Word: zollner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...forget it. (For those overwhelmed by a need to know, hoya is short for Hoya saxa!, a garbled Greek and Latin cheer meaning "What rocks!," and tarheel originated during the Civil War as a disparaging term for folks from the Carolina pine forests.) Few knew what the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons were when a pro basketball team played under that name. (They were players owned by Fred Zollner, who also happened to own a piston factory in Fort Wayne.) The early vogue of naming a team for a person seems to have come to an end with Paul Brown...
...Zollner Pistons eventually became the Detroit Pistons, showing that some nicknames travel well. The Brooklyn Dodgers, named for the difficulty of evading trolley cars in the famous borough, are now the Los Angeles Dodgers, where evading mayhem on the freeways is equally hard. The name Los Angeles Lakers, however, makes no sense at all, though it did when the team was in Minnesota. Utah, with its Mormon tradition, could easily have accepted the New Orleans football team (the Saints, as in Latter-Day Saints and saints who go marching in). Instead it got the New Orleans basketball team, now known...