Whenever I think a team is guilty of one of the word-based penalties (the "-ers" penalty in this case), I check the dictionary to make certain the word doesn't really exist. Imagine my surprise when I found that the word "oiler" really exists.

Imagine the surprise of the team's fans when they find out what it means.

For you see, it appears that an oiler is not someone who works on an oil rig, or some similarly manly occupation. According to Merriam-Webster, it is "one (as a workman) that oils something". That makes sense when you think about it. But what this means is that the occupation that comes closest to being an "oiler" is not working on an oil rig, but rather working at a massage parlor.

I don't claim to know what's usually going on in other people's heads, but I promise you that this is not the image people were trying to convey when they selected this name.

Of course, the team tries to drive home the "manly" theme in ways other than just their name. There's the drill-sergeantesque hockey player in the logo. There are all the rivets in the logo. There are all the--

Wait a second. Rivets?

What do rivets have to do with oil? You don't oil rivets, do you? No, of course not -- because you oil things to make them move more easily, and movement is the last thing you want out of a rivet. Okay, yeah, I know there are rivets on oil rigs, but there are rivets on lots of things. Like ships. I wouldn't buy it if you replaced the hard hart with a sailor's hat and used the logo for the Milwaukee Admirals, even if the circle does look like a porthole. So I'm certainly not buying it here.

I know. Those of you with better memories are ready to write me and say, "Wait a second, pal. For the Trenton Titans, you said you liked the rivets." To these people, I say, please note my exact words: "And given the presence of the bridge, I do like the rivets in the word even if they don't have anything to do with titans." [emphasis added] No bridge, no oil rig, no points for rivets. Besides, the Titans' logo is much more original than the Oilers' (and nobody's is much less original than the Oilers'), so I go easier on Trenton.

The plethora of clichés don't exactly bolster my opinion of this thing. Not only are there things that earn penalties, like the hockey player and the cartoony art, but there are also things like the "top half of a figure poking out of a hole" cliché, which I may need to actually make a penalty for, and the "city name written under the team name" cliché. I remember the previous Tulsa Oilers logo (seen at the right). I didn't like it, but I certainly respected it. It was distinct. It was bold and simple. I hated the blue-and-orange color scheme, and thought the white patch on his face made him look like he had a bizarre sunburn, but all in all it was not a bad logo. To say the very least, I don't think the same of this one.

Onto the scoring. Look, you knew this was subjective, right? You knew I sometimes bend rules to pile the points on ugly logos, right? Good, because anyone who didn't know that is about to find out.

"Oilers" is actually a word? So what: It doesn't mean what they're trying to imply here, so they get the "-ers" penalty anyway. I don't see any oil or any actual oilers in the logo, so they're getting the irrelevant penalty. They're getting the "colorful" penalty, and the highlights on the porthole count as "fade". (I originally didn't intend to ever give a team both "colorful" and "fade", but I need to award "fade" more, and no way is this team getting away from a "colorful" penalty. Besides, regardless of my intent, I never actually said I wouldn't give both of them. So there.) Anything else? Oh, I'm sure I can come up with other stuff. Crap logos like this are what inspired this website in the first place, so I'm laying it on as thick as I can.

That being said, I will at least award them -- grudgingly -- the "Local" bonus. After all, there's gotta be a massage parlor somewhere in Tulsa, right?

Final Score: 92 points.
Penalties: -Ers, 9 pts; Cartoon, 17 pts; Irrelevance, 14 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts; Equip-Logo (quadruply-egregious), 25 pts; Colorful, 13 pts; Fade, 6 pts; Ripoff, 4 pts; Yucky-Logo, 5 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -3 pts.