Adjectives Are Not Nouns

If there's one thing that's fairly consistent among major sports organizations, it's that the team name, no matter what league and what sport, generally are nouns. It's easy to see why this would be as most sports organizations want physical things as their representatives when it comes to logos, mascots, and branding. For a university as rich in broadcasting history as Toronto Metropolitan University - formerly Ryerson University - you'd think they'd grasp this concept when rebranding their sports teams, but they decided to rebrand in an incomprehensible way. You may even say this rebrand was "bold".

The very first sentence in the release TMU put out on Monday states succinctly, "The Ryerson Rams are now the TMU Bold."

As you're processing that astounding rebrand by TMU, let's run down the reasons why "Bold" is perhaps the worst name in all of sports teams history, let alone university sports in Canada. The only noun form that "bold" takes is when referring to typeface in terms of WORDS BEING HIGHLIGHTED IN BOLD. Even then, the usage of the word only makes sense when describing the typeface, so it's an attibutive noun - a noun which modifies another noun.

This isn't some team name like "Jets", "Bulls", "Lightning", or "Orioles". All of those things conjure an image in your mind of what the team's main identity is. "Bold" gives you no sense of any sort of branding or mascot in any way, shape, or form, yet TMU is going to play under this name for the foreseeable future. It makes you wonder who came up with this idea and who approved it.

What makes this harder to fathom is that there was a committee who reportedly engaged the TMU community to come up with this name. In the release, they write,

In an extensive two-phased process, TMU received 4,800 contributions via surveys. In May, the university received 2,100 responses to an initial survey and open call for suggestions. In July, a shortlist was published, which resulted in an additional 2,700 survey submissions and email responses.

These surveys followed some rather basic guidelines that included being appropriate for all sports teams regardless of gender or sport, being representative of the TMU experience and/or history, and being representative of positive qualities, ideals, or associations that align with TMU. All of these goals seem pretty easy to hit with respect to new branding, so I'm still puzzled how "Bold" was even in the shortlist.

According to reports, the shortlist in June included Bold, Meteors, and Towers - all things I immediately never think of when thinking about Toronto and TMU. I get "Towers" for the CN Tower, but that's a rather terrible name. I have no idea how "Meteors" even related to TMU or Toronto in general, so I cannot explain how that got to the shortlist. And "Bold" is awful because I don't think of TMU or Toronto as bold in any way, shape or form, and the word is an adjective, not a noun.

“Boldness is a core value of our university. It is shared by our students, reflected in our approach to learning and research, and demonstrated on the court, the field, and the rink by our athletes,” president and vice-chancellor Mohamed Lachemi stated in the press release. If you notice, the word "boldness" - a noun! - shows up in his statement, and not once is the adjective "bold" written. We'll hear about how bold the TMU teams are until the cows come home, I'm sure, but being bold is far different from being THE Bold.

What makes this name even harder to explain is that Egerton the Ram, which had been the university mascot since 1961, was retired in this rebranding, forcing the school to reconsider how they will be recognized by fans. Picture "Bold" in your mind - do you see a falcon? That's the new animal form for the Bold in this rebrand, and it was one that was suggested a number of times by the TMU community during the committee's survey period, leading me to ask why wasn't "Falcons" chosen as the new name?

"It was clear from the feedback that our community wanted the TMU mascot to be an animal with local significance, with a level of sophistication and something that would connect to the team name," Jen McMillen, vice-provost for students, stated. "Falcons are as bold as they come. They are fast and fierce, they are good critical thinkers, they are strong. These are all qualities that align with boldness, and represent many qualities of TMU student-athletes."

Hold on a second here. If Falcons checks all the boxes - local to Toronto, represents both the athletes and students who attend TMU, and appropriate for all sports teams regardless of sport or gender - why are we even discussing "Bold"? The TMU Falcons literally makes too much sense from a sports fan's point of view, so how the heck did we land on "Bold"?

McMillen likened the name "Bold" to the NHL's Minnesota Wild in an interview with Sportsnet, but I want to make one thing clear: I can sit out in the wild and be immersed in all sorts of imagery from trees to animals to creeks and rivers to the sky. I can't sit in the bold because that doesn't exist. And, coincidentally, all of those things make up the Wild's logo, so you're really making a false equivalency here, Miss McMillen. Your comparison fails on that level alone, so let's not liken an adjective to a noun in how they're used.

Honestly, if I was searching for "TMU Bold" online, I'd expect to get search results for a font that I needed, not a university athletics department. I know that TMU will want people to start using the new name, but this blog will not. It's ridiculously bad, and Falcons just makes more sense to me. If and when there are stories about the Bold, you'll only see TMU used here because it's not a team name. It's an adjective.

Just because it sounds cool doesn't mean it is cool. Jeff Goldblum's argument in Jurassic Park stands as the test for this name, and, quite frankly, Ian Malcolm's logic wins again.

Best of luck with your "Bold" decision, TMU.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!