Artifact Title / Sports

American Football

• College football's Liberty Bowl game was so named because it was originally played in Philadelphia, but it moved after just five games there (1959-63), first for a one-year stay in Atlantic City, then to its permanent home in Memphis.
• The American football positions "halfback" and "fullback". Judging by the names, one would think that the fullback would line up further behind the halfback, but in many modern offensive formations the fullback lines up ahead of the halfback or at the same distance (so as to block for the halfback). However, the terms have gained a new meaning in that fullbacks tend to be heavier and stouter than halfbacks, as their duties include more blocking and short runs through "heavy traffic" rather than halfbacks, who will be called on for runs that try to evade defenders rather than plow through them.
• The "onside kick" in American football. Originally this referred to a rugby play in which the team that had the ball could kick it downfield and anyone who was "onside"—namely, the kicker and anyone who was behind him—could advance downfield and recover the ball. Players on the kicking team who were "offside" at the time of the kick—ahead of the kicker when he kicked the ball—were not eligible to recover it. This play is still part of rugby, but in American football it has come to refer to a special kickoff play. In this "onside kick", the kicker kicks the ball in a way that gives his team the best chance to recover the ball, usually by kicking the ball sideways along the line of scrimmage rather than straightaway downfield. All players line up behind the kicking line, so there is no more onside or offside and the term in American football is a misnomer.
• Division names in the National Football League suffer from this, especially before the 2002 realignment. New teams occasionally joined the league, older teams relocated, and divisions ranged from four to six teams. By 1995 most of the NFC West division's teams were east of the Mississippi River. Reluctance to break up traditional rivalries kept these divisions in place until the league finally reached 32 teams in 2002, allowing a realignment into eight equal-sized divisions. It didn't happen without a fight, and there are still oddball things like the Dallas Cowboys in the East (and the Rams in the West, before they left St. Louis and returned to LA), as preserving established rivalries was considered far more important than geographically logical divisions.
• Four stadiums used primarily by the NFL have, or once had, naming rights held by a corporation that was otherwise no longer in existence.
  • PSINet Stadium in Baltimore (now M&T Bank Stadium) kept that name for a couple of seasons after PSINet went under in the dot-com crash.
  • Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts was originally called CMGI Stadium, but that company also went under in the dot-com crash. The naming rights were soon bought by Gillette... which no longer exists as a separate company, and is now a brand of Procter & Gamble.
  • The Denver Broncos' stadium was Sports Authority Field at Mile High in the 2017 season even though its namesake, a chain of sporting goods stores, had gone belly-up in 2016.
  • Heinz Field, home to the Pittsburgh Steelers, retained that name even after the Heinz Corporation merged with Kraft Foods in 2015 to officially become "Kraft-Heinz"—until 2022, when the naming rights were sold to financial services company Acrisure.
• As this Onion article points out, the Steelers' name refers to an industry that is no longer very prominent in Pittsburgh, though one could argue that the name is nowadays a homage to the city's heritage.
• The Tennessee Oilers were a brief historical example of this. This was done intentionally, because when the team moved from Houston the owner wanted to make sure that all of the team's history would still be "owned" by him, and that a new Houston Oilers team couldn't be formed later (the Oilers became the Titans, and H-town's eventual new team was the Houston Texans). Which is exactly what had happened with the Cleveland Browns when they moved and became the Baltimore Ravens; 4 years later a new Cleveland team was formed that took the name and history of the old Browns.
• The Indianapolis Colts are named after a tradition of its original city, Baltimore, horse breeding/racing. Just another reason for Maryland fans to be bitter about their sudden move.
• This almost happened with the Kansas City Chiefs. They were founded as the Dallas Texans in 1960, and when Lamar Hunt moved the team to Kansas City in 1963, he originally intended for them to keep their name. So they'd be the Kansas City Texans.
• The New York Giants official name is actually the New York Football Giants. There was already a baseball team with the same name so "football" was added to distinguish the two. The baseball team moved to San Francisco in 1957 and everyone just started calling them the "Giants", but the owners never bothered changing the legal name. At the time the Giants were founded naming NFL teams after their cities' Major League Baseball teams was not all that uncommon. At one time or another there were NFL franchises named the Boston Braves^note Now the Washington Commanders, Brooklyn Dodgers, Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates^note Changed their name to the Steelers in 1940, but still in Pittsburgh, and Detroit Tigers.
• The New York Jets are an aversion. Their nickname came from the jets that used to fly over Shea Stadium from nearby LaGuardia Airport. They moved to the New Jersey Meadowlands in the 80s, but Giants Stadium/MetLife Stadium was/is nearby Teterboro Airport^note though the former is a commercial airport for big planes whereas the latter is only intended for general aviation / business jets and also constantly has jets flying overhead.
• The term "touchdown" came from rugby, where the player must actually touch the ground with the ball to score. Rugby renamed it "try", which is itself a mild example of this trope as it refers to earlier versions of the sport where the try wasn't worth any points by itself, and only gave an opportunity for the team to "try" for a goal, worth 3 points. Now, a try is worth 5 points in Rugby Union and 4 points in Rugby League, and while the team will still kick for goal after a try, it's only worth 2 points in both codes.
• The Austrian Football League is actually named that in German and is the highest level of American Football in Austria - it also contains (as of the 2016 season) a team from Prague and one from Ljubljana. Jokes about renaming it the K.u.K. Football League^note K.u.K., deriving from kaiserlich und königlich, refers to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whose territory included those cities are starting to get stale. Besides that, the league immediately below it is called "Division 1" and also contains teams from outside Austria (Budapest and Bratislava as of the 2016 season).
• The Washington Commanders' former Flame Bait nickname of Redskins was, basically, this. When Boston was awarded an NFL franchise in 1930, the team (as was common in those days) initially rented space from a Major League Baseball team, the city's National League franchise the Boston Braves.^note They would later move to Milwaukee and then to Atlanta, but at that point that was decades in the future. Because pro football was seen as a niche sport at that time (the college game was where it was at football-wise), the team also took its name from its baseball landlords, and was called the Boston Braves or Football Braves. A few years later, this arrangement collapsed and the Football Braves moved to Fenway Park—home of the baseball team's American League rivals, the Red Sox. Of course, you can't be the Braves playing in Fenway, so the name was changed to something ethnic and Red-Sox-y—and thus the most enduring controversy in football was born. A few years later George Preston Marshall, the founding owner, moved the team to the DC area; he switched the "Boston" of the name for "Washington", but kept the nickname (even though the team shared Griffith Stadium with MLB's Washington Senators—although since the Senators were the most chronically pathetic team in the American League, perhaps it's no surprise he didn't want his team to share the name of the laughingstock of American sports). Come to think of it just renaming them "Washington Football Braves" might resolve the whole controversy in one fell swoop and it even has tradition on its side - somewhat. The Redskins nickname finally went away in 2020; "Washington Football Team" was intended to be used as a placeholder name for that season only, but remained in use in 2021 before Commanders was adopted in 2022.^note In no small part because owner Daniel Snyder resisted the name change for so long that outside parties swooped in to trademark pretty much all of the best name proposals.
• Some have made the argument that the Raiders' name and pirate logo are this following their relocation from Oakland - a city which, while having no historical connection to The Golden Age of Piracy, is a port city in the Bay Area of Northern California^note Related to this, the Raiders famously played in Los Angeles - another port city in Southern California in The '80s and The '90s - to Las Vegas - a city in the middle of the Mojave Desert that has even less to do with pirates than Oakland, and is more associated with gambling. Then again, most of said casinos in Las Vegas feature idiosyncratic themes such as Paris, New York City, Ancient Egypt, and Venice, meaning that a pirate-themed football team would not have been too out-of-place (there is also the fact that the first major league sports team in Las Vegas, the Vegas Golden Knights in the NHL, use a Medieval Fantasy/Sword and Sorcery theme).
• The name "National Football League" became a bit of an oxymoron during the existence of NFL Europe. As the idea of opening a new franchise in the UK or Germany is often talked about (with yearly games being played in both countries), this name may become an artifact once again at some point in the future.
• In college football, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets are a zigzag example. Originally the nickname came about from fans who attended games wearing yellow jackets; the team later adopted the yellowjacket wasp as a mascot to keep the name relevant.

