Long Beach Coast

62

This team has to win the award for the least original name and logo ever. To an extent this is apparent the moment you look at the name. The word beach is in the city name, and the nickname they gave the team is a synonym for beach. Now, to be fair, this sort of thing can work under the right circumstances. The Buffalo Bison picked a synonym of buffalo for its nickname, and that's a good name. The difference is, the name of the city has only an indirect (if not tenuous) connection to the animal. Also, bison are fierce animals, whereas a coast is...sand. So Buffalo Bison can and does work in a way that Long Beach Coast can't and doesn't.

But wait, it gets worse.

There are countless professional sports teams that play in cities that have universities, and as a general rule they avoid using the same nickname as the university does. There has never been a professional team in Durham, North Carolina called the Blue Devils, or the Devils, or the Demons, or anything remotely similar to Blue Devils. There are a few exceptions here and there — there's apparently an Australian football team in Baton Rouge called the Tigers — but these are rare, and I think you'll agree it seems somewhat pathetic to do something like that. Well, guess what. California State, Long Beach's teams are called the Long Beach State Beach. So the Long Beach Coast are ripping off the Long Beach State Beach. And like Buffalo's baseball team, the Baton Rouge Tigers at least have the excuse that tigers are fierce animals, whereas a coast is, again, sand.

And then there's the logo. If the name is ripping off the local university, the logo rips off the local high school (and every other high school in the country) by having a logo that is nothing but the word Coast written in the same fashion as the team name on a high school jackets.

All this is especially weird because the team has announced a second identity, the Long Beach Regulators, which will be as an "alter ego" according to the team. Now, I won't claim that Regulators is the greatest name in the history of baseball, but I think we can all agree it's approximately 34,981 times better than Coast. It also has a connection to the team, as one of the team's co-owners is rapper Warren G, whose song "Regulate" hit #2 on the Hot 100 chart back in the 90s. Why not just make that the actual name? Instead we get what is easily the worst name of any baseball team that isn't deliberately picking a bad name.

Final Score: 62 points.
Penalties: Singular, 15 pts; Script, 7 pts; Letter, 24 pts; Name, 10 pts; Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -6 pts.