, friends, or family members living with dyslexia—or of living with dyslexia yourself—in the comments.

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Ever wonder what a Canuck is? How about a Blue Jacket? With the NHL season kicking off this week, here's a breakdown of how the league’s 30 teams got their names.]]> Ever wonder what a Canuck is? How about a Blue Jacket? With the NHL season kicking off this week, here’s a breakdown of how the league’s 30 teams got their names.

1. New York Rangers
In 1925, the New York Americans joined the National Hockey League and played their home games at the old Madison Square Garden. Tex Rickard, the boxing promoter and ex-gold prospector who built and owned the arena, decided he wanted his own NHL team, which he was awarded in 1926. Rickard’s team was immediately dubbed “Tex’s Rangers” as a pun referencing the paramilitary force founded in Texas during the 1830s. The Americans folded in 1943, while Tex’s Rangers remain.

2. New Jersey Devils
Given that New Jersey has never been known for its mountains, the team needed a new nickname after the Colorado Rockies relocated to the Garden State in 1982. The New Jersey Sports and Exhibition Authority sponsored a statewide newspaper contest to determine the new nickname and some of the other finalists included Americans, Blades, Coastals, Colonials, Gulls, Jaguars, Meadowlanders, and Meadowlarks. While some fans objected to the winning selection on religious grounds – one threatened the life of a reporter who was covering the search – the Devil has an entirely non-religious folk history in New Jersey. According to legend, a harmless creature known as the Leeds Devil, or the Jersey Devil, roamed the Pine Barrens in the southern part of the state from 1887 until 1938.

3. New York Islanders
When New York’s expansion Major League Baseball franchise held a name-the-team contest in 1961, Islanders finished third behind Mets and Empires. Eleven years later, Islanders was selected as the nickname for New York’s new hockey team, which plays its home games on Long Island.

4. Philadelphia Flyers
The team sponsored a name-the-team contest after Ed Snider, then-vice president of the Philadelphia Eagles, brought hockey back to the City of Brotherly Love in 1966. Snider’s sister, Phyllis, reportedly suggested the name Flyers, which sounds good when paired with Philadelphia but doesn’t have any real meaning.

5. Pittsburgh Penguins
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sponsored a name-the-team contest, but Carol McGregor, the wife of one of the franchise’s part owners, Jack McGregor, was the one responsible for the nickname. In his book, Pittsburgh Penguins: The Official History of the First 30 Years, Bob Grove describes how Carol McGregor came up with the name. “I was thinking of something with a P. And I said to Jack, ‘What do they call the Civic Arena?’ And he said, ‘The Big Igloo.’ So I thought, ice. . . Pittsburgh. . . Penguins.” More than 700 of the 26,000 contest entries were for Penguins.

6. Boston Bruins
When grocery store tycoon Charles Adams brought a team to Boston, he hired former hockey great Art Ross to serve as his general manager. Adams tasked Ross with coming up with a nickname, with one of the requirements being that the team’s colors would be the same as his grocery store chain – brown and yellow. Ross decided on Bruins.

7. Buffalo Sabres
When Buffalo entered the league in 1970, owners Seymour Knox III and Northrup Knox wanted the nickname for their new team to be unique. The brothers sponsored a name-the-team contest and decided on Sabres, with a buffalo featured prominently in the team’s logo.

8. Montreal Canadiens
In 1909, John Ambrose O’Brien created the Club de Hockey Canadien. Ambrose wanted his team, a charter member of the National Hockey Association, to appeal to Montreal’s francophone population and he hoped to drum up a rivalry with the city’s established team, the Wanderers. The Canadiens are often referred to as “The Habs” or “Les Habs,” an abbreviation of “Les Habitants,” the name for the early settlers of New France.

9. Ottawa Senators
The original Ottawa Senators, founded in 1883, won 11 Stanley Cups. When an NHL team returned to Ottawa in 1992 after a nearly 60-year hiatus, the nickname, a reference to Ottawa’s status as Canada’s capital city, was an obvious choice.