Association Football (Soccer)

• Donegal Celtic Football Club are actually based in Belfast, over 100 km from County Donegal. It was founded by men from parts of the city that have Donegal-derived names (Lenadoon, Gweedore, Glenveagh, etc.) and has no connection to the actual place.
• Many soccer teams in the former Soviet Union and its past Warsaw Pact allies have the same issue as the Steelers, mentioned above — Metalist Kharkiv, Oțelul Galați (Oțel being Romanian for 'steel'), Rotor Volgograd, Lokomotiv Moskow.
  • Justified in Oțelul's case, as after the fall of communism and the privatization of previously state-owned factories, the company that took ownership of the steel company also purchased the team.
• The name "CSKA" is very common in eastern European soccer teams; in several Slavic languages, it abbreviates "Central Sport Club of the Army", even though none of the clubs are army clubs any more.
  • Similarly, the prefix "Dinamo" originally referred to clubs associated with the police force, and "Lokomotiv" originally referred to teams made up of railway workers.
  • In Romania, this led to the Ministry of National Defense claiming the logo for Steaua Bucharest was legally owned by the Army (the team was privatized and split from the Ministry-ran multisport club in the 90s), forcing the team to create a new crest. While for a few years there was a deal so they could keep the name, it ultimately led to in 2017 the football club shortening their name to FCSB, while the Ministry revived the football department of Steaua Bucharest. And both claim to own the team records prior to the privatization.
• Many English soccer teams:
  • Crystal Palace F.C. were founded by workers at London's Crystal Palace, which burned down in 1936.
  • Arsenal F.C. was founded by workers at Woolwich Arsenal, in south-east London. Since 1913 they have been based in north London, first in Highbury and since 2006 in Holloway.
  • Sheffield Wednesday is derived from the Wednesday Cricket Club (est. 1820), which played all its matches on Wednesdays. They set up a football team in 1867 which eventually became far more successful, and, needless to say, plays games on all days of the week.
  • Milton Keynes Dons get their name from their predecessor club, Wimbledon F.C.
  • Millwall F.C. are another London example, leaving Millwall for South London in 1910. Their current home ground is in Bermondsey.
  • Preston North End originally played in the north end of the town, but since 1875 have been based in Deepdale, in the centre of Preston.
  • Leyton Orient seem to have got their name because one of their players worked for the Orient Shipping Company.
  • Accrington Stanley take their name from a team named Stanley Villa, based at the Stanley Arms on Stanley Street. They now play at a ground on Livingstone Road.
  • Port Vale are actually located in Stoke, which has neither port nor valley. The name was taken from the pub where the club was founded.
  • Grimsby Town F.C. moved to Cleethorpes in 1898 — admittedly only three miles away, but still a separate town.
  • Derby County F.C.'s home stadium until 1997 was called The Baseball Ground. It was originally built for baseball, which had a brief vogue in England (especially around Derby) in the 1890s, but the last baseball game played there was in 1898.
• Wales’ national league, Cymru Premier, has an English-based team in The New Saints F.C., who moved to the border town of Oswestry in 2007 as the end result of a team merger four years prior. In complete fairness, Oswestry does have many Welsh cultural ties, so its inclusion in a Welsh league is not a total oddity. Even more to the point, the second side of the merger, the former Oswestry Town F.C., had long played in the Welsh league system despite its English location.
• Italian Serie A team Genoa Cricket and Football Club was founded as a cricket club, but since has abandoned it in favor of football.
• Brazilian football (soccer) has a lot of examples:
  • The "Club of 13", the association of biggest soccer teams, has 20 members.
  • Palmeiras' stadium is Palestra Itália, as the team still had that name when it purchased it (they changed it in the 1940s as references to Axis countries became illegal). And its nickname is the previous name of the venue, Parque Antarctica (as it was started by the eponymous beverage company), leading to the current corporate name of Allianz Parque.
  • The Rio de Janeiro-based teams Flamengo and Vasco da Gama full names are Clube de Regatas (literally "Rowing Club") Flamengo/Vasco da Gama. Both have this name as they were founded as rowing clubs (which was Brazil's main sport until the 1920s) in 1895 and 1898 respectively, only adopting football initially as a side-project in the 1920s. Their inter-city rivals Botafogo is named "Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas " (Botafogo Football and Rowing) as they were founded as merging between a rowing and football club both named Botafogo. It's important to note that all those three clubs still maintain their rowing departments and some other sports (including an eSports team in Flamengo's case).
  • In a similar manner, Maceió's football team CRB stands for "Clube de Regates Brasil" ("Rowing Club Brasil").
  • "Náutico" (lit. "Nautical") may sound a little weird for a team name when you see its full name: Clube Náutico Capibarense (Nautical Club Capibarense), it started as, you gusssed it, a rowing club.
  • Remo is another which started as a rowing club. "Clube do Remo" literally translates to "Rowing Club", yes, it's a rowing club named "Rowing Club", their biggest sport is football of course.
  • The Maranhão team "Moto Club" is a case of this, they were founded as a motorcycle and cycling racing club in 1937, but soon their football division became the main focus.
  • Oeste Futebol Club recieved its name from the place it was founded, in the western ("Oeste" = "West") region of the state of São Paulo, in the city of Itápolis. In 2017 the team transferred itself to the city of Barueri, located 360km away in the eastern region of the state.
  • And most bizarrely, Pará team Tuna Luso started as an... orchestra, yes, an orchestra. "Tuna" is an archaic term for an orchestra and "Luso" comes from "Lusitan", as the club was founded by Portuguese immigrants.
• Argentinian team Gimnasia's full name is Club de Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, "Gymnastics and Fencing Club La Plata". Yes, it started as a fencing club in 1887 of all things, but football would become the main activity.
  • Averted with the Argentinian team Racing Club de Avellaneda.^*The official name is simply Racing Club; the "de Avellaneda" is added to distinguish it from other clubs so named. It may seem they started as a racing club-turned football club, but they played soccer since day one; their name is just inspired by a French auto racing magazine called Racing Club owned by a co-founder, and the name just sounded very cool.
• While football is still by far its mainstay, Portuguese multi-sports club Futebol Clube do Porto (founded 1893) haven't been an exclusively football club since they added their swimming section in 1908. Nowadays, besides their namesake sport, they play 17 different sports (2 of which are other varieties of football).
• Since 1974, the trophy for winning The World Cup (i.e., the men's version) has not been a cup. Similarly, the trophy for the Women's World Cup (first played in 1991, though not officially branded as such until 1999) has never been a cup.
• From 1994 to 2019, the fifth level of Mexican football was the Tercera División, which translates to "Third Division". Similarly, the third level was known as the Segunda División ("Second Division") from 1994 to 2008, after which it became Liga Premier (and itself split into two levels, Serie A and Serie B). Originally, these leagues were the second and third divisions... but starting with the 1994–95 season, the Segunda was split. The top teams of the old Segunda formed the new second level, originally Primera División A, later Ascenso MX, and now Liga MX Expansión, while the rest of the Segunda retained the league name but not the old level. The original Primera División is now known as Liga MX. In 2019, the Tercera was rebranded as Liga TDP.
• Similarly, the second through fourth levels of women's football in Belgium are known as the "First" through "Third" Divisions. As in Mexico, the designations historically matched the leagues' positions on the pyramid. In the 2012–13 season, Belgium and the Netherlands established a joint top-level women's league, and the other Belgian leagues dropped down the pyramid. After the 2014–15 season, the two countries dissolved the joint league and reestablished their own top-level leagues. Belgium chose to establish a new women's Super League, initially consisting of the Belgian teams that had played in the joint league.
• The German Oberligen ("upper leagues" or "premier leagues") were the first-division leagues in Federal Germany until 1963^note with the overall champion played out in a playoff system, when they were replaced by a single countrywide Bundesliga. The GDR also had one single Oberliga at the countrywide level crowning its champion until reunification. The moniker was then revived in the west in the 70s for the Amateuroberligen. However, the prefix was dropped in 1994, and further leagues have been introduced, so as of the 2010s, the so-called upper leagues are merely the fifth tier overall.
• Many German soccer clubs have names that would indicate they do things other than soccer — while some clubs do have other sports under their umbrella, those are often separate legal entities which can go bankrupt on their own (it's incredibly messy and complicated). There are "Vereine for Leibesübungen" (VfL)^note Clubs for bodily exercise - it also sounds weird and antiquated in German "Turn und Sportvereine" ^note gymnastic and sport club - dating from a time when "Sport" and "Turnen" were considered separate and fought ideological and political battles against each other "Sportvereine" ^note Sport clubs and so on. Some bear a year in their name that is well prior to any soccer being played in that club. The people who founded the "Turn und Sportverein 1860 München" would probably have been offended at the mere suggestion that their good Bavarian club could one day lower itself to play some English barbarism with round balls — much less for money. And all that is not even going into the minor teams which have "Arbeiter" (worker) or some other designation in their name - well into the 1920s sport clubs were associated with a societal group or political ideology. No worker would have been caught dead in Catholic sport club and vice versa.
• The biggest stadium in Nuremberg, home to the 1.FCN soccer team has not been called "Frankenstadion" since 2006 (when it is between sponsors the incredibly bland "Stadion Nürnberg" is used), some fans prefer to call it Max-Morlock-Stadion instead after one of the most famous players of the FCN. However, the S-Bahn stop next to the stadium is unperturbed by all this and has been called Frankenstadion since it first opened. When the name was first changed, the VGN (who run the Nuremberg S-Bahn) said that "changing the name would be too expensive and we just put new signs up..." and nobody is really angry that ten years later, they still seem to not have gotten around renaming the station.
• To compete in the UEFA Champions League, you had to either win your nation's league or be the defending champions. In 1997, the runners-up (and, later, the teams that finished third or fourth in selected leagues) would be allowed to enter. At least the "Champions" bit made sense at the tournament's inception — but the Champions League is only a league for the first round.^note The same applies to its lesser tournaments, the Europa League and Europa Conference League. And "Champions" should have an apostrophe.
• The FA Cup's full name is the Football Association Challenge Cup because in its second season, teams played each other and the one that ultimately proved successful would be allowed to challenge the defending champions. That didn't happen the following season — or any other season since.
• The Scottish Highland League was originally for teams in the Highlands only, but its catchment area was later extended into the North East Lowlands. Nowadays it has a roughly even split between Highland and Lowland clubs.
  • One of the league's longstanding clubs, Inverurie Loco Works F.C., retains its original name even though the eponymous railway yards closed in 1970.
• Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Euro 2020 was shifted back a year to 2021. It retained its original name as renaming it would cause merchandise created for it to be destroyed, which went against UEFA’s aims of making it a sustainable event.

