In the impermanent world of sports, you get not one but nine, 13, or eleventyjillion chances to make a first impression. This is because sports is all about the reset. Draft a star, trade a mope, fire a coach, sell the team, move the team, as many times as necessary—if you don't like something about your past, change it. People will forget, even New York Jets fans.
This brings us to the new Toronto WNBA franchise selecting Tempo as its nickname, and the explanation as provided by its current marketing team. As it currently exists, this is among the most objectively risible nicknames in all of North American sports. It will change, of course, but we might as well celebrate it while we can.
And let’s get to it, because it took just a few days for BOS Nation, the freshly introduced National Women's Soccer League franchise, to dump its original slogan, "Too Many Balls." Too many people in its potential fan base objected, for multiple reasons, all of them profoundly valid. The most basic of those arguments against—"It stinks"—was the most compelling.
It could do the trick here, too. Leave aside Tempo as a nickname, even. The team’s logo is just the letter T, which suggests that most electric and fearsome of elemental forces: the alphabet. If you cannot come up with a visualization of your team other than "It's the first letter of the town we play in," the boat has left you on the dock already. What this suggests is club president Teresa Resch walking into the marketing people and barking, "Nickname and logo, stat. I'll be back in five minutes."
But let's defer to Resch on the explanation:
“Tempo is pace. It’s speed. It’s a heartbeat. And it’s what you feel when you step into the streets of this city, and in the energy of the people who call Canada home. As Canada’s WNBA team, I know the Tempo will set our own pace, move at a championship cadence, and inspire people across this country.”
Well, no. Tempo is "a" pace, but not necessarily a speedy one. And if it were, you don't want a heartbeat with a fast pace—"We're The Tachycardia!" Besides, what if the Tempo choose to play slow as a tactical decision, as some under-talented expansion teams often do to minimize their new team talent shortcomings? Tempo becomes an in-joke right out of the chute, and being the butt of a self-administered in-jokes is no way to start a business.
Some folks might find yet another singular nickname an annoyance as well, but that argument long ago was lost and in any event is silly. The WNBA already has and does flirt with the celestial, meteorological, metaphysical, and generally vague as long as it isn't plural—Sun, Sol, Shock, Storm, Mercury, Dream—and probably always will. Besides, once the NBA approved the New Orleans Jazz in 1974, all future bets were officially off.
So let's move past that and return to the here-and-now, which is already unflattering. The way we found out about Tempo in the first place was sufficiently slapstick, in that the nickname was included in a dropdown menu on the WNBA website the day before the official reveal. It was spotted there by someone at Chris Creamer's foundational SportsLogos.com, which is based in Toronto. Having your big surprise revealed by someone other than you is a bummer; having it be this particular surprise is even worse.
Besides, there was an immediate opportunity presented to the Tempo in its very history, and that was in how it was approved by the WNBA and NBA owners who voted on WNBA expansion teams. The Toronto bid received all 13 WNBA votes and 29 of the 30 NBA votes approving it as the league's 14th franchise—the more brand-creditable Golden State Valkyries are the 13th—with the sole dissenting vote coming from the NBA's Doctor Cranky himself, Jimmy Dolan and the New York Knickerbockers. Even Dolan didn’t object to the team per se; the vote was because Dolan, now the league's designated irritable contrarian, is suing the Raptors over a wobbly claim about theft of intellectual property. Finding a nickname that would trigger Dolan's already sensitive temper would have given the team immediate cache in a crowded metropolitan space for sports franchises, including the brand-new PWHL Sceptres. Even staid, blue-gray Toronto would enjoy sticking a finger in New York's eye just for hoots and cackles, especially if the offended eye is Dolan's. It's not like the Maple Leafs are going to manage that any time soon.
Fortunately for all involved, nothing is permanent for those who are prodded to change. The Las Vegas Aces used to be the Starzz and Silver Stars before they settled on Las Vegas and Aces. The Washington Wizards used to be the Packers, Zephyrs, and Bullets, of Chicago, then Baltimore, and then Capital.
In other words, Our Teresa (or owner Larry Tanenbaum, whoever gets there first) can remedy these initial gaffes simply by reconvening the marketing department and saying, "OK, five minutes was a little too stat. Take the afternoon." There are lots of possibilities out there. I mean, they asked for suggestions from the public, including Towers (after the CN Tower), 6ixers (which makes no sense and in any event chooses a poor role model), and Traffic. And we can all agree that Tempo implies some form of motion, albeit a lame and vague one, while Traffic is very much the absence of same, and you don't want to be selling something that makes people kick the knobs off their dashboards in rage. Come on, kids, you can do this. Even Toronto People is better than Tempo.
