WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Kansas City's Major League Soccer team is undergoing a face lift...for the second time.  On Wednesday, the announced they are changing their name for the Kansas City Wizards to Sporting Kansas City.

The name means nothing.  It's ambiguous.  It doesn't make me think of soccer.  It's sounds like the name of a local sports magazine.  Yes, I'm one of those people that doesn't get it, but I'm not alone.

This is the team's third nickname in 15 years.  When it was introduced, along with the inception of the MLS, back in 1996, the team was known as the Kansas City Wiz.  And believe me, they took some mighty ribbing for that.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I did cover Kansas City's inaugural game.  I played soccer on the Arrowhead Stadium field with the team and even gave Preki a piggy-back ride.  I had the time of my life, but I'm not a soccer fan.  I really never have been, but this isn't so much about the game of soccer as it is about how this team has made a monumental marketing mistake, a colossal communications conundrum, a boneheaded branding blunder.  You get the gist of it.

What I see with these MLS nicknames, i.e. Real Salt Lake, FC Dallas, Sporting Kansas City is that they are trying way too hard to Europeanize the American version of a world sport.

Let's look at basketball for a minute.  The international rules differ in many ways from how it's played in the NBA.  A couple of major, notable differences are that 1) the lane in international rules is a trapezoid versus a rectangle in America and 2) the three-point arc is closer.  Now, I'm not going to go into all the difference between the two versions, but there are differences to separate themselves from how it's played here.

My point is that foreign countries took an American game and pretty much made it their own.  Sure, the basics of the game are the same, but they tweaked it just enough that it isn't completely or uniquely an American sport anymore by virtue of these changes.  Do I like it or approve of it?  It doesn't matter.  It's how they play the game over there, and I couldn't care less.

So, why is MLS trying so hard to be like the European or South American version of the game?  Is it to attract world-class talent to play here?  Do most Americans know who these people are?  Or do they care?  If David Beckham walked past me on the street, I'd have no idea who he was, and he's considered one of the most famous and recognizable athletes in the world.

My other point is this, making these changes, MLS and the individual teams are shooting themselves in the foot by not appealing to a wider audience.  I'm not saying they should be all things to all people.  Heck, as popular as the NFL is these days, there are some people that don't care and never will.

Sure, the hardcore fans get these changes, love them and will accept them.  If they've been following the game around the world, this makes total sense to them.  But how does a league attract new fans and grow when they assimilate themselves with something that is foreign to most Americans to begin with?