Appropriately lost amid this wonderfully crowded sports season, which included no less than a Sports Equinox this past Monday, the UFL—you know, America’s latest college-try at spring football—made waves recently by revealing not just one destined-to-last-three-seasons-at-most franchise but two. (Editorial note: “Waves” is used here in the nickname news sense; not to be confused with actual headline-worthy happenings; e.g., the Brewers ripping through the World Series like a shotgunned can of Miller Lite or the Valkyries and Dream duking it out for layup supremacy…and wondering where they’ll play next.)
Introduced first to the world were the Rhode Island Breakers (DOB: 10.18.26), and a week later came the Colorado Stampede (10.25.26). Both teams, on their newborn faces, sport decent-enough identities (Rhode Island as the rocky-shored Ocean State with the famed Breakers mansion in Newport; Colorado as the outdoor playground of the West where the Great Plains collides with the Rockies), but when you push past their recycled team rosters (the Breakers with the Birmingham Stallions and the Stampede with the Dallas Renegades) and fresh-out-of-the-box logos, those nicknames lose whatever luster they hoped to have, especially as one name has been used previously by a trinity of failed spring football teams (R.I.P., Breakers–Breakers–Breakers, USFL 1983–85) and the other appears as a half-baked knock-off of a longtime CFL team (Calgary Stampeders) mixed with Neon Deion’s Buffaloes upstate at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Our verdict? Stampede over Breakers in a squeaker-stinker, 5 Buffalo Sauce Bottles (one for every wild bison in Colorado today) to 4 Twice-Baked Potatoes (one for every iteration of spring football Breakers—Boston, Portland, New Orleans, and now Rhode Island).
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