It looks like your Kansas City Wizards gear might soon be collector's items.
Nothing is official, but the club is expected to make a major announcement Wednesday night at 5:30 in the Power & Light District. That has soccer fans and bloggers whipped into a frenzy anticipating what the team will reveal.
The Wizards won't comment until then, but previously,
speculation/online rumors had focused on the team changing its name
from the apparently meaningless moniker to a more traditional
(and, yeah, European) soccer club name, a la Real Salt Lake.
Then, on Sunday, that line of thinking got a boost of credibility. Wizards fan blog Down the Byline posted a logo (see above)
it says came from an anonymous source who claimed it is the new Wizards logo. If these partially substantiated web rumors are true, the Wizards will be reborn as Sporting Kansas City, the team's third name, after playing their inaugural season
as simply The Wiz.
But, if it pans out, will the fans like it? On the event Facebook page, reaction has been
mixed about renaming their favorite club, ranging from calls to support the team no matter what it's called
(soccer is still soccer, after all), to cranky fans threatening to
cancel their season tickets over the title change.
As one fan
wrote to OnGoal, the team's ownership group: "OnGoal: Thank you for
building the stadium. Thank you for keeping the ownership local. But I
have a deposit on WIZARDS season tickets, and will expect a refund of
that deposit if there are no WIZARDS season tickets to be had. Don't
trash 15 years of history. I'll still go to some games, but I won't be
buying any merch,... and I will abstain from season tickets for at least
2011 in protest of this blatant disrespect of your core fanbase."
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The names, "Sporting Kansas City" and "Livestrong" Stadium may be "politically correct" and "nonviolent," but in my humble opinion, they are an embarrasment to Kansas City.
Sporting Kansas City is certainly a better name than Wizards. Washington has Wizards since bullets was too street. The Wiz became the Wizards. Other than a tie to an old film, there was nothing to link Wizards to KC. Now Sporting Kansas City has the focus on Kansas City.
I would think the focus would be more on Teal Bunberry getting a cap than dropping a name. Team names don't win games, teams do.
Wow... You never realize how much like Comic Book Guy you sound until you're quoted verbatim. Still butthurt about it though.
If "SC" means "soccer club", then the Wizards have successfully taken a "European" name - which really means nothing, like "REAL" Salt Lake - and Americanized it, which is good, because it actually makes sense in our native language.
As long as they still play soccer, they're gonna sell tickets. Especially in that new stadium. The place is going to be crazy.
MLS is dumb, and OnGoal is dumb. Using a "European" terms for your name is pointless when American sports teams are run as franchises.
"Real" Salt Lake is stupid because Real is Spanish for Royal. Teams with the name Real in them were named so because members of the Royal Family were fans. SC refers to "Sporting Club". There are also "FC"s which means Football Club. Teams would use these terms in accordance with what sports their "clubs" played. If you only had a pro soccer team you would be an FC. If you had other sports (i.e. Rugby, cricket, etc.) you would be a SC. As far as I know the Wizards are a franchise and not a club, and they sure don't have other sports within that franchise.
Sporting KC? Is that anything like sporting wood? Smart move, Wizards, but a stupid name.
Apparently, it doesn't take a whole lot for "soccer fans and bloggers to get whipped up into a frenzy"!
The current "frenzy quotient" in the area must be very low.
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