Auto Racing

• NASCAR:
  • The middle two initials stand for "Stock Car"; the cars haven't been stock since The '60s, and the formula now includes such race-car-only features as tube chassis and a slightly more centered driver's position.^note In motorsports parlance, this is known as a silhouette car where the race car bears at least some resemblance to the road-going model for marketing purposes, but has next to no underpinnings shared between them.
  • The phrase "Buschwhacking", referring to Cup Series drivers who also decide to compete in NASCAR's second-tier feeder series, gets its name from past series sponsor Busch, who sponsored it from 1982 to 2002 (as the NASCAR Busch Grand National Series) and from 2003 to 2007 (as the NASCAR Busch Series). Though considering the guy most known for "Buschwhacking" is named Kyle Busch (he's the all-time leader in series wins, with 102) the phrase still fit even after what is now the Xfinity Series changed title sponsors.
• Indy racing:
  • "IndyCar" comes from Indy 500, as they are the cars used in that race. However, they are also used in various races outside the Indy 500, in fact, there's a whole series and championship using IndyCars which compete in various locations around the United States and Canada.
  • All the open-wheel cars raced at Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the years when it only hosted the Indy 500 had long since switched over to using methanol, and now ethanol, as fuel, but they still call the garage area Gasoline Alley. Since the name of the eponymous comic strip is also an artifact of bygone days, this is an interesting example of a name that became artifactual in two entirely different contexts.
  • The final day of practice before the Indy 500 was called Carburetion Day because teams would make final adjustments, most notably to their cars' carburetors. Since 1963, when only two of the 33-car field had carburetors, every car in the race has used fuel injection, but the event was still known as Carburetion Day until 2000, when it became Carb Day.
• The Dakar Rally. Began as the Paris–Dakar Rally as that's precisely where it ran. Retained the Paris Dakar Rally name as it gradually became the "Various places in southern France to Dakar" rally. The race hasn't been held in Africa since 2007. A terrorist attack that killed four French tourists resulted in the cancellation of the 2008 race, and the event has been held outside of the African and European continents since 2009 (beginning as such in South America, then moving to the Middle East in 2020).
• In Formula One, during sessions and races when drivers' positions are listed on the side of the screen, they are identified by the first three letters of their last name... except Michael Schumacher, who was identified as 'MSC'. This trope is why: it's from when his brother Ralf Schumacher was also an F1 driver; they were identified as 'MSC' and 'RSC' to differentiate between the two Schumachers. Michael's MSC abbreviation proved to be so iconic that when his son Mick joined Formula One in 2021, long after Michael and Ralf had retired from the sport, he specifically requested his name to be abbreviated in the same way as his father was due to the nostalgia factor.
  • Inverted by Max Verstappen, who originally had to use 'VES' as Jean-Eric Vergne came into the series and took 'VER' before him; when Vergne left the series Verstappen was allowed to take over 'VER', which he accepted.
• The humbly named Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course was indeed originally built as a local track for weekend sports car racing, but is now recognised as one of the best circuits in the Americas and has seen a range of top-level categories race there.

