California Redwoods to relocate, and be renamed
After failing to make a big splash in the San Francisco market, and failing to draw big crowds in the California bay area it looks like the UFL’s California Redwoods will move to Sacramento and rename their franchise with a nickname that is more native to the Sacramento area. It also looks like the club will take on two local Sacramento minority owners and work towards establishing itself as a sports team worth caring about. Since the club failed miserably to draw fans in the San Francisco area it makes a lot of sense to move the club and try again, however renaming teams is never a really good idea.
Generally speaking, renaming a team means all the money the team and league has spent to promote itself is wasted, since the UFL has spent virtually no money on promotion, but the loss of a name still means this team will have to start over at square one. This team and this league fought an uphill battle to gain some relevance to sports fans, changing the name of the team means the fight starts all over again.
Worse than that of the four charter members of the UFL we could argue that the Redwoods had one of the better team names. It is a name in homage of the California Redwood forests which virtually everyone on the planet has heard of. While a local Sacramento name will probably help the team locally, nationally it seems that it would hurt it. What does anyone out there really know about Sacramento? It is the capital of California, and they have a basketball team. So what the Redwoods become the Sacramento Capitals, sorry UFL but that is a tired nickname which is pretty lame. The one thing this league had going for it was its inventive club nicknames, taking that way is yet another bad mistake by this league.
