Mississippi Surge

38

When I read that Biloxi's new hockey team was going to be called the Mississippi Surge, one question immediately popped into my head: "What was their reasoning in choosing the name 'Surge'?" Well, that's not entirely true. The question that immediately popped into my head was "You're kidding me, right?" The second question was "What was their reasoning in choosing the name 'Surge'?" No, I take that back as well. I think the second question was, "Would someone please tell me they're kidding?" But the thir— well, I'm not certain it was the third question, either. But eventually I got over the surprise of how stupid the name was, and I'm sure I got around to wondering what their motivation was soon after that.

I'm not the only one asking this question. Apparently some people were rather upset about the name. It reminded them of the storm surge from Hurricane Katrina which, as you may recall, caused a slight amount of damage in the general vicinity of Biloxi. A nearby TV station's website actually gave the story about the name announcement the headlne New Hockey Team Gets Controversial Name. Now, it's true that there is a long history of sports teams being named after disasters that have ruined the lives of locals. Major League Soccer has the Chicago Fire. Arenafootball2 had the Green Bay Blizzard. Baseball's Florida State League has the Tampa Yankees. But naming a team in Biloxi after Katrina may fall under the "Too Soon" category.

But that's assuming that the name does indeed come from Hurricane Katrina, and according to the team it doesn't. The team says the logo (and presumably the name as well) refers to "the electricity our fans will feel during the game" — in short, an electrical surge. This is obviously a better inspiration than one of the five deadliest hurricanes in American history, but it's still questionable. Say "power surge" to most people, and they remember the time a lightning storm permanently zorched their answering machine — hardly a catastrophe, but not a pleasant association, either. And let us not forget that the Mississippi Surge are hockey team, and thus play on frozen water. Does electricity conduct through ice as well as it does through liquid water? Because if so, I don't want to think about a power surge traveling through the ice during the game. Actually, I do want to picture it, and it's a pretty amusing image. But it's not an image I think the team is trying to conjure up.

Fans have also complained about the fact that the team uses the same colors as the Pensacola Ice Pilots (archrivals of the Mississippi SeaWolves a few years back) and the fact that the logo looks amateurish. On the issue of the team colors, I do feel compelled to tell these people to get over themselves. This is a different team in a different league, and blue and yellow is one of those classic color schemes. As for accusations that the logo looks amateurish, I'm right with them on that one. The logo is nothing more than the name with a few modifications. The "R" and "G" have lightning bolts stapled onto them, while the "S" has numerous jagged edges to make it look like a lightning bolt with rickets. For those of you who can't figure out that this is a hockey team, we've got the word "hockey" in the logo. For those of you who can neither figure out that this is a hockey team nor read, we've got a hockey stick in the logo. With the exception of the "S", the whole thing looks like it was put together in MSPaint. In fact, the more I look at it, the more I think it's nothing more than an updated version of the old Toledo Storm logo. That logo, as I mentioned on my review for the the Toledo Walleye, was voted the worst logo in minor league hockey so many times that the team started using that as a selling point in ads for their merchandise. Did the designers of this logo figure that with the demise of the Storm, they could create a clone of that logo and become the new perennial worst logo? I kind of hope so. I'd hate to think any other motivation could have resulted in this.

Final Score: 38 points.
Penalties: Region (egregious), 5 pts; Singular, 6 pts; Name-Logo (quadruply-egregious), 7 pts; Obvious, 6 pts; Equip-Logo, 5 pts; Yucky-Logo, 5 pts; Yucky-Name, 4 pts.
Bonuses: None.