Team Names

Call this team the Philadelphia Charge. And plan to go see it play at Villanova Stadium. Just don't ask who's going to be the coach (it's a secret), or who the players will be on the complete roster. So far, there are only five. There still is a lot of work to do before Philadelphia's first professional women's soccer team takes the field in April. But don't worry about the unfinished details. The Women's United Soccer Association, scheduled to begin play in April, is getting it all together.

For the second time in three months, the Metrodome in Minneapolis finds itself hosting both a major sporting event and a Native American controversy. In October, it was the World Series, with the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves playing baseball against a backdrop of tomahawk chops and Indian war chants. This week, it is the Washington Redskins, a team with a nickname many Native Americans consider offensive, coming to Minneapolis for a Super Bowl XXVI date with Buffalo on Sunday.

The new Philadelphia soccer team has chosen its nickname: The IronPigs. Just kidding, soccer fans. Don't have a stroke. Besides, that name is already taken, picked for a new Phillies farm club in Allentown through an online vote of baseball fans. Which explains why, when Philadelphia was formally awarded a Major League Soccer team and Gov. Rendell announced that fans would choose the name, you could see members of the ownership group squirm. Actually, fans will only help select the name.

The 1991 professional football season ended with the Washington Redskins crowned world champions. Although the game has been briefly placed in mothballs, the battle over the name of the victors rages on. Last week, District of Columbia City Council member William P. Lightfoot introduced a measure calling for the name of the Washington Redskins to be changed to acknowledge the sensitivity of American Indian leaders and many of their 1.8 million followers...

Owner Mike Agganis said he wanted to honor the nation's space program by tagging this city's new minor-league baseball team with a rocket-powered name: The Blast. But many here thought the name - not to mention the mascot, a space-suited cat called Kaboom - was a sick joke. That's because Akron's strongest link to space exploration was as the home of astronaut Judith Resnik, who died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded moments after takeoff in 1986. "Geez, it's in poor taste," said Wendy Ellis, a baseball fan who stood on the edge of downtown this week, watching construction workers build the team's $31 million stadium.

Some people see a bridge. In fact, they see a very specific bridge, the Commodore Barry, deftly tucked into the logo of the region's new pro soccer team, the Union, which formally announced its name and colors yesterday. A rollicking news conference at Philadelphia City Hall drew hundreds of fans along with dignitaries from Mayor Nutter to Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber, gathered to celebrate what team co-owner Jay Sugarman grinningly called "the world's worst-kept secret.

The Eagles officially passed the title of defensive coordinator from Jim Johnson to Sean McDermott yesterday. With Johnson still battling the metastatic melanoma that was discovered by doctors during the Eagles' playoff run in January, the decision was mutually agreed upon that it was time for McDermott to take control of the defense. McDermott, a 35-year-old graduate of La Salle High School and a member of the Eagles' organization since 1998, will speak about his new role for the first time today at a 1 p.m. news conference.

Denis Mercier sees himself as a modern Don Quixote. "But instead of tilting at windmills," said Mercier, a communications and popular-culture professor at Rowan College of New Jersey, "the target is Jack Kent Cooke!" Mercier, 51, whose colorful office walls display the fruits of his quest for examples of ethnic stereotyping in the media, now finds himself lined up against Cooke and his Washington Redskins football team. After seven prominent American Indians began a campaign to cancel the trademark term Redskins last September, Mercier was recruited to bolster their case by compiling examples of American Indian stereotyping in the media.

Being the owner of a professional sports team has its perks. One is that you hire the coach. Chester County resident Scott Barker, owner of the Delaware Blue Bombers of the Atlantic Basketball Association, hired himself. Barker, of Franklin Township, was an assistant coach at Delaware Tech when he read a newspaper article this year saying that the six-team ABA, a successor to the Eastern Basketball League, was looking for people or organizations to purchase franchises. The ABA, a weekends-only league, began its first season Nov. 27. Barker became very interested when he found that a franchise "wasn't too expensive," meaning under five figures.

The owner of Camden's minor-league baseball franchise has chosen an executive involved in the start-up of the Atlantic League's Bridgeport, Conn., team to launch operations here. One of the first jobs that John J. Brandt Jr., 33, has taken on as general manager for Camden Baseball LLC is running a contest for Camden schoolchildren to choose the name of the team, which is slated to start play next year. The announcement of Brandt's appointment by team owner Stephen R. Shilling comes as workers are preparing ground on the Delaware River waterfront for a $17.5 million, 6,000-seat stadium, which will be owned by Rutgers University and used by the minor-league franchise and the school.