The Big Ten As A Fictional League
by Cairo on Jul 25, 2010 12:05 PM CDT
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Print[Bumped, and make sure to read through to Akron's fictional name.--AJ]
I downloaded a demo of a game from 2005 called "Bowl Bound College Football." I'm not promoting it, not getting money from it, in fact I haven't even played it. Why I'm posting is because of the rare opportunity to see farcical leagues and team names. Before EA Sports was wise enough to come to exclusive agreements with the NCAA and all of the professional sports leagues, video game companies had to invent team names that didn't violate licensing--which led to some ridiculous names for players and teams. With the licensing, gamers didn't have to spent hours setting up all of the names and teams to match reality. This is largely why there are almost no other companies that make sports games.
Not the folks behind Bowl Bound College Football -- they cast caution to the wind and put out this football manager-style game sans licensing agreement. The results remind me of the days playing basketball on the 8-bit Nintendo as the Los Angeles "Waves" against a friend who always picked the Boston "Greens."
Without further ado ladies and gentlemen, I present you the license infringement-bending MIDWEST TEN!
Herky the Harvester.
A true blend of wonderfulness from top to bottom. Beware the Indiana Heroes! Fear the Ohio State Dollah Dollah Bills (or perhaps they are forecasting Tressell's Buffalo Bills-like run in the BCS Championship Game?). Your underclassmen are no match for the Penn State Cougars! etc., etc.
The capstone, however, is easily "NW Illinois". Because just Northwestern wouldn't be descriptive enough. Add in "Wild Dogs" as a mascot (a nickname shared with NC State) and it sounds like the lame culmination of a mid-'90s sports marketing effort. Kudos to the folks at this company turning just another direction into a CFL expansion team: THE NORTHWESTERN ILLINOIS WILD DOGS!
Other great names from around the "NCL"
- Syracuse Heat (umm... because the sun is orange, y'know)
- East Carolina Swashbucklers
- Akron Zaps
Source: image.guardian.co.uk
- Utah Runnin' Elk (doesn't even seem like they're trying at this point)
- and the Arizona State Flaming Beasts.
Unless otherwise expressly indicated by BHGP editors, this FanPost is strictly the viewpoint of the author and is not endorsed by BHGP in any way.
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Minnesota Bulldogs?
now that’s an unworthy upgrade, couldn’t they at least keep it in the rodent family?
How about the Minnesota Azure Gerbils?!?
Keeping wildlife, an amphibious rodent, for uh, domestic, you know, within the city - that aint legal either, Dude.
by AcrimoniousAngerererer on Jul 23, 2010 3:43 PM CDT reply actions
Awesome find.
I’m not sure I see jNWIllinois as a wild dog, but certainly wild something.
Friend of the Pants since 2009.
jNWIL is a wild campfire cinder that happens to land in the middle of my bush
Then it burns. And smells.
That’s not good for anyone.
So fuck them.
No self-respecting man from Iowa goes anywhere without beer
by Hayden Fry's Moustache Ride on Jul 24, 2010 1:10 AM CDT up reply actions
Burnt Sausage pleases no one.
"Oh no, don't do that, don't do that. If you shoot him, you'll just make him mad." - The Waco Kid
Arizona State Flaming Beasts?
Something tells me conservative groups could find just as much wrong with that as “Sun Devils”.
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
I don't know...
I recall when Rudy Gay was still at UConn- one of those web programs that wrap up sites in charmany-soft cuddliness auto-correcting words in national stories so they wouldn’t harm their reader’s delicate sensibilities – renamed him Rudy Homosexual.
One man doing the work of 100's for the good of 1000's
Coincidentally, that's also the auto-correct for "Notre Dame."
/cashes in some equality and inclusiveness points stored over the years
Can we please...
Edit the Black Heart Gold Dictionary to say jNWIL rather than the standard jNU?
"You're going to go out there with a dick full of confidence. Then, you're going to go out there and shoot that confidence all over the stadium." -Blue Mountain State
Iowa State?
Did you see what they called Iowa State? Or did the game creators forget that they existed. Which would be extremely understandable.
There is no way that Paki rushes for nine yards. -KenOKeefeIfuckinghateyou.
The Iowa State Tornadoes
…which play in the Great Plains 12 Conference. They play in the same conference as the Kansas Magpies and the Texas Bulls.
So Kansas is always off looking for new shiny things?
Lew Perkins thinks that sounds about right.
"I want to be a cowboy. I don't want to be a panda. Pandas are boring, stupid and boring. Bad panda!"
Magpies?
