The New York Football Giants

Thank God the Superbowl is almost here. That means it will be over soon which means hopefully people will take a break from referring to the Giants as “The New York Football Giants”. For me, this archaic descriptor has become the sports equivalent of “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”. It used to be that ESPN’s Chris Berman would be the only one to use the phrase as a quaint, retro nod to one of the NFL’s oldest franchises. But now every asshole who says the team’s name aloud uses it, rendering it no longer quaint but annoying. You don’t hear people saying the “Utah Basketball Jazz” because it’s unnecessary and most unnecessary things are annoying. Aside from the basketball team, there is no jazz in Utah, just like aside from the football team, there are no Giants in New York.
I know, I know, before they moved to San Francisco, the Giants played baseball in New York too and so there were two teams in the same city sharing the nickname. But you don’t hear anybody saying “The St. Louis Baseball Cardinals” and there were two teams sharing the same name in St. Louis a lot more recently (1988) than in New York (1958). In Chicago, people seem to have been able to figure out the difference between Cubs and Bears without having to resort to “The Chicago Football Bears” and “The Chicago Younger, Smaller, Baseball Bears”, which must frustrate New Yorkers who 50 years after the fact still get constant reminders which game their Giants play.
For the sake of decreasing the sheer volume of things that annoy mankind (and by mankind, I mostly mean me), there should be some sort of rule or law that restricts this phraseology to cases where it is necessary and makes sense. Such as:

• The Colorado Baseball Rockies / The Colorado Rocky Mountains


• The Toronto Baseball Blue Jays / The Toronto Bird Blue Jays


• The Detroit Basketball Pistons / The Detroit Locally Manufactured Automobile Part Pistons


• The Tampa Bay Hockey Lightning / The Tampa Bay Lightning Which Can Kill You On A Golf Course


• The San Antonio Basketball Spurs / The San Antonio Jinglin’, Janglin’ Spurs


• The Tampa Bay Football Buccaneers / The Tampa Bay Bunch of Drunken Idiots Dressing Up Like Buccaneers For Gasparilla


• The Montreal Hockey Canadians / The Montreal Everybody Else Who Lives There Canadians