Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2009 March 28

Welcome to the Wikipedia Entertainment Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 28

Naming convention distinctions between scholastic and professional sports

I had a very strange conversation recently, with a friend involved in both college and high school sports. When I casually made reference to the "team name" for a college basketball team, she said that college and high school sports teams are named the same as the school, and what I thought of as the team name was the mascot name. In other words, KUs sports teams are named "Kansas" and the "Jayhawks" are the name of the mascot. In professional sports, she conceded, the team has a name separate from the place of origin.

This is totally weird and bizarre to me. I always thought that "Jayhawks" and similar were the team names, just like "Bills" is the team name of the NFL team from Buffalo. Has anyone else heard this theory? Is it correct? Did I somehow misunderstand what she was trying to say? gnfnrf (talk) 13:28, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea. But, I can point out that several college teams' names are unlikely to ever have been mascots: Cornell Big Red, Dartmouth Big Green, Alabama Crimson Tide, Harvard Crimson... There are more that I can't think of right now. MookieZ (talk) 00:09, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

What you are confusing is three things; the school name, the sports team nickname, and the mascot. I went to the University of Delaware whose sports teams are nicknamed the Fightin' Blue Hens and whose mascot is named YoUDee. For your Kansas example, the University of Kansas sports teams are nicknamed the Jayhawks and their mascot is Big Jay. Usually, the mascot is an anthropomorphized version of the school's nickname; but not always. The University of North Carolina, whose nickname is the Tar Heels have a sheep named Rameses as their mascot; there is a real live Ram and also a dude in a Ram costume.

No real knowledge of this, but I would imagine that when it comes to going through the bureacracy of registering a school or college sports team in some competition it's probably registered as "Kansas University", or "Kansas University Jayhawks", and not "Jayhawks". This is probably to avoid any confusion if the team were to change to another nickname, or if another university were to come into the competition who were also called the "Jayhawks". DJ Clayworth (talk) 14:06, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

It is not uncommon for college/high school teams to share a common nickname. Just google for something generic like "bulldogs football team". I got University of Georgia, Yale, Fresno State, Hart County High School, and University of Redlands on the first page of hits (I didn't check to see if those schools actually use the name Bulldogs, but I assume many do). Therefore, the schools must officially use the school name. I assume that conferences have some rules about team names to avoid duplicate names in a single conference. With extreme restrictions on names that are allowed, due to political correctness, either duplicate naming will need to be allowed or we'll soon end up with team names like "The Carrots". -- kainaw™ 15:00, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

For the avoidance of duplicate names, the SEC didn't bother: not only are the LSU Tigers and the Auburn Tigers duplicated, they're even in the same division. — Lomn 16:43, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

This irrelevantly reminds me of a much-repeated anecdote which I find fishy because of the question "what kind of football team has the devil as a mascot?" How about half the rural high schools in the Midwest? (or so it seemed to me) —Tamfang (talk) 19:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Mine was (and after checking, still is) the Red Devils... not be confused with any of the other colors of devil... Dismas|^(talk) 03:05, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there was a time in professional sports when this problem existed as well. Consider the Canadian Football League, which for MANY years, despite being an 8-team league, has TWO of its 8 teams sharing a nickname, the Ottawa Rough Riders and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Sadly, the Ottawa team folded in the 1990's in the aftermath of the CFL's ill-advised expansion into the U.S. and subsequent near collapse. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 20:50, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Is music recycled?

Hi. My friend suggested that most new songs are developed with key elements from taken other existing ones. This makes sense, because when a song runs in my head, the tune gets intermingled with other songs, evolves over time, and becomes a whole new song. I've even heard the quotation, "A good composer does not imitate, he steals", so is there some truth to this? Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 15:35, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Of course. It's a time-honored tradition dating at least from the Renaissance and Baroque -- but we musicians prefer to call it "borrowing". :-) Hermione1980 18:41, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Well that quotation you use is more commonly associated to artists - "good artists copy, great artists steal" (Picasso?), so it sounds like that's just a take on that statement. I would expect plenty of music is created from known patterns/melodies, but don't know if it is systemic or not. Hopefully someone will be able to elaborate on that more. ny156uk (talk) 18:45, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Some melodies either consciously, or more probably unconsciously, emulate existing melodies, but unless they're so close as to be plagiarism material, they're usually safe from the lawyers. Giacomo Puccini successfully sued the writers of the popular song Avalon (written by Al Jolson and others), because they took the tune of his aria "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca, changed it from minor to major, and slightly adjusted the rhythm. This was still too close to be regarded as an independent piece of music, so Puccini got $25,000 and all future royalties from Avalon. Johannes Brahms wrote his 1st Symphony, and people immediately started calling it "Beethoven's 10th Symphony" because of various similarities with Beethoven's general idiom. When people said the theme from the last movement reminded them of the "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's 9th Symphony, he retorted "Any ass can see that", but he didn't go so far as to say he had actually used that theme as the basis of his theme, and there was no plagiarism suit brought. Musical plagiarism has some examples of plagiarism suits involving popular music. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:10, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

If you're ever in a band that writes songs together, and there's a guy in the band who always says, "Wait, this song sounds too much like one I've heard before" -- kick him out of the band. He can't help you write songs. ;-) —Kevin Myers 08:47, 29 March 2009 (UTC)