Baseball

• Major League Baseball team the Los Angeles Dodgers bear an artifact title, but it was somewhat obscure to begin with so no one really notices. (The club was originally called the "trolley dodgers" among many others, after a popular turn of the century nickname for Brooklynites. However, as horse-drawn trolleys were phased out first in favor of electric streetcars and then to buses and the New York City Subway and then (to a lesser degree) automobiles, coupled with the Dodgers team's move to Los Angeles, the name became doubly outdated).
• Except for occasional "Turn Back the Clock" games, the Chicago White Sox haven't worn white socks since 1976.
• The Atlanta Braves originated in Boston in 1870, as the Red Stockings no less, but were not called the 'Braves' until 1912; John Montgomery Ward suggested the name Braves because the new owner, James E. Gaffney, was a member of Tammany Hall, which was named after a Native American chief and used an Indian image as its mascot. Tammany Hall doesn't even exist anymore, so the team is obviously not run by anyone associated with Tammany Hall. Everybody now just assumes it was just a team name someone picked.
• The Chicago Cubs (originally the Chicago White Stockings) were first called 'Cubs' around 1902; journalists were referring to how very young the players were. It still fits the bear logo and how the city's NFL team are the Bears.
  • Wrigley Field became an artifact in 1981 when the Wrigleys sold the Cubs and the stadium to the Tribune Company. (and there's not even the justification of Busch Stadium, where the Busch family don't own the St. Louis Cardinals but the Busch brewery bought the naming rights; the gum company has no part in it)
• Venezuelan Baseball: the Navegantes del Magallanes originally played in Caracas' satellite town Los Magallanes de Catia, itself named after the famous sailor. When the league made a "only one team for city" rule, the Magallanes team moved to the nearby city of Valencia, where there is no seashore, but they maintained the full name because it was too emblematic.
• Minor League Baseball has some artifact titles for league names:
  • The Pacific Coast League, one of two at the Triple-A level (a step below Major League Baseball) is the most evident. When it was founded in 1903, the furthest of its six teams from the Pacific Coast was in Sacramento, California. Throughout the league's glory days as the highest level of baseball on the west coast up until the Dodgers and Giants moved to California in 1958,^note In the late 40s and early 50s, the Pacific Coast League had serious ambitions to become a third major league (and was sometimes colloquially referred to as such), and from 1952 to 1958, the PCL held an Open classification that was higher than Triple-A and limited the Major Leagues' rights to draft players from the PCL. (Which also meant that for their first two seasons in 1956 and 1957, the Vancouver Mounties were the highest-level baseball team in Canada.) the PCL consisted almost entirely of teams based in states or provinces bordering the Pacific, the single exception being the 1915-1925 incarnation of the Salt Lake Bees. Following the major leagues' expansion west of St. Louis and the PCL's reversion to Triple-A status, the league slowly edged eastward, although they also moved into the Pacific from 1961 to 1987 with the Hawaii Islanders. By the 80s and early 90s cities in Alberta, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico hosted Pacific Coast League teams, but the league still extended no further east than the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. When the Triple-A American Association disbanded in 1997, however, its teams were distributed between the other two Triple-A leagues and the PCL absorbed five new teams, the furthest west of which was in Oklahoma City. After that, they had teams in Des Moines, Memphis, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Round Rock, Texas (a suburb of Austin), San Antonio, and Wichita. In 2024, only two of its 10 teams are even in states that border the Pacific, and only Tacoma is actually on the coast.^note The OKC and Round Rock teams are still in the league. The others are in Albuquerque, El Paso, Las Vegas, Reno, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, the Houston suburb of Sugar Land, and Tacoma.
  • When the Triple-A International League was founded in 1886, the name was appropriate; two of its eight teams were in Canada. They even had a team in Cuba between 1954 and 1960. But the IL hasn't had a single team outside the US after the Ottawa Lynx moved and became the Lehigh Valley IronPigs before the 2008 season.
  • Likewise, at the Double-A level, the Texas League has half of its teams outside Texas, with two of those teams in states that don't even border Texas. Similarly, the New York-Penn League, a short-season Single-A league, had teams not only in its two namesake states but almost every bordering state as well.
  • The restructuring of Minor League Baseball in 2021 brought a brief end to all of these, with several leagues being given new names based on their class and region (the PCL and IL respectively became "AAA West" and "AAA East"), but the change was short-lived. Fan pressure, and the fact that everyone still referred to the leagues by their old names, pressured Minor League Baseball to return the old, irrelevant league names for the 2022 season.
• One MLB stadium once had naming rights held by a corporation that was otherwise no longer in existence. The current home of the Houston Astros was originally known as Enron Field. After that company collapsed in an epic accounting scandal, the Astros soon bought back the naming rights and called it Astros Field. The stadium is now Minute Maid Park (after Coca-Cola's fruit juice brand).
• The two major leagues fell into this trope at different points:
  • The National League was this between 1969 to 2004 when the Montreal Expos were added to the league. However, this was rectified in 2005, when the Expos moved to Washington, D.C. and became the Nationals.
  • Played with in the American League. Toronto was awarded a team with the Blue Jays in 1977, which would make them an international team. However, the league name could still work if one considers it it refers to the North American League.

Basketball

• The very name "basketball" counts, since the sport's inventor James Naismith famously used a pair of large wooden peach baskets nailed to the balconies of the Springfield College gym as the original goals. Now they're metal rings with nets attached to the bottom.
• The term "field goal" derives from the sport's origins as a wintertime alternative to football. In the early days, each field goal was worth the same number of points (one) regardless of where it originated, just like in football. As basketball became a huge sport in its own right, this connection was gradually lost, and the term itself became completely obsolete with the inauguration of the 3-point arc.
• The NBA has a peculiar quirk: when teams move, they traditionally keep their old name even if it becomes hilariously inappropriate in the new city:
  • The Los Angeles Lakers get their name from their earlier location of Minnesota, "Land of 10,000 Lakes". Los Angeles has five total lakes.
  • The Clippers' name was a reference to the clipper ships at San Diego's iconic harbor. While Los Angeles obviously has a harbor of its own, it has no connection with clipper ships. However, their original team name were actually the Buffalo Braves.
  • Perhaps the most glaring example is the Utah Jazz, originally from New Orleans. They moved to Salt Lake City in 1979 but didn't change the name, allegedly because the team's then-owner thought it would be a temporary stop and they'd move again soon. They didn't, and the name stuck despite Utah being the last place you'd associate with jazz music.
  • The Memphis Grizzlies are named after a bear species that doesn't live anywhere near Tennessee, but does live in British Columbia, as the team was originally based in Vancouver. Like the Jazz, the team considered changing—local company FedEx even tried to name them "Memphis Express"—but direction decided to keep it that way.
  • Subverted by the Houston Rockets, originally based in San Diego, so named because the city built rockets, missiles, and jets. The team kept the name when it moved since NASA's Mission Control is located in Houston.
  • Similarly subverted by the Pistons. They began as the Fort Wayne Pistons, named after one of the products original owner Fred Zollner's company made. After a decade, Zollner moved the team to Detroit, and, as the city was/is the heart of the American automobile manufacturing industry, the name still fit.
  • In the rare example of an NBA team that did change its name, the New Orleans Hornets were originally based in Charlotte and drew their name from the city's nickname ("Hornet's Nest", as General Cornwallis described Charlotte as "a hornet's nest of rebellion" during the American Revolution). In 2012, after ten years in New Orleans, the team changed their name to the Pelicans after Louisiana's state bird^note Interestingly, the New Orleans Hornets had considered buying the rights to the "Jazz" name from the aforementioned Utah Jazz, thereby possibly averting this trope, but the latter refused to do so due to having the Jazz name for over three decades to the point that it has become part of the local culture. Charlotte's new team, the Bobcats (whose name was unpopular with locals due to being painfully generic and feeling like it just fit the name of the original owner, Robert "Bob" Johnson of BET fame, more than anything fitting Charlotte), followed suit by taking the Hornets name back.
• The NBA—the National Basketball Association—expanded into Canada in 1995 with two new teams, and while the aforementioned Grizzlies have since moved to Memphis, the Raptors still play in Toronto, meaning the NBA is an international league.
• Another peculiar quirk some NBA teams have is that they sometimes have shortened out nickname distinctions that usually just as well as the original team name would, if not more so.
  • Technically the Knicks are/were named the New York Knickerbockers, but no one calls them that anymore.^note (Especially after the team began fielding majority-black players teams in the late 1970s and racist detractors began derogatorily calling them the "Ni***bockers".) In fact, the short form has been standard for almost as long as the team has existed, popularized by brevity-loving newspaper headline writers. (A "Knickerbocker" is an old nickname for a New Yorker, which is in turn derived from a name for the city's early Dutch settlers in reference to the three-quarter length trousers they wore.)
  • Zig-zagged with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Similar to the Knicks, they were nicknamed the "Cavs" by local newspapers since it fits better on headlines, and the team used this name in its imagery from 1984-2003, along with a rather generic logo of a basketball going into a basket, meaning many a young Clevelander had no idea what a cavalier actually was. It wasn't until 2004 that the team went back to promoting itself under its full name, along with a sword logo and Three Musketeers theme to invoke the look and feel of historic cavaliers.
  • Also zig-zagged with the original Seattle SuperSonics. Like the Knicks and Cavs, they were nicknamed the "Sonics" by local newspapers with it fitting better on headlines. However, their team name also has a distinction of working just as well without the "Super" in their team name as it did with it since the original team name was named after Boeing's contract for their SST project, which was ultimately cancelled in 1971. The "Sonics" nickname became more prevalent when the team changed their logo in 1995 to prominently say Sonics on it instead of SuperSonics, which continued to be the case when they changed their logo again in 2001, staying that way until the team moved to Oklahoma City in 2009 and became the Thunder.
  • Another zigzag occurred with the Sonics' nearby rivals, the Portland Trail Blazers. Due to their unique name distinction, being the only team name with a space on their team name, local news outlets nicknamed them the "Blazers" with it fitting for better headlines there. While their unique looking logo hasn't changed much conceptually since its first reveal back in 1970, entering The '90s, the Trail Blazers removed the "Trail" from their official logos, utilizing more of an distinction of calling them the Portland Blazers during that decade and the early 2000's. However, by 2004, the team decided to include the "Trail" part of their name back to the team for their logos (though with a distinction of still having the Blazers as an option to refer to them as such), with them still keeping the "Trail" part of the Trail Blazers to this day.
  • One team that has never had a logo officially naming themselves a shorter distinction of their name, but has had jerseys made of their shortened out concept, is the Dallas Mavericks. While they always stuck with the Dallas Mavericks naming distinction, starting in at least 2004 and still continuing to this day, the Mavericks have utilized alternative jerseys with the "Mavs" shortened nickname on them to promote their shortened nickname for media outlets.
  • Another team that has been open with its shortened nickname, though has never utilized it for their team logos, is the Minnesota Timberwolves. For most of their team history, the Timberwolves have opted to remove the "Timber" part of their team name, shortening it to just the "Wolves" for their team jerseys at home, which was useful for local newspapers there. While they have also shortened the team name to just "Wolves" for their road jerseys from 1989-1996 and have also had alternative jerseys doing something similar, they never had an official logo shortening their team name to just the Minnesota Wolves in their history. In fact, from 1996-2008, the Timberwolves stuck with their full name on their jerseys, only later having their location name appear on their road jerseys going forward, while their home jerseys have "Wolves" on them.

