New year. New puns

It's so great to be back under the dome for another year of parity fun. I know for myself one of the best parts is looking forward to the wonderful punny team names each season. 

Parity veterans know that each name will be ruthlessly graded against the Morgan Parity Naming Convention: https://www.ocua.ca/comment/34615#comment-34615

This year however one name stands above all as an early favourite.

“Team Morgan” 

Just a great entry here, but let's see how it stacks up against the criteria.

1) A well named parity team should be based on one of the following pun categories, ranked from most to least desireable.

·         Captain's first name, last name or well known handle

·         Parity or its aspects (stats, heckles, trades etc)

·         Topical pop culture

Captain’s name prominently featured? Oh abosolutely.  We’re good here.  Parity aspects?  Well there are 10 teams in the league and the word team is right there in the team name, so we have to stretch a bit, but I think we get there.  It won’t be easy to hit all of Morgan’s criteria in a simple two word name, but I believe.

Now topical pop culture is a bit trickier.  I’m older now than I once was and certainly less with it than in my past, but a quick entry for Team Morgan into the google machine returns something about a firefighter’s fundraiser for children’s cancer research and MANY picture for US soccer star Alex Morgan.  I’m not sure about cancer fundraisers but Alex Morgan seems very pretty and I recognize her so I think this counts.

Three for three so far.  We’re doing great!

2) A secondary pun can be chosen from this list to support the primary pun

·         Notable team member's well known handle

·         General frisbee puns

·         Local history, culture, or boroughs

·         Popular sayings

·         Something naughty

·         Obscure cultural references

A little tough to have a notable team member’s well known handle.  We have Morgan of course, but he was already covered under point 1) above.  I’m not saying he isn’t notable, I’m just not sure we can give double points.  Maybe we can, he is great after all.

Now for general Frisbee puns, we do all play on teams so I think we can definitely award a point here.  If we’re giving double points for Morgan, its only fair to do the same for Team. I think we can reach and get a local angle as well.  In my google search above, the firefighters’ charities were raising money for CHEO research.  Well played Morgan!  That’s a deep cut, but I see what you’ve done.  Now the last three bullets for popular sayings, something naughty or obscure cultural references, I may have to crowd source the grade.  As I said, I’m not with it enough to grasp these obscure references.  I could believe that there is something naughty here though, after all I did just finish googling pics of cute soccer players.  We’ll grade this section as incomplete.  I don’t want to rule out that Morgan is doing something here that has just gone over my head.

3) The use of puns does not justify incoherent phrases.

4) Use of arbitrary punless themes is strictly forbidden

This is important.  We don’t want to go overboard with the puns, but I think we’re safe.  Team Morgan is a clean and tight two word name that conveys clearly what this team is all about without clogging up the stat spread sheets by being too verbose or by confusing the readers with too many references.  I like it.

I think we have it.  I think we have the perfect parity name.  After all what could possible rate higher on the Morgan Parity Naming Scale than: “Team Morgan”.