10. Toronto Maple Leafs
Conn Smythe purchased Toronto’s hockey team in 1927 and one of his first orders of business was renaming the team. The franchise that began play as the Arenas in 1917 changed its nickname to St. Patricks in 1919 to attract Toronto’s Irish population. Smythe eventually decided on Maple Leafs, for a couple possible reasons. Smythe fought in the Maple Leaf Regiment during World War I, and there was a former Toronto hockey team called the East Maple Leaves.

11. Atlanta Thrashers
Ted Turner named Atlanta’s 1997 expansion team after the brown thrasher, the state bird of Georgia.

12. Carolina Hurricanes
After the Hartford Whalers moved to Raleigh in 1997, new owner Peter Karmanos, Jr. named his team after the devastating storms that regularly ravage the region.

13. Florida Panthers
Had Tampa Bay been awarded a baseball team in the early 90s, they likely would’ve been called the Florida Panthers, a reference to the endangered species of the same name. Instead, the nickname was adopted by Florida’s second NHL team. When Panthers president Bill Torrey revealed the nickname, he told reporters: “A panther, for your information, is the quickest striking of all cats. Hopefully, that’s how we will be on the ice.”

14. Tampa Bay Lightning
In 1990, a thunderstorm served as inspiration for then-president of the Tampa Bay Hockey Group Phil Esposito’s decision to name his team the Lightning. Esposito said that in addition to being a natural characteristic of the Tampa Bay area, Lightning expressed the fast action of a hockey game.

15. Washington Capitals
Washington owner Abe Pollin decided on the perfectly apt nickname Capitals after staging a name-the-team contest.

16. Chicago Blackhawks
World War I veteran and coffee tycoon Frederic McLaughlin was Chicago’s owner when it entered the NHL in 1926. McLaughlin named the team after the 86th Infantry Division in which he served. The “Black Hawk Division” was named after Chief Black Hawk of the Sauk American Indian tribe, who fought the Illinois militia in 1832. The nickname was officially changed from Black Hawks to Blackhawks in 1986.

17. Columbus Blue Jackets
Blue Jackets was the winning entry in a name-the-team contest. According to the team’s website, the name “celebrates patriotism, pride and the rich Civil War history in the state of Ohio and, more specifically, the city of Columbus.” Ohio contributed more residents to the Union Army than any other state during the Civil War.

18. Detroit Red Wings
After purchasing the Detroit Falcons in 1932, James Norris renamed the team after the “Winged Wheelers,” the nickname of the Montreal Hockey Club for which he once played. Norris chose a winged wheel as the team’s logo, a nod to Detroit’s growing reputation as the heart of the automobile industry.

19. Nashville Predators
A vote by the fans helped determine Nashville’s nickname, a reference to the saber-toothed tiger remains that were discovered during an excavation in the city in 1971.

20. St. Louis Blues
According to the team’s website, owner Sid Saloman Jr. selected the nickname Blues in 1967 after W.C. Handy’s song, “St. Louis Blues.” Mercury and Apollo were two of the other nicknames that were considered. The space capsules bearing those names were built in St. Louis.

21. Calgary Flames
The Flames played in Atlanta from 1972 until 1980 and their nickname was a reference to the burning of Atlanta by General William T. Sherman during the Civil War. While the team moved, the nickname remained.

22. Colorado Avalanche
Rockies, the nickname for Colorado’s hockey team that left for New Jersey in 1982, had been adopted by Denver’s baseball team by the time the Quebec Nordiques left Canada for the Front Range in 1995. Management originally wanted to name the team Extreme, but received all sorts of negative feedback, and justifiably so. Avalanche, which eventually beat out Black Bears, Outlaws, Storm, Wranglers, Renegades, Rapids, and Cougars, drew some criticism, as well, given their deadly nature. A member of the marketing group responsible for naming the team replied: “This is the NHL, a rough and tough sport, and Avalanche is something that matches the ‘on the edge’ feel they want to create. Hey, Cougars and Bears kill people, too. People shouldn’t get so excited about Avalanche being a disrespectful name or something. It’s just a name.”