Now that is awesome. Please tell me Louisville’s mascot is the Scarlet Tanager.
Friend of the Pants since 2009.
by ReadingRambler on Jul 26, 2010 9:33 AM CDT up reply actions
I've always considered a Jayhawk...
…as the result of a wild night in Vegas between Foghorn Leghorn and Woody Woodpecker.
The apex
of this phenomenon was the Super Nintendo’s Super Play Action Football, which turned the private (i.e. non-geographic) schools for which they couldn’t break copyright into a series of bad puns. Tulane became “Two Lanes,” Rice became “Nice,” etc. It shouldn’t bug me that I can’t remember more of them, but it does.
That makes sense now.
Rice Owls are the “Central Texas Night Hawks” but Tulane is Tulane.
Added bonus, the “South Bend Leprechauns.”
Bill Walsh College Football
also had this problem, but they just replaced all the “State” schools with the city the school is in, leading tens of thousands of kids to ask their television screen, “what the fuck is Pullman?”
I got more rhymes than Wade Lookingbill's got dunks
Oh, Washington State....
Your location always makes me want to insert a dirty joke about the entire campus being in the same Pullman bed.
Whores.
Me gustan los estados unidos.
The Pullman Porters?
I’m surprised that you couldn’t actually get away with things like “Wazzu” or “Mizzou” unless those are actually somehow trademarked.
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
by Kyle McCann't on Jul 26, 2010 2:29 PM CDT up reply actions
What if you used "s" instead of "z"...
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
by Kyle McCann't on Jul 26, 2010 3:10 PM CDT up reply actions
It only changes to an "s" if Lou Holtz is saying their name.
by Eyeheartfreedumb on Jul 27, 2010 9:42 AM CDT up reply actions
They put there panths on the thame way we do!
Who's leg do I have to hump to get a drink around here?-Brian
I still have that game and an SNES...
….I literally just played it in the man cave last week (while jacked up on doctor perscribed muscle relaxers – - to make it seem a little faster) and I’ve been wracking my head all day to think of some of the other puns.
by Eyeheartfreedumb on Jul 26, 2010 3:58 PM CDT up reply actions
I'll write em all down tonight (I forgot it was in 1992 before re-allignment, and I'd like some help identifying some of the teams)...
…but a few jems:
Purdue Pursue
Duke Fluke
(my favorite) Dartmouth Smart Mouth
Interesting note: All of the Big Ten teams (pre-Penn State) are named after their state, and that’s it, except for Purdue (as noted above the name had to be changed) and Northwestern (who, for obvious reasons, remained just Northwestern- – I mean, c’mon, it’s just a direction).
by Eyeheartfreedumb on Jul 27, 2010 9:41 AM CDT up reply actions
I half expected Purdo and Duchy.
Friend of the Pants since 2009.
by ReadingRambler on Jul 27, 2010 11:20 AM CDT up reply actions
Awesome
Illini → Indians (NCAA would have a heart attack)
Hoosier → Heroes (Nobody knows what a Hoosier is anyway)
Hawkeyes → Harvesters (Apparently a bird isn’t fitting for a state like Iowa)
Spartans → Trojans (Clever…)
Wolverines → Panthers (I suppose there isn’t another name or creature similar to a wolverine? Badger, perhaps)
Gophers → Bulldogs (Well, technically, there is a UofMN Bulldogs, but they’re up in Duluth. Though perhaps they should have been “Chipmunks” or “Field Mice”)
Wildcats → Wild Dogs (Indeed…)
Buckeyes → Bills (Perhaps “Acorns” or “Pine Cones” wasn’t enough?)
Nittany Lions → Cougars (essentially the same thing, correct?)
Boiler Makers → Miners (Trading one blue collar job for another, eh?)
Badgers → Beavers (LOL. Beavers)
Cyclones → Tornadoes (At this point they aren’t even pretending to be creative. I would have been happy if they had been the “Clowns”)
Any chance we can get a full list of teams?
"Hawkeye" isn't technically a bird reference.
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
by Kyle McCann't on Jul 26, 2010 2:30 PM CDT up reply actions
It's clearly an Avengers reference.
Jeremy Renner better appear as an honorary captain at this year’s homecoming game or all hell will break loose.
by The Mexican't on Jul 26, 2010 2:39 PM CDT up reply actions
Yes, I was clearly making a Clint Barton/Lester reference,
because my comic book nerdery always goes over so well here.
