The XFL today unveiled every team name and crest for the upcoming season, which kicks off in February. This will be Vince McMahon’s second foray into professional football, after the original incarnation of the league stopped playing after one season back in 2001.

Now, I think I’m a pretty fair guy, except when it comes to critiquing Angelo Cataldi, but I gotta be honest here; these names are incredibly boring and basic. It seems as though five seconds of effort was put into selecting these monikers:

  • Dallas Renegades
  • Houston Roughnecks
  • LA Wildcats
  • New York Guardians
  • St. Louis BattleHawks
  • Seattle Dragons
  • Tampa Bay Vipers
  • D.C. Defenders

Really?

Defenders? Guardians? BattleHawks? Feels like we’re playing Starcraft instead of football. And don’t we have enough Wildcats already?

These are just blah. Whatever. Is it that hard to come up with something new and unique, or base a name off an interesting geographical or civic connection?

Here are the logos:

The league’s video presentation featured individual snippets for each team, which I did think were actually kind of cool. The New York Guardians clip had a gargoyle theme to it, which was gnarly, but doesn’t the logo kind of look like a cat? It looks like a Saber Tooth tiger or something:

Here’s the clip for the BattleHawks, in which they go with a “winged warriors” type of bird/fighter jet crossover theme:

Anyway, the rest are on the XFL site if you wanna check ’em out. I think they’re pretty basic, but whatever.