Ottawa Titans

159

A few years ago, I wrote the following as part of my review for the Ottawa Champions:

"This has got to be the most arrogantly-named team in all of North American professional sports, possibly in all of sports anywhere on the planet. Sure, other teams give themselves names like Giants, Angels, and so forth, names which imply supernatural qualities or powers. But people understand there are no actual Giants or Angels playing baseball, so they understand these names are, and indeed must be, metaphorical. But there are real teams of champions out there, so to call yourself the Champions isn't the same thing as calling yourself (for example) the Titans."

Obviously, I had no way of knowing that the next time I did a review for a baseball team in Ottawa, that team would be called the Titans. But it's an amusing coincidence.

The Champions, incidentally, folded when the league they played in, the Canadian-American Association, merged with the Frontier League but the Frontier League decided they didn't want a team in Ottawa. You will note that the Titans are a Frontier League team, so either the Frontier League changed its mind or it was never about Ottawa so much as it was about the Champions. I'm not sure precisely why they would want to keep out the Champions only to let another team in a couple of years later. Granted, the Champions were pretty bad, failing to make the playoffs four years out of the five they existed. But the one year they did make it, they won the playoffs. I'll be generous and assume the Frontier League just changed their mind.

In that Champions review I commented that the logo was an uninspired smörgåsbord of baseball logo clichés. The Titans, I have to say, aren't any better. There's the goofy, cartoony Titan in the logo. There's the city skyline. There's the baseball in a circle. And while the name isn't written in baseball script like some teams, it is in one of those old-timey fonts reminiscent of the Giants or the Red Sox. In fact, it is the exact same font as the San Francisco Giants use, and is even curved across the logo in the same way. Honestly, the more I look at it, the more the whole thing looks somebody decided to just rip off of the Giants logo, but make a few changes in the hope that no one would notice.

Sorry, guys, I noticed.

Final Score: 159 points.
Penalties: Scenery, 11 pts; Equipment, 13 pts; Obvious (egregious), 35 pts; Cartoon, 47 pts; Player, 51 pts; Logo, 12 pts.
Bonuses: None.