Hockey

• The Anaheim Ducks were originally owned by Disney and called the Mighty Ducks. While the "Mighty" got dropped when Disney sold them, the name still serves as an outdated reference to a 1990s movie owned by a company that no longer owns them. The Disney connection is even hard to lose given the team plays a short distance from Disneyland, where you can find Donald and a few other ducks. That being said, while Disney no longer own the Ducks, the Ducks and Disney do maintain a business relationship, complete with sponsored days for the team to visit. The hockey team maintains the rights to the old name and colors. And when it was announced that The Mighty Ducks was being revived as a series on Disney+, there was even talk of the professional team being referenced.
• The name of the Pittsburgh Penguins was inspired by the nickname of their home arena, "The Igloo", meaning they fell right into this after moving into the Consol Energy Center, since renamed PPG Paints Arena, and the Igloo was demolished. Then again, it didn't make much sense in the first place.
• Briefly Played With by the New York Islanders. Their nickname came from the fact they initially played at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. In 2015, the team moved to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York City. Brooklyn (along with fellow NYC borough Queens) is physically on Long Island, but most people in the New York City area, especially Brooklynites, define "Long Island" as Nassau and Suffolk Counties only. The Islanders logo plays this straight, as its graphical depiction of Long Island has never included the New York City counties, and the "I" in "Islanders" continues to point to the approximate location of the team's old home in Uniondale. The whole thing was rendered moot in 2017 when it was announced they reached a deal to build a new arena back in Nassau County, though that venue didn't open until 2021.
• The Montreal Canadiens are an oft-unrecognized form of this trope. Their name doesn't refer to what are now called "Canadians" in the common sense. Rather, it refers quite specifically to French speakers in colonial times, as until surprisingly late in Canadian history the term specifically meant "French-speaker in the New World", as these were thought of as the "indigenous" of the non-aboriginal population (the English-speaking arrivals saw themselves as British for the most part). The team name comes from the original, amateur Club de Hockey Canadien^note (which to this day is the team's legal corporate name) — the term "Canadien" here distinguishing the francophone Québécois from the cross-town, English-speaking Montreal Wanderers (and later, the Montreal Maroons, for whom the Montreal Forum was originally built). Today, the word's connotations have changed 180 degrees, and "Canadien" is the last word that Quebec nationalists want to be called, so this trope is played straight. However, Québécois do know what the word actually means, and if Quebec were to separate from Canada, the team name would undoubtedly stay the same and not be thought of as contradictory.
• Five out of fourteen teams in Finnish major ice hockey league have word "ball" in their name. They were founded when football, bandy and Finnish baseball were the most popular sports, but nowadays only TPS ("Turku Ball Club") has any activity outside ice hockey.
• The National Hockey League itself is has been an international hockey league since 1924, when it added its first U.S. team, the Boston Bruins. (You read right; the "National" in the name "National Hockey League" refers to Canada, not the United States.)
• On the opposite of the above, the NHL's top minor league, the American Hockey League, has included at least one Canadian team since 1959. Its now-defunct rival, the International Hockey League, lacked teams outside of the United States from 1952-1963 and again from 1964-1996, only living up to its title for 13 of its 56 seasons of operation.
• Similar to baseball's Pacific Coast League, the East Coast Hockey League (or the ECHL as it now refers to itself) has not been East Coast-centric ever since the merger with the Western Hockey League in 2002. It got to the point where, from 2003 to 2017, the league had a team in Anchorage, Alaska, which is about as far West as you can go and still be in North America.
• Two of Canada's three major junior level leagues have such names. The Ontario Hockey League has had at least one team located outside of the province since the 1990–91 season, and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League has had at least one team located outside that province since 1994–95.
• Aversions:
  • The Atlanta Flames were named after the massive fire that nearly razed Atlanta during the American Civil War. Then they moved to Calgary, a city which was nearly razed by a massive fire in 1886. Not to mention the significance of oil and gas production in Alberta, making them a fitting contrast to their new intra-provincial rivals, the Edmonton Oilers.
  • Many people assume that the Winnipeg Jets were named for Bobby Hull, the "Golden Jet", who played for the Jets for eight years (making an artifact of a player long since retired), but the team was actually named for a previous junior hockey team that existed before Hull joined the NHL.^note However, that team didn't actually play as the Jets until 1967, by which time Hull had been in the NHL for a decade. The name instead refers to one of Winnipeg's main industries, the manufacture of jet aircraft parts. Winnipeg is also home to the largest Air Force base in Canada, commemorated by the current team's logo, which is the roundel of the Royal Canadian Air Force with the silhouette of a CF-18 Hornet superimposed on it).
  • When the Minnesota North Stars, whose nickname came from the Minnesota state motto, moved to Dallas, they officially dropped "North" from the nickname to match the Texas state nickname of "The Lone Star State".

Mixed Martial Arts

• The very name "mixed martial arts" referred to competitions where fighters from various martial arts disciplines would compete against each other. But since some techniques lend themselves to athletic competition better than others, fighters began picking up moves from across multiple disciplines to get ahead. "MMA" has essentially become a fighting style of its own, and MMA gyms exist all over the world. In a way, the "mixed" part still applies, but rather than having specialists from various disciplines squaring off, the fighters individually draw from various disciplines.
• The Ultimate Fighting Championship was designed to be a one-off event that would establish once and for all what fighting style is the best, so the word "ultimate" was meant literally. When the promoters realized they could make more money by putting on more shows, the "ultimate" lost its original meaning. However, it can be salvaged by shifting its meaning from "final" to "best." Instead of the final contest of fighting styles, the UFC is now the best contest for fighting.
• Mixed martial artist Nick "the Goat" Thompson was originally nicknamed "the Fainting Goat" due to the frequency at which he was knocked out. When he learned better defense and toughened up, his nickname got shortened to just "the Goat", which has no relevance or meaning.
• The Blackzilians training camp was so named because all of the founding members were black or Brazilian. The name remained long after the racial makeup of the gym changed. It eventually closed down and rebranded to Sanford MMA.
• The legendary Brazilian gym Chute Boxe has two: the first one is the name itself, a calque of "Kick Boxe", as the gym was one of the first Muay Thai gyms in Brazil and the name served to showcase the new fighting style. The second is the "Vale Tudo" shown on the logo and sometimes in the full name, even though the sport evolved to MMA and the term Vale Tudo was mostly abandoned in Brazil. The name remains as a tradition.
• The American Kickboxing Academy began as a kickboxing training camp before becoming one of the top MMA teams.
• Pancrase still has "Hybrid Wrestling" on its name and logo as an artifact from its shootwrestling days even though they adopted the unified MMA rules in 2014 and even stopped using the wrestling ring in favor of a octagonal cage.

