Look! It’s football season, and I’m blogging again. It’s almost as if I wait for football to start and do little else the rest of the year. Not so. I do watch baseball.
Anyway, game one for the Boise State Broncos this season is similar to last year’s opener, in that it’s the same opponent. If you love alliteration, you’ll enjoy the Boise State Broncos taking on the Troy Trojans.
There’s actually surprisingly little alliteration in Division I FBS football. In addition to the Boise State Broncos and Troy Trojans, there are the Baylor Bears, Buffalo Bulls, Eastern Michigan Eagles, Massachusetts Minutemen, Pittsburgh Panthers, San Jose State Spartans and Utah Utes. That’s only nine teams out of 129. When I was a kid, I was on the Morningside Mustangs, Sawtooth Sabers, Bittner’s Bulldogs, Joe’s Jaguars and Chevy Shifters. That’s five alliterative teams in the same town. And I wasn’t even any good.
The nine college teams I mentioned are the ones I consider “purely” alliterative, because the first sound in the school name equals the first sound in the team name. There are other teams with some alliteration, and I’ll give each of those partial credit.
Eight teams have a team name with the same sound as the second word in the names of the school, including the Air Force Falcons, Alabama-Birmingham Blazers, Arizona State Sun Devils, Florida State Seminoles, Iowa State Cyclones, Michigan State Spartans, Southern Methodist Mustangs and Texas A&M Aggies.
Two teams, the Duke Blue Devils and Illinois Fighting Illini, have names where the second word in the team name matches the school.
Two other teams, the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers and the Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns, have alliteration in their two-word school names without matching team names. One other school does, also, but I put them in their own category for having double alliteration That’s the Texas Tech Red Raiders. The San Diego State Aztecs are the only one whose school name has alliteration in its first and third words without matching the team name, differentiating them from the aforementioned San Jose State Spartans.
Two team names have alliteration without matching the school: the Minnesota Golden Gophers and Wake Forest Demon Deacons. And I’ll give just the tiniest partial credit to the Central Michigan Chippewas. Central and Chippewa start with the same letter, but not the same sound.
Here’s something I find interesting: no alliteratively-named team has won the national championship outright since the 1976 Pittsburgh Panthers, who were led by Heisman Trophy winner Tony Dorsett. That was 42 years ago. However, during that 42-year period, the Utah Utes went undefeated once and the Boise State Broncos did it twice during years in which teams that didn’t go undefeated were named national champion. Non-alliterative teams, naturally.
I’m not sure what that proves, but since I went to Boise State, it kind of horks me off. I guess my point is that something should be done. I won’t say someone should do something, because I don’t really want it to be me.
