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The fine folks at UND continue to whittle their list of potential nicknames down. I'm hoping this working group operates out of an undisclosed location, because per the Grand Forks Herald their early efforts will leave Whioux fans...well, let's go with underwhelmed:
Sixty-four UND nickname ideas are moving on to the next round of discussion after a Monday committee meeting. The 11-person committee went through all of the 1,172 individual nickname ideas on a list of viable suggestions compiled by consulting firm PadillaCRT and moved 26 forward on Monday. Last week, the committee went through 500 and moved 38 forward. ...
"Nodaks" had the most votes in support at Monday's meeting. "North Stars" came in second with six votes in support while "Spirit and "Pride" tied for third with five votes each. At the last meeting, "The Force" had six votes in favor of keeping it while "Big Green" and "Flames" tied for second with four votes each, but the number of votes won't be taken into account as the group moves forward.
Nodaks. They are actually considering Nodaks. Honestly, of the choices named in the article that is by far the best option. Spirit? Pride? The only thing worse would be calling the teams the "Spirit and Pride". Actually, you should go with that UND. The Fighting Spirit and Pride. Perfect.
The originality is stunning. "Big Green" was clearly submitted by an East Grand Forks HS alum who wasn't trying all that hard. "The Force" is just an attempt to have every home game be Star Wars night at the Ralph. The Star Wars related nickname campaign has already been done by Ole Miss and they did it better.
Frankly, several of the eliminated names are superior:
Some of the names eliminated during this most recent meeting were "Pterodactyls," "Meadowlarks," "Pulverizers," "Northerners" and "Oil Frackers."
WHY WOULD YOU PASS ON PULVERIZERS? That's the sort of name you'd expect to see in a 8-bit Nintendo football game that didn't have the rights to NFL team logos/names. It's PERFECT for the off-brand nature of everything Grand Forks.
My favorites that weren't mentioned in the article? (NOTE: link opens a PDF)
Bison Slayers: Fantastic little brother issues here.
ENERGY: The ALL CAPS thing was a nice touch.
Sundog: I don't hate this one mostly because I find most people not from the MN/plains area don't seem to know what a sundog even is.
Wooly Mammoth: Please let this win. This would be legit awesome.
The best part of all of this is that the process is still going. This is a good thing as it is the off-season and UND related pointing and laughing is much better than the alternatives.