US College Sports

• The Big Ten Conference has not had 10 teams since Penn State joined in the early 90's, taking it up to 11 (the logo was then updated to include an "11" in negative space to represent this). It got even better when Nebraska joined in 2011, their departure from the Big 12 Conference (along with Colorado to the Pac-10, which now has 12 members with the addition of Colorado and Utah) resulted in the Big 12 having ten members and the Big Ten having twelve. The Big Ten expanded even further in 2014, adding Maryland and Rutgers to give the league 14 full members, and will go to 18 members in 2024 after poaching Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington from the Pac-12. The Big Ten, with its eponymous network and 100 years of history, will not be relinquishing its name to the Big 12, founded in 1994 (with play starting in 1996).
  • From the time the University of Chicago left the conference in 1946 to the time Michigan State joined four years later, they had only 9 teams. However, during this period, the conference was popularly known as the Big Nine. And, its legal name from its founding in 1896 was the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives. It didn't officially become the "Big Ten Conference" until 1987!
  • The Big Ten is matched by the Atlantic 10 Conference, which now has 15 members (see below for more details on that conference).
  • The Northeast-10 Conference of NCAA Division II currently has 12 members, but at one point had 16. A number of schools moving up to Division I has brought its numbers back down to something slightly less inaccurate.
  • Interestingly, the Big 12 has averted this trope in wrestling. After Nebraska departed in 2011, the league was left with four wrestling schools.^note Iowa State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, West Virginia The Big 12 picked up six single-sport members^note Air Force, North Dakota State, Northern Colorado, South Dakota State, Utah Valley, Wyoming in 2015 by absorbing the Western Wrestling Conference, and added two more wrestling members^note Fresno State and Northern Iowa. Both were also charter WWC members, though Fresno State dropped the sport before the WWC began play, not reinstating it until 2017, while UNI left the WWC for single-sport membership in the Mid-American Conference in 2012. in 2017, making the "12" in Big 12 accurate once again—though only in that specific sport. While Fresno State shuttered its wrestling team (for the second time) after the 2020–21 season, the Big 12 brought back former full member Missouri as a wrestling-only member for 2021–22 and beyond, maintaining the 12-member lineup... for one more year. The "12" is again an artifact with California Baptist becoming the 13th wrestling member in 2022; while Oklahoma is set to leave for the (non-wrestling) Southeastern Conference in 2024, wrestling-sponsoring Arizona State will join the Big 12 at that time.
  • For a short time, it looked like the Big 12 would return to 12 full members in the near future. In July 2021, Oklahoma and Texas announced they would leave for the SEC no later than 2025, eventually reaching an agreement on a 2024 departure date. The Big 12 raided the American Athletic Conference, inviting Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF to join, and also giving FBS independent BYU an offer it couldn't refuse. These four schools joined the Big 12 in 2023, which would have brought the conference back to 12 members... before the announcement that Colorado would return to the Big 12 in 2024, soon followed by the announcement that Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah would also join in 2024.
• The Pac-10 averted this with a 2011 expansion; it at least renamed itself the Pac-12 with the addition of Colorado and Utah.^note At the same time, the conference's formal name changed from "Pacific-10 Conference" to "Pac-12 Conference". However, the "Pac" part (short for "Pacific") has been something of an artifact since 1978, when Arizona and Arizona State joined the then Pac-8 to become the Pac-10. It's looking more and more likely that the Pac-12 will fold, with ten of its 12 members leaving in 2024.
• The SEC abandoned the "Southeastern" part of their name (or at least stretches it right up to the breaking point) with the inclusion of Texas A&M (located in what's considered part of the American Southwest, though with College Station being in east Texas at least it's geographically near the Southeast) and Missouri (Midwest, and being in the northern edge of central Missouri it's even more of a geographic stretch than Texas A&M, though less of a cultural stretch as the area around the school's home of Columbia [though not the town itself] was a hotbed of pro-Confederate sentiment in the Civil War) in 2012.
• Similarly, the Atlantic Sun Conference, which had only renamed itself from "Trans America Athletic Conference" in 2001, abandoned "Atlantic" just two years later when Lipscomb, located in Nashville, joined. The "Sun" part, presumably referring to the Sun Belt, arguably became an artifact as well at the same time, since Tennessee may or may not be in the Sun Belt, depending on one's definition of such.^note From 2005 to 2014, another Tennessee school, East Tennessee State, was a member as well. "Sun" indisputably became a misnomer in 2012 when Northern Kentucky joined. Although they left for the Horizon League in 2015, they were replaced by NJIT, or the New Jersey Institute of Technology (which left for the America East Conference in 2020).
  • Then again, if you interpret the conference name as referring to the combination of the Atlantic coast and Sun Belt, it didn't indisputably become an artifact until Northern Kentucky joined.
  • Starting in the 2016–17 school year, the conference averted this trope to a degree, rebranding itself as the ASUN Conference. And it turned out that trope-wise, the conference needed the rebranding, since it added a different Kentucky school in 2020 (Bellarmine, out of Louisville... whose namesake college already plays in the Atlantic Coast Conference...so it sorta makes sense?). They added Eastern Kentucky in July 2021, along with Central Arkansas and, for the second time, Jacksonville State (from Alabama; Jacksonville [in Florida] was already a member), though the last of these left in 2023 for Conference USA.
  • But then it went back to the "Atlantic Sun" branding in 2023, despite the aforementioned Kentucky schools still being members. And that's not even considering that it has single-sport members in such "Atlantic" and "Sun Belt" states as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Colorado, and Utah (seriously). Even with most of these schools leaving in 2024, the Colorado and Utah schools will remain.
• Ditto for the Atlantic Coast Conference, which added Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania has no Atlantic shoreline, but is still considered Mid-Atlantic) and Notre Dame (from Indiana, far from the Atlantic) in 2013 and Louisville in 2014. To say nothing of their 2024 addition of not only SMU (based in the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex), but also San Francisco Bay Area schools Stanford and California amid the collapse of the Pac-12 Conference, named for their location on the coast of the Pacific Ocean.
• The Atlantic 10 has been an example of this trope for almost all of its history. It was founded in 1975 as the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League, beginning play in 1976, and changed its name to the Eastern Athletic Association in 1977. During this time, the league was popularly known as the Eastern 8. Although two schools left in its early years, both were immediately replaced, keeping the conference at 8 members. However...
  • The conference expanded to 10 members in 1982, and adopted the "Atlantic 10" name. But wait... West Virginia had been a member since the league's formation, and remained a member until 1995, making "Atlantic" a misnomer.
  • After Penn State left for the second and final time in 1991, the A-10 was down to 9 members. The conference has never had exactly 10 members since that time.
  • Then to 8 when Duquesne left in 1992... but they came back a year later.
  • West Virginia and Rutgers left in 1995, and five new schools came in, bringing the conference to 12. This would have made "Atlantic" accurate... except that two of the schools added were Dayton and Xavier, in Ohio. (Dayton is still in the league.)
  • Since then, the league has had 11, 12, 14, 16, 13, 14, and 15 members, and will go back to 14 in 2025 when UMass leaves for the Mid-American Conference. Also, Dayton has been joined as a non-"Atlantic" member by Saint Louis (since 2005) and Loyola Chicago (since 2022). For the 2012–13 season only, Butler (from Indianapolis) was a member.
• The Big East is similarly a geographic artifact title. Originally consisting exclusively of East Coast schools, the conference began mildly moving away from its namesake in 1995 when it added Notre Dame (located in Indiana) as a non-football member. However, this trend increased in 2005 when it was raided by the ACC for teams and thus had to replace them with several Midwestern schools such as Cincinnati, Louisville, Marquette, and DePaul. Then things really began to unravel in the early 2010s when the Big East was further raided by several neighboring conferences and, in an ill-fated attempt to survive, was forced to add teams as far south as TCU in Texas and as far west as Boise State University in Idaho (both moves were later canceled). Even after the 2013 breakup into two smaller conferences, the new Big East (consisting primarily of the small Catholic private schools of the previous iteration) still breaks its naming description, as half of the original 10 teams in the conference are located in the Midwest. (It now has 11 after UConn joined in 2020.) The other half of the breakup (mainly the larger public state schools) apparently decided to preemptively avoid this issue altogether by renaming themselves the very geographically inclusive American Athletic Conference.
• The New England Women's Hockey Alliance, the newest conference in NCAA ice hockey, became an example of this trope only two years after it launched. It began in 2017 as a scheduling alliance among six New England institutions, and formally organized as a conference the following year after losing one of the founding members. It received official recognition as an NCAA conference in 2019... just in time for it to pick up its first non-New England member in the form of LIU (as in Long Island).
