The new Amarillo minor-league baseball team, an AA affiliate of the San Diego Padres, announced Tuesday afternoon the name of its club will be the Sod Poodles.
Sod Poodles is another name for prairie dogs, an animal native to the Texas Plains. The team also will be called the Soddies, for short.
Other finalists for the team name were Boot Scooters, Bronc Busters, Jerky and Long Haulers — the last one a reference to Amarillo’s Route 66, open roads and wind-bent trees.
The Route 66 link isn’t totally lost with the name, however. Here’s how the team described the team’s name, logo and color scheme in its official announcement:
The team name was selected after fans suggested more than 3,000 different names in a month-long name-the-team contest. The Sod Poodles, a pioneer’s nickname for the “Prairie Dogs”, was chosen due to its Texas pioneer ties, appeal to kids, marketability, and representing the fun of Minor League Baseball.
The primary logo features a coterie of Texas Sod Poodles defending their hometown turf. The cap logo features a Sod Poodle in the white hero’s hat biting down on a stalk of prairie grass, a nod to the community’s agricultural heritage. The leaning Sod Poodle is tipping his cap, representing Amarillo’s welcoming hospitality. The quick-draw Sod Poodle represents the community’s tenacity and tough of mind spirit. Finally, the Texas Pride mark represents the Sod Poodles’ home, the great state of Texas.
Amarillo Yellow, Texas Red and Blue, and Route 66 Retro Blue make up the club’s new official colors. The Sod Poodles are the first professional sports team to use this color combination.
Brandiose of San Diego developed the logo and is designing the team uniforms. The Amarillo ballclub already is selling Sod Poodles merchandise — through SodPoodles.com, natch.
The proposed names — including Sod Poodles — were met with widespread derision when they first were announced in May.
But, as time wore on, the Sod Poodles name began to gain acceptance. As Charlie Hardin of KMXJ radio in Amarillo put it after the team-name announcement Tuesday:
It would be hard to accept anything else at this point. While those who are prone to hate everything about life will surely complain, the rest of us understand how much sense this makes.
Local businesses began using the name in advertisements and on their signs. People began screen printing t-shirts with the name on them, and they sold all over the country.
The tongue-in-cheek nature of the team name is why it works. It’s why this is actually a good thing for the city. Not everything in life should be taken as seriously as your cholesterol.
I am guilty of having the same initial reaction to the team name when it was first brought up. I rolled my eyes. I even loudly proclaimed from my microphone, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
But after seeing how quickly the name was adopted across the city, from t-shirts and business signs to folk songs, I was won over.
KFDA-TV in Amarillo also noted songs were written about the proposed Sod Poodles name here and here.
The Amarillo Pioneer blog noted before the announcement the Sod Poodles name was baked into the cake some time ago:
On Twitter, @SodPoodles has been claimed, and a U.S. Trademark filing was made on June 5th by Panhandle Baseball Club, Inc. Sodpoodles.com was also purchased on May 25th, with Amarillosodpoodles.com also being purchased on the same day. The finalists were unveiled on May 30th. The Sod Poodles trademark has not been published for opposition.
Minor-league baseball also holds a long history for weird team nicknames, including Batavia Muck Dogs, Hartford Yard Goats, Montgomery Biscuits, Richmond Flying Squirrels, Toledo Mudhens, Akron Rubber Ducks, Savannah Bananas, Wichita Wingnuts, Lehigh Valley Ironpigs and Albuquerque Isotopes.
The Sod Poodles’ home opener in a new stadium in downtown Amarillo is April 8 against the Midland RockHounds.
UPDATE: KFDA published this fascinating piece about the marketing of the team’s name, getting input from marketing professor and Route 66 enthusiast Nick Gerlich.
Gerlich says the home run for the team’s marketing was the use of 21st-century technology like social media.
“Probably the best thing they did was utilize social media,” said Gerlich. “We didn’t have these tools 15-20 years ago and now we do, so you can take a campaign and literally go viral with it in seconds.” […]
The hype surrounding the potential names even spread to local businesses with renamed menu items, shirts, signs and more popping up in store fronts and markets.
“Crowdsourcing public support like this has a lot of benefits because you’ve got other small businesses in town who have already gotten behind it and have made t-shirts and other products bearing this name, showing their support for it,” said Gerlich.
(Images of the Sod Poodles logos via Amarillo baseball club)