I'm feeling somewhat embarrassed right now.

Longtime readers of this website (or people who have been here for three days but just read every single page because it's a slow day at work) know that my wife and are are the proud possession owners of a greyhound. Related to this is the fact that my wife and I enjoy watching dog shows on TV. For fairly obvious reasons, we're particularly interested in the Hound group.

So as I was beginning this write-up, I had this nice little intro going about how the name of the team was "SteelHounds", but this steel "hound" didn't actually look like a hound. He looked more like a beagle.

Here is today's trivia question: Which group does the AKC classify the beagle as?

Now, in my defense, I should point out that I am outrageously biased when it comes to the matter of dogs, and nowhere does this manifest itself a strongly as it does on the issue of the Hound group. (Yes, I know: I am defending my intelligence by admitting that I am the canine equivalent of a racist.) The Hound group can basically be divided into two subgroups -- sighthounds and scenthounds. Sighthounds are sleek, swift, handsome dogs of a noble demeanor such as the greyhound, Scottish deerhound, borzoi, and Irish wolfhound. Scenthounds, on the other hand, are squat, funny-looking, feces-sniffing dogs such as the bloodhound, coonhound, and -- you guessed it -- the beagle. So the long and short of this is that when I think of hounds, I'm thinking of something very different than a beagle.

My biases aside, beagles are indeed hounds, and this is not a bad rendering of a dog, as such things go. It's not perfect, mind you: There's the rather worrisome dent in his head, and the jaw appears to be dislocated. But still, compared to the dog in the similarly-styled logo for the defunct Grrreenville Grrrowl, it's pretty good.

The same can not be said about the name. The name demonstrates the shortcomings of the whole concept of picking names with a geographic tie to the city the team calls home. This concept does give us some good names, such as New Orleans Saints, New England Patriots, and Dallas Mavericks. But these names work in part because these places have something to celebrate. Youngstown, I'm guessing, is a little lacking in this department. When your idea of civic pride is to say "Hey, we're part of the Rust Belt!", then perhaps it's time to go with a generic name like Eagles. And lest anyone think the Pittsburgh Steelers make Rust Belt names acceptable, let me state that "Pittsburgh Steelers" is the dumbest name in the NFL. Even "Green Bay Packers" is better (though not by much).

The other problem with the name is it creates what can best be described as a very short, very bad poem:

Youngstown
SteelHounds

The bad rhyme is obvious. The other problem is that it doesn't scan at all. It's in spondaic monameter, if such a thing exists. In other words, every single syllable in the "poem" is stressed, and there's only one "foot" per line. Granted, they couldn't change the name of the city, but they could have picked a nickname that added a little variety to the name's rhythm. This is especially true since they had to make up a word to make it sound this bad. I freely admit that the poetry I wrote back in college wasn't the greatest in the world, but I think I can safely say it was better than this.

Let's go back to the logo. Like I said, the beagle is well drawn, but that doesn't change the fact that having a beagle in the logo is a questionable choice. Beagles may be hounds, but they're not particularly intimidating unless you're a fox. (Or my greyhound, I have to confess, but he's got issues.) The hockey sticks that are just sort of hanging in midair -- they're too low to be clenched in his teeth -- look pretty odd.

As for the way the word "SteelHounds" is written, I'm not sure what I think. It took me a while to figure it out, but the way the word is written in white and is clenched between his teeth indicates that it's supposed to represent a bone. But like I said, it took me a while to figure that out. I'm trying to decide if that proves it doesn't work very well, or if it's just another example of my being dense today. (I'm leaning toward the former, but I'm biased.) If that is the intent, I would point out that most bones wouldn't bend that much even if you had boiled them for a week.

Basically what I'm saying here is that between the name and the logo, there's a fair amount of stupidity going on. Almost as much -- but not quite -- as forgetting that a beagle is a hound.

Final Score: 25 points.
Penalties: Compound, 13 pts; Software, 8 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts; Yucky-Name, 5 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -3 pts.