Worshipping Laundry

In earlier times (i.e. last week), this bit of news might have made the files:

The Athletics, formerly of Oakland, are all excited about their impending move to Las Vegas. But they may have to change their name before they go there.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied multiple requests from the A’s for the names “Las Vegas Athletics” and “Vegas Athletics.” The requested trademarks were denied on the grounds the names were “too generic.”

As reporter Josh Gerben writes, “According to the USPTO, the dominant portion of each mark refers to a well-known geographic location (Las Vegas) while the remaining wording, ‘Athletics,’ lacks distinctiveness as applied to the goods and services identified in the applications.

“The examining attorney noted that ‘athletics’ is defined as ‘activities such as sports, exercises, and games that require physical skill and stamina,’ and concluded that the term directly describes ‘the purpose and feature of the applicant’s goods and services.’ As a result, the USPTO found that the marks merely describe a professional sports team located in Las Vegas rather than functioning as unique indicators of source.”

And then you can just fall asleep, assuming you haven’t already done so.

My take:

Back in the day, a sports team’s ethos was all bound up with their ties to their hometown and its fans.  Now?  It really doesn’t matter, because all the hoopla about the “storied franchises” and associated bollocks is tinsel on a dying tree.

As long as a team stuck with what made them unique — e.g. the Pittsburgh Steelers, a name which tied the team both to the city and to the industry which gave the place their ethos (not to mention that the name is kick-ass good) — then there was something to be said for the “brand”.

But if tomorrow the Steelers were decide to move to Shreveport LA, thus giving up everything — the city, their fans, the players, the history — that made them what they are, then why should they try to cling to the Steelers name?  Because without all the other stuff, all they are is, as Jerry Seinfeld so wonderfully put it once in an excellent rant, laundry.

Nowadays, very few players are associated with teams either, because instead of the players choosing loyalty to the team and the city which made them famous, they swap teams (or are traded) to the point where you need to look at their resume just to track their career path.  (Baseball management, by the way, has pretty much made a business out of treating players like disposable resources, and the players have responded in kind by treating each team as nothing more than a meal ticket, so I have little time for either teams or players and their problems.)

And thus with the Oakland As (not “A’s”, FFS), who once represented the city and neighborhood as the gritty working-class underdogs they always were.  So they want to leave Oakland and go play their little game in Las Vegas, but keep their nickname?  Hell, as I see it, the “generic” quality of their desired name(s) actually suits them just fine, because when they decide to quit Las Vegas for Tallahassee or whatever, they can just take their meaningless name with them.