Help with team nicknames

[Icy]

I'm working on an new OOTP fictional league to play with myself. The league will have 36 teams. All them based in North America, and divided in two sub leagues (NA League North and NA League South). Each subleague is divided in 3 divisions of teams each, East, West and Central. I selected 36 big cities and placed them geographically sorted in the proper sub league and division.

As my knowledge of American history/tradition is limited, i would like to ask you guys for two things:

1) Are the cities a good selection based on city size and location? And the sub-leagues/divisions?

2) Can you please guys come with a nickname for each team based on it's city history, tradition, industry, population, etc? OOTP can generate random ones, but i would prefer those nicknames to represent something related to that city and not already used in the MLB, NBA or NFL.

Here is the league structure:

NALN East	NALS East
Philadelphia	Miami
Boston		Tampa
New York	Jacksonville
Washington	Atlanta
Baltimore	Charlotte
Cleveland	Columbus
	
NALN Central	NALS Central
Minneapolis	Memphis
Chicago		San Antonio
Kansas City	Oklahoma City
Milwaukee	Dallas
Detroit		Houston
Denver		Tulsa	
	
NALN West	NALS West
Seattle		Los Angeles
Portland	San Diego
San Francisco	Las Vegas
Oakland		El Paso
Sacramento	Phoenix
Toronto		Tucson
Tacoma		San Jose

Thanks in advance.

[Bobble]

You'd probably do better putting this in the main forum. I don't think many drill this far down too often.

Secondly, wikipedia would be a decent place to look for ideas. If you don't get enough response, look up each city and pick something from there.

Lastly, some suggestions

Detroit - Anything automotive - Drive, Gears, Wheels, Motors, etc. or use some of Detroit's more famous models (esp. the muscle cars): Mustang, Camaro, Firebird, Boss, Charger, Thunderbird, Barracuda, etc.

[Roundin Third]

Toronto looks out of place out west - perhaps that was meant to be Vancouver, BC.

Also Tacoma is just minutes from Seattle and are considered to be in the same metro area. If that is something you were trying to avoid, you can move Denver to the West and add Indianapolis to the Central division. Salt Lake City is another option for the West.

[Bobble]

Columbus: Explorers, Buckeyes, Archers (for the "Arch City").

[tkirch]

Milwaukee: Pale Ales. It has to do something with beer. Brewers already taken. Milwaukee Hops, Barley Pops. The only other thing we are most famous for is being known as the City of Festivals, but can't figure out a good name with that. Beer and brats are our two top commodities. Or in bad taste .... Milwaukee Cannibals. We have one former citizen that could give us that name.

[t-bone shuffle]

Originally Posted by Roundin Third

Toronto looks out of place out west - perhaps that was meant to be Vancouver, BC

Yeah, you definitely need to swap Denver and Toronto division-wise.

[boblight24]

This is one of the trickier parts of creating a league. I tend to lean towards naming teams based on what their region is known for, i.e. Las Vegas Gamblers, Washington Senators, New York Empires. That can be tough when you can't find a logo to go with the team, if you're doing logos. What I do is I will go to CephasJames' PhotoBucket (where he currently has a TON of logos)and just put the ones I like on a spreadsheet then I will take whatever cities I want and try to match them up. I try to avoid using duplicate nicknames whenever possible. It is a neat thing that really makes your league your own. If you would rather have the Los Angeles Tigers and the Baltimore Panthers, go for it! It's all up to you.

Just off the top of my head, here we go:

Atlanta Peaches
Toronto Canadians
Philadelphia Liberty
Cleveland Rock
Miami Pirates (I love using the Pirates in Miami!)
Las Vegas Gamblers
Los Angeles Stars
Phoenix Sun Devils
El Paso Diablos

The possibilities are endless!