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
by Kyle McCann't on Jul 26, 2010 2:51 PM CDT up reply actions
I wasn't going to use the comic reference
But your “nerdery” forced my hand. Initially, I’d taken the Rambler route and simply typed “Your mom’s a bird reference.” Lucky for you, I’d just read the Avengers announcement and it was still fresh in my mind.
by The Mexican't on Jul 26, 2010 3:02 PM CDT up reply actions
No
I know Hawkeye isn’t necessarily a Hawk reference, but doesn’t change the fact that it’s Herky the Hawk and he’s a giant anthromorphic bird.
It makes sense though, from a practical standpoint.
If they went literal with it, it’d just be a white guy dressed as a Native American. And then everyone’d confuse us with Illinois.
"Kittens give Morbo gas."
by Bucketochicken on Jul 26, 2010 6:46 PM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
What I want to know is whether this game sucks or not
As that hasn’t even been broached yet.
My blog: http://www.gretainthebox.com
Much like the team mascots, it has little in common with reality.
I “played” one season over lunch and led the Rutgers Red Raiders to an illustrious 1-10 record in the East 8. Like most manager type games the focus is on developing players and schemes, which I started to automate after two weeks.
Some thoughts:
-Firstly, you CAN change the name of the conferences and the teams manually. Of greater value is the “Randomize” function you can see in the image I captured. It’s a wonderful way to generate a conference that sounds like a Single A baseball league (Des Moines Alleghenys, Abilene Reign, Reno Canucks, Waco Crescendo, Tallahassee Desert Dogs, Athens Clarks, Canton Elephants, Montreal Slicers, and the Oklahoma City Marbles were in one league)
-What’s odd is that you have to “bid” for non-conference games. You start with just your conference schedule and then shop around to different schools for a single home game or single away game. No home-and-away arrangements, and the game does not have the actual non-conference opponents from the NCAA season. I ended up playing at Illinois, at Washington State, and two home games against Kent State and Eastern Michigan.
-The most bizarre, what-the-hell-kind-of-SEC-bull-is-this moment is after the bowl games you can “shop around” for players to see if you can get them to transfer to your school. You target players and see if you can draw them to your program.
I think it was the NCAA Basketball series from EA that had a similar "bid for non-conf. opponents" feature.
I always kind of liked that and wished they would have tried it out in the Football series.
"I want to be a cowboy. I don't want to be a panda. Pandas are boring, stupid and boring. Bad panda!"
I know
It’d be kind of nice, setting up your own non-conf schedule in NCAA ’11. I propose we write a letter and see what happens.
Me gustan los estados unidos.
You can.
You can customize your schedules every year except for what they make your conference schedule.
"You don't become a Hawkeye fan, You're born with Black and Gold in your veins." - Me
by BStylin Hawkye on Jul 28, 2010 8:15 AM CDT up reply actions
Well...
As BStylin noted, you can absolutely set the non-conf to just about anything you want. I liked the “bid” system because it added a new, semi-“realistic” wrinkle to things. That’s all.
"I want to be a cowboy. I don't want to be a panda. Pandas are boring, stupid and boring. Bad panda!"
So...
It’s more like semi-pro football…
I clicked on that link...
…and what the hell are the “Clinton Irish Blizzard”?
by Eyeheartfreedumb on Jul 27, 2010 2:14 PM CDT up reply actions
I recall the same deal on Roger Clemens Baseball on SNES
The Yankees were the NY Rebels (get it, they went all civil war opposites?) Boston had the Crabs, the Montreal Lumberjacks were okay, the Cleveland Tomahawks and Pittsburgh Black Cats were vaguely racist, and the San Fransisco Quakes were just in bad taste (I think the game came out about the same year as the earthquake-delayed World Series).
Aside from The Rocket, I think the players’ names were all changed slightly as well. The only one I seem to remember off the top of my head—and I don’t know why I remember—is Jose Vizcaino, whose name was changed to V. Caino.
by IPeeBlackAndGold on Jul 27, 2010 12:38 AM CDT reply actions
Was it Ken Griffey Jr. baseball--
where the entire Boston team was named after cast members from Cheers with some Revolutionary War heroes thrown in?
by Kinnick Stadium is my Graceland on Jul 27, 2010 10:23 AM CDT up reply actions
No, that was actually a requirement for playing with the Red Sox in the late 80's/early 90's.
Remember such greats as Wade Pulaski and Norm Schiraldi? Thank God Carla Yastrzemski wasn’t around to see it.
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
by Kyle McCann't on Jul 27, 2010 11:37 AM CDT up reply actions
I always remember the Griffey games had weird names like that
I think Stevie Wonder was on Detroit’s team. No idea why I remember that one.
It's not that I'm lazy, Bob, it's that I just don't care
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