Genocide, Terrorism, Alcohol: Professional Sports Teams Liable to Be Bullied Into a Name Change (Part 1)

John Rich1/17/2025 5:30 PM

Education Images. Getty Images.

There's a tremendous amount of good that comes from American professional sports. A successful sports franchise can take a struggling economy and flip it on its head. It can provide a city with hope when they're at their lowest. The New Orleans Saints winning the Super Bowl post Hurricane Katrina galvanized the city in a way only sports could. It can't be stressed enough how much the Los Angeles Rams playoff win over the Minnesota Vikings last weekend meant to the celebrities who lost everything they owned in a blazing wildfire just days prior.

But there's a dark side of sports as well. And it's our responsibility to shine a light on the negative aspects. Once every few years, society comes together for a good ol' fashion internet nickname shaming, and bullies a billion dollar company into a complete re-brand. Doing so makes us good people. It's only a matter of time before we strike again. By my calculations, there's at minimum 16 teams who are a viral incident away from a PR nightmare, and will someday be holding an online vote to determine which new family friendly nickname their fans will hate the least.

Atlanta Braves

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The Atlanta Braves are seemingly the professional sports organization who's nickname is next in line on the ~~chopping block~~ cutting board. By the skin of their ~~heads~~ teeth, they managed to avoid the fate of the Washington Redskins & Cleveland Indians, who in 2020 finally bent the knee and rebranded their organizations after decades of protest.

Probably because Native American communities in the greater Atlanta area are by and large fully supportive of the name and even the tomahawk chop. The Braves have established partnerships with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians & the Native American Working Group. They collaborate closely with the Georgia Council on American Indian Concerns to support economical development, protect Native American history, and create initiatives to highlight the contributions made by Native Americans in their region.

But thanks to a mass genocide in the 1600's, the voices of benevolent American's who are in no way shape or form affected by the name, far outweigh the few remaining Native Americans who actively benefit from the Atlanta Braves being named what they are. In the end, that may be enough to force the Braves into a change. Even if it has a direct negative impact on Native American communities in the region. Sometimes you have to lead a horse to water to make them realize they've been offended.

Chicago Blackhawks

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Unlike the Atlanta Braves, the Chicago Blackhawks do not have the full throated support of Native American communities in the Chicago area. The Blackhawks logo depicts an Indian named Black Hawk, who many Native American groups, including descendants of Black Hawk himself have actively called for the team to stop using his cartoon head as their logo.

Black Hawk was the leader of the Sauk people, who were brutally slaughtered while defending their homeland during the Battle of Bad Axe. After the battle, Black Hawk was taken prisoner by future President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, who took Black Hawk on a tour of the United States to show off as a trophy of war. After Black Hawk died, people robbed his grave and severed his head. Some of his remains wound up at a museum. That museum was eventually burnt to the ground.

However… the Chicago Blackhawks jersey is really cool. So cool. I mean look at it. It's a classic. Some say they're the best uniforms in sports. It's nearly impossible to convince someone to part ways with a logo that looks that sharp on a sweater, no matter how racist. That's why the Nazi's were so successful. They looked so damn spiffy in their Hugo Boss designed S.S. uniforms, they managed to convince all of Germany and half of Europe to commit genocide against other white people. And despite Hugo Boss outfitting the entire Nazi Party, they are still a thriving company to this day. Because they make a really nice suit. This is what the Sauk people are up against.

Kansas City Chiefs

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The Kansas City Chiefs round out the Native American portion of this blog. Naturally, Native American themed nicknames are most susceptible to ~~getting the axe~~ change, as there are real life people you can point to and say, "Their culture is being mocked". There's always a disconnect between Native Americans and the sports fans who use their culture as a costume, because to people like me, their culture is objectively cool. Do you have any idea how powerful you feel when you wield a tomahawk? Or the amount of respect you command at a Kansas City Walmart when you purchase tailgating supplies in a gigantic feathered headdress? It's intoxicating.

People protest the Chief's organization the same way they do everyone else, but for some reason the protests don't seem to reach a national audience quite as often. I've never felt like the Chiefs were under much pressure to change. Deadspin tried to make it happen by dragging a child across the internet for cheering on the Chiefs in black face.

Unfortunately it was only half black face, and the small child turned out of be of Native American descent. Deadspin was sued into oblivion. Ironically, the efforts of our country's most progressive keyboard ~~warriors~~ social justice seekers did nothing but set back any actual progress Native American organizations may have made when it comes to changing the Chiefs.

Pittsburgh Pirates

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Despite the sheer destruction caused by these homicidal boat dwelling terrorists during the Golden Age of Pirates, they're looked back on with rose-colored glasses. When we think of pirates we don't think about their unspeakable acts of violence, or the number of lives they ruined. Maybe it's because Blackbeard carried out his atrocities with a wise-cracking parrot on his shoulder. Or because his merry men sang fun sea shanties as they tied men up and raped their wives.

Or more realistically, that's just what 400 years of time does. The classical pirate is no longer a threat. Their crimes against humanity don't seem real. Nobody has a grandpa who's childhood home was pillaged by Calico Jack. So the pirate is nothing more than a mythical villain who makes for an intimidating mascot. Maybe 400 years from now, thanks to a cutting edge pedophilia vaccine, pedophiles will be a mythical thing of the past. The NFL will add an expansion team called the Charleston Child Predators, and people will think it's a bad ass nickname because pedophiles aren't real, and 'I'll Be Missing You' by Diddy is still a banger in 2425.

