by TomG » Sat Sep 03, 2011 2:02 pm
I'm going to preface this story with this: I'm generally a nice guy. The reason for this disclaimer? One season a few years ago I wound up having a little too much fun with my team names and logos and wound up offending some people. Back in 2005 a buddy of mine, who was originally from Louisiana, started a fantasy football league called "the Gulf Coast Football League". That was the year that both Katrina and later Rita devastated the Gulf Coast (in fact, some of the guys where drafting during Katrina). I asked the commish if he thought anyone would get offended if I named my team Katrina. I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, and I knew and fully understood the devastation it caused, I was just trying to make light of a terrible situation (and in retrospect, and with the additional years of maturity, it was a dumb idea). The Commissioner thought it would be fine so I did. Well halfway through the season a small controversy arose where a guy had the commish set his lineup after the fact, as he had lost electricity. In the aftermath the guy sent out an angry email to the league about how hard it had been and in the email decided to randomly say, "So if anyone wants to name their team Katrina or Rita, I don't care!" The next day I changed my team name from "Katrina" to "Katrina or Rita"
Same league, the next year, I named my team "Your team sucks!" during the draft. Once the season started I would change my team name weekly to whatever my opponent's team name was sucks and would PhotoShop a new team logo mocking their team name (frequently just a picture of what their team name represented with a circle and a line through it). Halfway through the season the Commish changed the rules so owners could no longer change their team names and logos. Before he locked it in I changed my team's name to "oppressed by the man."