Fantasy Football Team Names and Logos
Your Team Name isn’t Punny Any More
We get it. You named your team “Rollin' With Mahomies” last year because “Mahomies” rhymes with “Homies” and you had Patrick Mahomes on your roster.
Lol.
Oh wait…The comedy of that was lost a mere moment after first read. And now that Mahomes isn’t on your roster this year, you are going to have to rebrand yourself yet again. You aren’t alone though, because the other owners in your league brandishing names like “Little Red Fournette” and “The Blair Walsh Project”, are also going to have to start over again.
My biggest fantasy football pet peeve is having to dig around for which owner I’m actually playing on a weekly basis, because some dumb-dumb decides to change their name every week. Annoyances aside, the downfall of this is that any sense of team tradition is thrown in the garbage the moment the name gets changed. You don’t see established NFL franchises changing their name or logos (unless of course they move cities), and neither should you. It’s Branding 101.
Stop Yourself and Your Owners From Changing Names
There’s an intangible value in establishing a set team name.
Imagine what would be taken away from the New England Patriots legacy if one year they called themselves “A Mingo Ate My Brady” and the next year they were “Gronky Tonk Man”. You would look back in the history books of Super Bowl Champions and just be like, “What the f*ck? Who won Super Bowl LIII…’Ladies and Edelman’?!?”
We established a rule in our league to charge owners $10 to perform a name change. That small barrier retained owners civil liberties, but also incentivized them to not change their name very much. In the 25+ years of this league, this action has result in only a couple team name changes.
Another benefit of not changing team names is that it alleviates the need to change a team logo from year to year.
Create Set Logos for Each Team
It’s called “fantasy football”: meaning it should be a simulated reality of owning a football franchise. Everyone should thus have a fantasy logo that one could picture on an imaginary uniform and helmet. Is this take nerdy? Yes, yes it is. But it’s also awesome. And who doesn’t want their league to be more awesome.
While not everyone in your league has the artistic chops to create their own logo, even the most crude drawings will be more meaningful down the line than some stupid cat GIF that was had it’s 15 minutes of fame on Reddit, and is now very tired.
As a commissioner, you have a couple of options:
Have all of the members in your league create a logo and provide it to you.
Create the logos for all of the teams.
The first option works best if you provide the tools and setting to do this.
In one of our first seasons, I brought a bunch of drawing supplies to our draft, and required everyone to create draw a logo before the draft would begin. It may sound corny, but actually a bunch of half inebriated dudes forced into craft time was incredibly funny, and made for some ridiculous results that we still use as logos today.
The second option (creating logos for the teams) is a fine approach as well. This is because an owner who doesn’t like the result will be incentivized to put the work into making their own.
There are a plethora of online tools to help even the most unartistic bunch in creating a logo. Below are some resources you (or your owners) can use to create some semi-quality logos to start with. Most of these tools were made with small business logos in mind, but there’s nothing stopping you from using them to make a fantasy football logo.
Logo by Shapefactory: Nice logos can be created, but they are watermarked (unless you buy them)
Launchaco: Free, but again pretty basic.
Logopony: One of the better free logo wizards we came across.
Looka: AI powered logo maker
Above you will see logos that I was able to create from the five different example platforms. Each only took about 1-2 minutes to get made.
If you Google “Free Logo Maker” you can find even more platforms that provide this same kind of service.
Another option to consider is Fiverr, where you can pay creatives a small fee (as low as $5) to create a custom logo based on a description you provide.
Start Establishing Names and Logos Now
Once you start establishing team names and logos, some fun traditions can come out it. In a couple of my leagues we honor the winner each year with a professionally printed “Super Bowl Champion” t-shirt baring the team’s name and logo. While some of the names and images are usually NSFW, they are fun to wear at the league events.
Also, all of our annual draft packets and website feature all of our logos along side of our team names. The best part is we can look at the Historical Records, or list of Super Bowl Champions, and not have to guess who the owner was, as opposed to a giant list of expired and outdated pun names. Instead, the name simply says “Randall Rabid Squirrels”, a brand that is as strong as “Coca-Cola” or “IBM” within the little bubble of our fantasy league.
Now that you have the tools and know-how, you too can take your league to a new level of awesomeness, and maybe even create a LEAGUE LOGO!