23. Edmonton Oilers
Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, is also the oil capital of Canada. Edmonton began play in 1972 in the World Hockey Association and retained the name Oilers when it joined the NHL in 1979.

24. Minnesota Wild
In 1998, Wild was chosen from a field of six finalists, which also included the Blue Ox, Northern Lights, Voyageurs, White Bears, and Freeze. (Voyageurs were the working-class employees of fur trading companies in the region during the 1700s.)

25. Vancouver Canucks
Johnny Canuck, who originally appeared as a Canadian political cartoon character in 1869, was reinvented as a comic book action hero who fought Adolf Hitler, among other villains, during World War II. Canuck is also slang for Canadian, making Vancouver’s hockey team the Canadian equivalent of the New York Yankees – with a little less money.

26. Dallas Stars
When the Minnesota North Stars, whose nickname was decided by a fan contest, moved to Texas in 1993, they ditched the “North” and didn’t feel compelled to replace it with “South” or “Lone.”

27. Los Angeles Kings
The late Jack Kent Cooke, who owned the Los Angeles Lakers and later the Washington Redskins, settled on Kings as the team nickname from entries submitted in a fan contest. The Los Angeles Monarchs played in the Pacific Coast Hockey League during the 1930s and Cooke’s new team adopted the same royal color scheme as the Lakers.

28. Anaheim Ducks
Quack. Quack. Quack! Quack! QUACK! Anaheim joined the NHL in 1993 and its team was known as the Mighty Ducks, after the wildly popular Disney movie and cross-marketing vehicle of the same name. The nickname was changed to Ducks and the logo was changed in 2005 after Disney sold the team.

29. Phoenix Coyotes
The Winnipeg Jets moved to Phoenix in 1996 and Coyotes was the winner in a name-the-team contest that attracted more than 10,000 entries. Scorpions was the runner-up.

30. San Jose Sharks
Sharks was chosen from 2,300 entries in San Jose’s name-the-team contest. The other finalists included Rubber Puckies, Screaming Squids, Salty Dogs, and Blades. Blades was the most popular entry, but ultimately rejected because of its gang implications. When the nickname was chosen, seven shark species made their home in a stretch of the Pacific Ocean off the California coast called The Red Triangle.

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As the “Breakfast of Champions,” Wheaties won’t put just anyone on their iconic orange boxes. But there have been a handful of lesser-known people featured through the years. Here are six of them.]]> As the “Breakfast of Champions,” Wheaties won’t put just anyone on their iconic orange boxes. Most of the athletes to appear on the General Mills cereal’s boxes since Lou Gehrig became the first in 1934 have been household names from a major sport. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Ken Griffey Jr. come to mind. But there have been a handful of exceptions to the rule. Here’s a closer look at some of the less familiar names to hit the breakfast table on boxes of Wheaties over the years.

1. Denny Brauer, Angler

After he won Angler of the Year honors in 1998, Wheaties made Brauer the first fisherman to appear on the front of the box. PETA objected to Brauer’s depiction and distributed postcards in protest that referred to fishermen as “cereal killers” and included the message, “Weenies: the Breakfast of Lip-Rippers.” Wheaties issued the following statement in response: “We certainly respect their right to object and protest our decision, but we must disagree with PETA when they say that fishing is not a sport.” According to the New York Post, nearly 75 percent of the boxes featuring Brauer were bought within the first week of their release. David Walker, the 1999 Angler of the Year, also appeared on a Wheaties box.