You could also take the Somali pirate angle. Somali pirates have atrocious PR. I bet they're sick and tired of being viewed as menaces to society without receiving any of the fanfare their pirate ancestors did. Captain Phillips was the Somali pirate's one big movie and they could not have gotten a worse edit. But what if they took matters into their own hands? There's a sizable Somali population where I used to live in Columbus, Ohio. If for some reason they re-located to Pittsburgh, and started showing up to Pirates games in droves dressed as Somali Pirates…

AFP. Getty Images.

Which would be tough to do without guns and shitty motor boats. But with tattered clothing, the proper head wraps, and some creative signs, they could get their point across. If real Somali pirates started flying Pittsburgh Pirates flags, and wore Andrew McCutchen jersey's as they held cargo ships at gun point… If Somali pirates can manage to attach themselves to the Pittsburgh Pirates in a public way, that would put the Pirates' organization in a tough spot. When you lay out the facts, you can't really argue that the classic Blackbeard style pirate is any better than the modern day Somali pirate. They were most likely worse. It could force Pittsburgh to change their nickname altogether.

P.S. I suppose you could say the same about the Bucs and Raiders, but without the threat of Somali pirates appropriating your brand. But I'm not writing 2 more paragraphs about pirates.

Milwaukee Brewers

Matt Marton. Getty Images.

One alcohol related death occurs every 39 minutes in the United States alone. 11,000 people die each year from drunk driving accidents. In November 2021, Raiders' wide receiver Henry Ruggs, with a blood alcohol level of 0.16, crashed his Corvette at 156mph on a Las Vegas city street, killing a lady and her dog. Henry Ruggs is up for parole next year. If he can still run a 4.2, he may be back on an NFL roster. But for the rest of their lives, the family of the lady who Henry Ruggs killed will be forced to re-live that moment every time the Milwaukee Brewers take the field, and fans celebrate the people who effectively killed their daughter by brewing the evil elixir that made Henry Ruggs drunken joy ride possible.

New York Jets

Ryan Kang. Getty Images.

A lot of people thought the New York Jets would undergo a re-brand immediately following 9/11. A New York City football team that crashes & burns season after season being named after Osama Bin Laden's weapon of choice would be too ironic to keep around. But amidst a major national security overhaul and a full-blown war in the Middle East, the New York Jets' triggering nickname managed to slip through the cracks.

Now that the memory of 9/11 is all but forgotten, jets pose a whole new problem for society. Carbon emissions. The carbon emissions from Taylor Swifts' private jets alone would be enough to evaporate a small African village. With nearly 100,000 commercial flights taken per day, unless Elon Musk blesses us with electric planes, or we finally get around to building the high speed rail that takes people from LA to New York to London in 90 minutes, our planet will soon be extinct. According to the giant doomsday climate clock in Union Square, the earth is going to explode in less than 5 years.

Gina M Randazzo. Shutterstock Images.

Pretty sure that's what the clock is telling us. How much longer will the New York Jets let themselves be named after something that's trying to kill us? There's too many parallels to be drawn there. Commercial jets are killing the environment… the New York Jets are killing their fans… the 9/11 thing again… stuff of that nature. Eventually they might have no choice but to change their name to something less embarrassingly apropos.

San Diego Padres

Daniel Shirey. Getty Images.

The origin of the San Diego Padres' nickname dates to back to the Spanish missions in California. If you're aren't familiar with the Spanish missions, unlike me who definitely knew about them before reading a Wikipedia page just now, the Spanish missions were "communities" set up across California in the late 1700's by the Spanish Empire. As part of the expansion of New Spain, they wanted to shove Christianity down the indigenous people's throats. The missions were led by Spanish priests, aka Friars, aka Padres, who's goal was to convert the locals into Christians.

As a part of these missions, unmarried indigenous girls as young as 7 years old were separated from their families and shipped off to special houses called Monjerios. The Monjerios were bad. The living conditions in the Monjerios were likened to a prison. The girls were used for labor. They were allegedly beaten and raped by the Padres.

Donald Miralle. Getty Images.

It begs the question, in the Padres classic "friar swinging bat" logo, what exactly is the jolly friar knocking out of the park? A hanging slider? Or the skull of a teenage girl he's punishing for giving birth to a still born? Which is allegedly something the girls were beaten for.

MLB.com doesn't do them any favors by specifically referencing the Spanish missions on their official website in an explanation of the Padres nickname. The Padres' certainly don't do themselves any favors by making their mascot a pervy bath robe wearing sex monster.

Donald Miralle. Getty Images.

It's hard to watch a Fernando Tatis Jr. home run without thinking about an innocent girl being taken from her parents and shipped off to a sex dungeon. But if there's one area of the country that would be quick to pull the trigger in the face of an internet-wide nickname shaming, it's Southern California.

This concludes part 1 of, "Genocide, Terrorism, Alcohol: Professional Sports Teams Liable to Be Bullied Into a Name Change"

Part 2 coming soon. You'd be surprised how many problematic teams you can identify when you put your cancelling pants on and start looking at things through a "Why are they bad?" lens. I've got at least 7 more teams who are ripe for a PR nightmare if the wrong person makes a fuss. I'm already a little worried I might accidentally start something with the Padres. Sorry San Diego. I'm sure most of the Padres were good. Maybe.

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John Rich1/17/2025 5:30 PM