Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Origin of Bay Area AUDL Team Names

Two 2014 expansion teams in the West Division of the American Ultimate Disc League provide background on their team name.

The San Jose Spiders explains the team was:
"named for the internet term for bots that crawl through the web & collect data for search engines. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the team name is a tribute to the great tech tradition that has been a part of Silicon Valley."

Fifty miles away is their California neighbor. The varied ways the San Francisco team was initially being presented (see below) has since been sorta fixed - "FlameThrowers" (one word, capital F & T) in copy; "FLAME THROWERS" (two words, all caps) in logo.

Screengrab of Fb site [November 2013]

In a December 22nd reply via their Facebook page, the SFFT explained their team name:
"First and foremost, we do not intend to use militaristic imagery. That has never been our intention, and we ask anyone with that kind of message to please find another venue. We do believe strongly in the SoTG, and its goal of non-violence and direct conflict resolution.

For us, the FlameThrower is the athlete—traditionally a pitcher—who "brings the heat" and throws the ball, or disc(!), hard and with authority.

Finally, we've also seen a few snide comments about the FlameThrowers name and the LGBT community in San Francisco. We want to make absolutely clear that language or behavior that makes any members of the SF FlameThrowers community feel unwelcome will not be tolerated on this platform or at any SF FlameThrowers events."

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