2. Myriam Bedard, Biathlete

Representing Canada, Bedard won two gold medals in the biathlon at the 1994 Lillehammer Games, including the 7.5 km race on a pair of mismatched skis. Following her Olympic triumphs, she was the toast of the town in her native Quebec. In addition to landing on the front of a Wheaties box, Bedard appeared on various magazine covers and was named to the Order of Canada. She married fellow biathlete Jean Paquet in a highly publicized ceremony in Hawaii, but her life would later take a bizarre turn for the worse. Bedard divorced Paquet and was arrested in 2006 for allegedly abducting their 11-year-old daughter and bringing her to the United States, a violation of a child custody order. Bedard returned to Canada in 2007 and appealed the ruling earlier this month, arguing for an unconditional pardon that would wipe her criminal record clean.

3. George Murray, Wheelchair Racer

In 1961, 14-year-old George Murray was paralyzed in a hunting accident. Twenty-three years later, he appeared on the cover of a Wheaties box. Murray, a two-time Boston Marathon champion in the wheelchair division, was one of six athletes selected in Wheaties’ first “Search for Champions” contest. A native of Maine, Murray won in Boston in 1978 and 1985 and was the first wheelchair racer to break the 4-minute mile barrier. Murray, who graduated from the University of South Florida with a physical education degree, was selected by a panel of judges from a pool of more than 6,000 entrants. The other winners in the contest were Jody Lynn Beerman (Ms. Indiana Basketball), Sammy Chagolla (Arizona high school wrestling champion), Leslie Deniz (discus thrower and Olympian), Mary T. Meagher (swimmer and three-time Olympic gold medalist), and Chris Spielman (high school linebacker). Spielman would go on to star in the NFL.

4. Peter Gagarin, Orienteer

When Gagarin learned he was one of six winners in Wheaties’ second “Search for Champions” contest, he told reporters that the honor fell “some place between mind-boggling and hokey.” Gagarin was a five-time U.S. champion in orienteering, which involves using a map and compass to navigate unfamiliar terrain while competing against other teams. Gagarin hoped his appearance on boxes of Wheaties would bring some recognition to the sport, which originated as a military exercise in Scandinavia in the late 1800s. Gagarin recounts the tremendous backing he received from the orienteering community throughout the nomination process on his personal website. A panel of judges, including Hank Aaron, Walter Payton, and Peggy Fleming, selected the six winners, one of whom was a whitewater canoeist.

5. Marie Bartoletti, P.E. Teacher and Marathoner

In 2001, Wheaties sponsored a contest in search of an everyday champion from all 50 states, six of whom would be selected to appear on boxes of General Mills’ new Wheaties Energy Crunch cereal. Bartoletti, a marathon runner, triathlete, P.E. teacher, and mother of two from Finleyville, Pa., won the contest, which required entrants to submit a 300-word essay. In addition to appearing on the front of the box –- the five runners-up were relegated to the back — she received $5,000 and General Mills donated $25,000 to the charity of her choice, the American Heart Association.

Some people’s life goals might start and end with appearing on a Wheaties box, but not Bartoletti’s. Three years after appearing on the box, she achieved her goal of participating in a marathon in all 50 states.

6. Eiji Oue, Conductor

Just how does a conductor wind up on a box of Wheaties? Being appointed music director of the orchestra in the same city as the corporate headquarters of General Mills is a start. Oue appeared on 8,000 boxes distributed in Minneapolis, a small part of a $500,000 advertising campaign to coincide with the appointment of the little-known conductor to his new post after five years as director of the Erie (Pa.) Philharmonic. “I never used to have breakfast, but I guess I will now,” Oue, a protégé of Leonard Bernstein, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Oue left the Minnesota Orchestra three years later to expand his career in Europe.

Who’s Next?

Beginning in January, athletes –- and perhaps musicians, too –- will have another piece of real estate to strive for in the cereal aisle. Wheaties is introducing Wheaties FUEL, an offshoot of their traditional product engineered by nutritionist Dr. John Ivy in collaboration with five world-class athletes, including Peyton Manning, Albert Pujols, and Kevin Garnett. If you can’t wait a few months to get your first taste, collector’s edition boxes featuring the five athletes who helped engineer the product, are currently available online. As far as we can tell, no orienteers were involved in the development process.

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