Writing, Running, & Rebranding

* I have to address the recent name/logo reveal of the upcoming NWSL team for Boston. BOS Nation FC.

* BOS Nation is the single worst professional team name in American sports. There are D3 schools with much better names. There are USL and PLL teams with better names. There are fantasy sports teams with better names. The local women’s Football team is called the Renegades. They get it! This name is so bad that the ownership group should be stripped of the team and a new group found. They are completely out of touch with sports.

* In sports you want tribalism. That is kind of the point. Sports are a healthy way to express our tribal instincts. They are supposed to be totemic. Team names should conjure an image that puts us in awe. Reminds us of something powerful, makes us think of something fast, or strong. This is why big cats and birds of prey are so popular. They bring about thoughts of soaring, feelings of predation. They help us imagine being wild, free, and dangerous. Even the human names work this way. Imagine a Cowboy, imagine a Pirate, or a Miner, or Patriots and you get that sense of exploration, adventure or toughness. Nation fails this test. It fails it harder than anything I can imagine. I would have felt more intimidated by the Boston Toddlers. Or the Boston Iced Dunkin on a Cold Winter’s Day. Now that is something badass to put fear in the hearts of your opponents. Are you tough enough to handle Iced Coffee in 20 degree weather?

* Look at European soccer teams. Billionaires and consultants only see the FC, but they miss the Red Devils (Man U), the Magpies (Newcastle), the Wolves (Wolverhampton Wanders), and I could go on. Dig further into Eastern Europe and you will see a ton of Spartas, Lokomotives, and Dynamos, all fulfill the western call for a totemic name. These are powerful things that make you want to be a part of their fight. And whether these were team names or things the fans pushed, they are now as part of the teams as their color schemes or badges.

* Women’s sports are in a tough place right now. They are about to boom, they are about to take off and enter the big time. This is great and I want this to happen! But growing pains suck. We have forgotten the growing pains that men’s sports have gone through. Teams moving west, free agency, strikes, games on cable tv, all of these were growing pains. Some of the growing pains women’s sports in the US are about to go through will be the same as the men’s, others will be different. The women’s teams do not have legacy territorial rights, legacy radio broadcasts and are dealing with streaming world right off the bat for big tv deals. But the big challenge tight now is finding a way to be familiar while standing out. This is tough. And I feel for the owners of Boston’s NWSL team.

* It can be done right, though. We can look to recent expansion teams to see how to do this better than Bos Nation. The WNBA has the Golden State Valkyries and the NHL has the Seattle Kraken and Vegas Golden Knights. All three of these are slam dunk wins. These nicknames all evoke things of power. You do not want to fight any of these things. Sure, do you want to a fight AN ENTIRE NATION? Well maybe…what if that nation is Tunisia? Or Ireland? Or Panama? I would go fight Iceland. Maybe their point was that Boston is tougher than other cities, HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES! Well other places are tough (and other places have apples).

* The issue goes beyond the name. Go look at that picture at the top of this post. That’s the badge. Yeah, it’s just as bad as the team name. The colors are fine, but please make it look like it belongs to a sports team! A badge needs to be compact and tight. It is your quickly identifiable logo. It is the Alligator, the Moose, the Guy on a Horse, on your polo shirt. It is the thing on the front of the baseball hat. This looks like the name of a movie theatre opened by some tech bro that got rich by having the right roommate in college. The kerning of the FC compared the the BOS is off because of the random sparkle. Why not use the sparkle as the O in BOS? The top line of the logo wood look tighter that way. It is an ugly logo. Because it is impossible to make a nice logo from this crap name.

* Please sign the petition, and please keep the pressure on Boston’s NWSL team to fix this. The video needed an apology and I am glad it got one. But the rest of this launch needs fixing as well. If you want to reach mainstream popularity, then I am part of the target audience here. I love sports, and I live in suburban Boston. But I won’t support this crap, I will actively root against it,