• The Ohio Valley Conference started in 1948 with a very indicative name. Five of its six founding members were in the Ohio River state of Kentucky—Eastern Kentucky (left in 2021), Louisville (left in 1949), Morehead State, Murray State (left in 2022), and Western Kentucky (left in 1982), with Louisville in a city on the river and all in the Ohio River watershed. The sixth, Evansville, was in an Indiana city on the river.
  • A year later, Marshall and Tennessee Tech joined. Marshall's home of Huntington, West Virginia is also on the river; while Tennessee doesn't touch the Ohio, the vast majority of the state, including TTU's home of Cookeville, is in the Ohio watershed, so the title didn't become fully non-indicative. Marshall would leave in 1952 (as would Evansville), but TTU remains a member today.
  • The next arrivals were three more Tennessee schools—Middle Tennessee (1953–2000), East Tennessee State (1957–1978), and Austin Peay (1962–2022). Again, all are in the Ohio watershed, so no real change with respect to this trope.
  • Next came two schools from Ohio. Akron (1980–1987) played with the trope; while Ohio obviously is an Ohio River state, Akron lies in the Great Lakes watershed. The other 1980s arrival from the state, Youngstown State (1981–1988), is in the Ohio River watershed.
  • After YSU left, the OVC had a few more years as a reasonably indicative name, with Tennessee State, from Nashville (on the Cumberland River, an Ohio River tributary), having joined in 1986. That permanently ended in 1991 when Southeast Missouri joined. Since then, the conference has had two members from Alabama (Samford from 2003–2008, Jacksonville State from 2003–2021),^note The far northern part of the state, including Huntsville, is in the Ohio watershed, but both schools are well outside it. one more from Missouri (Lindenwood, 2022–present), and one from Arkansas (Little Rock, 2022–present). Three members from Illinois, also an Ohio River state, play with the trope; Eastern Illinois (1996–present) is (barely) in the Ohio watershed, while SIU Edwardsville (2008–present) and Western Illinois (2023–present) are outside of it.
• The West Coast Conference had BYU, located in the inland western state of Utah, as a member from 2011 to 2023.
• On a related note, the postseason Vegas 16 tournament in basketball, launched in 2016, was meant to have a 16-team field. However, for what proved to be its only edition, only 8 teams were picked for quality concerns due to how the season ended up finishing.
• Lower division NCAA and NAIA conferences named after individual states generally only have members located in that state. More recently a few have expanded to include members from other states but have elected to keep their original name. The Lone Star Conference,^note NCAA Division II named after Texas' longstanding nickname, still has the bulk of its schools in that state, but now has full members in Arkansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, as well as football-only members in Oregon and Washington. The Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association^note NCAA Division III now has two Indiana schools, both located in counties on the Michigan border. The Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference^note NAIA still has a majority of schools in Kansas, but in the last few years added members from Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference^note also NCAA D-II had single-sport members from outside the state in the past, but did not get its first out-of-state full member until Shepherd, from West Virginia's eastern panhandle, joined in 2019. The Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference^note also NCAA D-III added Nebraska Wesleyan in 2016 and kept its name, but decided to avert this trope and change the name to the American Rivers Conference in 2018.
  • Not to mention the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC).^note also NCAA D-III It was founded in 1989 with six members in the St. Louis metropolitan area, but expanded into central Missouri just a year later, and now has members in central Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Mississippi (which doesn't even border Missouri!) as well. An Iowa school had been a member from 2013 to 2021.
  • And the Old Dominion Athletic Conference.^note also NCAA D-III It was founded in May 1975 as the Virginia College Conference, but adopted its current name, referencing the state's historic nickname, on January 1, 1976. The ODAC started out as an all-Virginia league, but picked up a Tennessee member in 1980, followed the next year by a DC school. By 1989, both out-of-state schools had left, making it once again an all-Virginia circuit, but the arrival of a North Carolina school in 1991 made the "Old Dominion" name an artifact once again, with said NC school still in the league.
  • The NCAA Division II conference founded in 1912 as the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletic Association played with this trope for more than two decades after its first two out-of-state members (both from Kansas) joined in 1989. The next year, it changed its logo, originally consisting of the initials within an outline of Missouri, to include an outline of Kansas (while reorganizing the letters). In 1992, it renamed itself the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association, allowing it to keep its long-standing MIAA initialism. When the MIAA expanded into Nebraska and Oklahoma in 2012, it ditched its logo, creating a new one that eliminated any state outlines.
  • The NAIA's Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference was founded in 1916 as a Kentucky-only conference, but before it finally became the River States Conference in 2016, the following out-of-state members joined:
    • Rio Grande (in Ohio; pronounced RYE-o grand): 1964–1971 and 2004–present.
    • Oakland City (in Indiana): 1968–1975 (rejoined in 2020, after the conference name change).
    • Clinch Valley (now known as UVA Wise, as in Virginia): 1971–1994.
    • IU Southeast (the first of three Indiana University branch campuses to join): 1994–present.^note Granted, this particular campus is in a town just across the Ohio River from Louisville.
    • Bethel (in Tennessee): 1999–2006.
    • St. Louis Pharmacy (yes, that St. Louis): 2003–2014.^note The school changed its name in 2020 to "University of Health Sciences & Pharmacy in St. Louis". It now calls its athletic program "UHSP". Incidentally, because Louisville school Spalding joined the aforementioned SLIAC in 2009 (where it remains today), the KIAC had a St. Louis member and the SLIAC a Kentucky member from 2009 to 2014.
    • IU East: 2007–present.
    • Mountain State (in West Virginia): 2007–2012.
    • Cincinnati Christian: 2008–2019.^note Again somewhat excusable, given that Cincinnati's southern suburbs are in Kentucky.
    • Carlow and Point Park, both from Pittsburgh: Both joined in 2012; Carlow left in 2023.
    • IU Kokomo: 2013–present.
    • Ohio Christian and West Virginia Tech: 2015–present, though Ohio Christian will leave in 2024.
    • To sum it up: In its final season under the KIAC name, the league had 13 members in five states, with only four members in Kentucky!! At least the new conference name finally fits, seeing that every current member (including another Indiana school that joined in 2021, and schools from Indiana and Ohio that joined in 2023) is in a state on the Ohio River.
• The NCAA itself has one example. In sports that have national championship events open to members of more than one of its three divisions,^*See our page on the NCAA for the detailed rundown. the championship events are officially called "National Collegiate" championships... except in men's ice hockey, where the top-level championship is called the "Division I" championship despite being open to D-II members. Reason? The NCAA held a Division II tournament from 1978–1984 and again from 1993–1999.
• As of the 2023–24 basketball season, the Philadelphia Big 5, the city's traditional men's basketball rivalry, officially involves six teams. The historic rivalry featured La Salle, Penn, Saint Joseph's, Temple, and Villanova. La Salle, Penn, and Temple are located entirely in the city; Saint Joe's campus straddles the city limits; and Villanova is in a Main Line suburb.^note This refers to the old Main Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In the late 19th century, many of Philly's wealthiest families built main or second homes near the stretch of the line just west of the city limits, and over time it became a wealthy suburban region. This rivalry excluded Drexel, even though like the others it's a member of NCAA Division I, and its campus is adjacent to that of Penn. When the rivalry format was revamped after the 2022–23 season, Drexel was officially added to the rivalry, which retains the Big 5 name out of tradition (not to mention that Drexel insisted on keeping the historic rivalry name).
• The Southland Bowling League was established in 2015 by the Southland Conference (SLC) as a single-sport conference for women's bowling (the ten-pin variety). While the SLC provided administrative services, the SBL operated separately from the all-sports SLC and was a separate legal entity. When the SBL formed, its name was also non-indicative to a degree; it had a couple of members well outside the South, and more significantly, its eight members included only two full SLC members (Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin). Both schools were expelled from the SLC in 2021 when they announced their departure for the Western Athletic Conference, joining the latter league at that time, but remained SBL members because of that league's separate legal status. This became a Dead Horse Trope in 2023 when the SBL agreed to merge into Conference USA.
• Conference Carolinas in NCAA Division II initially subverted this trope; when they added Longwood University in Virginia in 1995, the league changed its name to the Carolinas–Virginia Athletic Conference, but reverted back when the Lancers left eight years later for Division I. But by the 2010s, CC started adding members from Georgia (Emmanuel, Shorter, and Young Harris) and Tennessee (King).

Other

• Figure skating got its name from its original focus on having one skate a series of predefined compulsory figures on the ice (like a figure-eight). With the advent of television, home audiences found the process of watching skater after skater perform a series of mundane movements followed by minutes of nitpicky judging to be boring in the extreme, and were often outraged when a skater had basically won the competition before the more exciting free skate started. Thus, the "figure" part of figure skating began to play less and less of a role in official competitions until being completely eliminated in 1990. The Other Wiki has a separate page on the decline of compulsory figures.^PostscriptCompulsory figures were revived as a completely separate competitive discipline in the current century, with figures-only world championships having been held since 2015.
• The term "try", currently the highest-value score in both rugby union and rugby league, is an artifact from the earliest days of rugby, before the split of league from union at the turn of the 20th century. Initially, the goal of the game was to score goals. The act of the attacking side downing the ball in the defenders' in-goal area was called a "touch down", which had no value. Instead, it gave the attackers a "try at goal" without interference from the defenders. A successful kick "converted" a try to a goal—which is the source of the modern term "conversion" in both codes of rugby. Over time, the "touch down" became what we now call the "try".
• Rugby union club London Irish was founded in London for Irish immigrants — they now play in Reading (40 miles from London) and as of January 2011 had only two Irish players. The name became meaningful again in December 2013 when a group of London-based Irish businessmen bought the club.
• A more recent rugby union example: The transhemispheric league then known as Pro14, featuring clubs in Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales, had only 13 teams in its final season under that name in 2020–21. It was intended to have 14 teams, but one of the SA sides went belly-up after a takeover bid collapsed in fraud. After that season, the trope was averted. The remaining SA side left, the country's four former Super Rugby franchises joined, and the league renamed itself the very inclusive United Rugby Championship.
• Also in union, the move of South Africa's former Super Rugby franchises into the URC made the word "European" in the nonsponsored titles of both of Europe's transnational club competitions, the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup, an artifact. That said, the "European" part can be salvaged as referring to Europe-based leagues; the aforementioned URC is based in Dublin, and all of the non-SA teams in the last season under the Pro14 name continue to play in the URC.
• An Artifact Nickname: Brazilian swimmer Fernando Scherer is known in his country as "Xuxa", a nickname he earned in his youth for having golden locks similar to an eponymous TV host from that country. Ever since he became a professional swimmer, he is bald (in that sport, it's either that or a swim cap).
• The UK's premier tennis venue, home of the Wimbledon Championships, is formally named the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. This is a deliberate adoption of this trope: though croquet was dropped, and the name changed to reflect this in 1882, the current name was instated in 1889, for sentimental reasons. The club grounds do still include a croquet lawn, but it's more a historical decorative feature than a practical one. The "All England" part of the name isn't really indicative either, as the club's orbit extends across the whole of the UK. The "Lawn" part is, though: Wimbledon is now the only Grand Slam event played on grass.
• Australian Rules Football: As the AFL expanded from a Victorian to a national competition, many Victorian clubs lost their connections to the suburbs they were named after. Collingwood, Hawthorn and St Kilda no longer have any ties to their namesake suburbs, and (except for Melbourne) the rest of the suburban grounds are used only for training and social purposes (the league's nine Melbourne-based teams have a grand total of two home stadiums).
  • The AFL name is Newer Than They Think—the league was founded as the Victorian Football League in 1897, and didn't become the AFL until 1990. Once South Melbourne moved to become the Sydney Swans in 1982, the "Victorian" Football League had a team in New South Wales, and before the league changed its name, it had added teams in Queensland (the Brisbane Bears, later merged into today's Brisbane Lions) and Western Australia (West Coast Eagles).
  • Hawthorn and North Melbourne both currently play some home games in Tasmania (Launceston and Hobart, respectively), which is an island on the other side of the Bass Strait from their respective Melbourne namesake locations. This arrangement will end when the AFL adds a Tasmanian team in 2028.
  • Even though the South Melbourne team moved to Sydney in 1982, their jerseys are still labeled "SMFC".
  • The Fremantle Dockers have always played their home games in Perth, which is about a half-hour's drive inland from Fremantle.
• Similar to hockey's NHL, Australia's National Rugby League has a team from New Zealand, the Auckland-based Warriors.
• Another Aussie example: the National Rugby Championship (in rugby union; the NRL plays rugby league) added the Fijian Drua in 2017.^note The Drua is a developmental side for the country's national team. The league went belly-up after its 2019 season, but the Drua returned in 2021 in Super Rugby Pacific.
• Many continental sports governing bodies have members from outside their main geographic region.
  • Practically all "European" governing bodies (UEFA in football/soccer, FIBA Europe in basketball, Rugby Europe in rugby union, etc.) include members that are either partially or totally in Asia. Most notably, these bodies all include Russia (with most of its area in Asia, but most of its population in Europe), Turkey (primarily in Asia), Kazakhstan (but only for UEFA; it does have a small amount of European territory, but only by some definitions), and Israel. In the case of Israel, it joined European bodies because many of its Middle Eastern neighbors do not recognize it.
  • CONCACAF, standing for Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football, includes three members on the South American continent—Guyana, Suriname, and the French overseas department of French Guiana. (They do form the south boundary of the Caribbean Sea, however, and because of the isolation caused by the Amazon rainforest, have always had more to do with the Caribbean islands than with other countries in South America.)
  • The Asian Football Confederation has included Australia since 2006 - in part because Australia has won the Oceanian continental qualification round handily more than once - only to then fall in a play-off against much stronger opposition and in part because aside from New Zealand there really isn't any Oceanian country with soccer even remotely on par with Australia. And even then both nations are known primarily for other sports (Rugby and Aussie Rules Football).
• Following the COVID-19 Pandemic, the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo was postponed until 2021, but like with Euro 2020, the "2020" branding was still used for the event despite it taking place a year late.
• In golf, "woods" are now made from lightweight metals such as titanium, or sometimes carbon fiber, instead of wood. The TaylorMade company hung a lampshade on this change in 1979 when it introduced its first metal driver (with a steel head), branding it as "Pittsburgh Persimmon" (persimmon being the wood of choice for such clubs before that time). Though TaylorMade wasn't the first company to introduce a metal wood, the Pittsburgh Persimmon was the first such club to be a market success, making it the Trope Codifier for the product.
• The "league changes the number of teams it has but keeps its old name" phenomenon also happens on the high school sports level. The Western Big 6 Conference in Illinois now has 8 members (having added 2 schools in 2019).