Don't Blow it up... Re-Brand it!

Yes, the Quintonian’s team, those Ottawa Senators, went down meekly in this year’s edition of Lord Stanley’s hockey playdowns. This posting is not a scathing rebuke of the disastrous ‘07-08 season. Frankly, this has already been done up and down by the bloggers and the normals. Also frankly, we saw this collapse coming way back in December whilst attending a Saturday afternoon snoozefest in person at the ScotiaBank Place, when the then-frontrunning Sens put on a miserable display of lacklustreness vs. the Rangers; so weak was the effort put forth that an ominous foreboding was cast for the rest of the season, surely for all in attendance.

No, rather, this missive is a plea for the Senators organization to transform their damnable brand. Lose the Neo-Classical Roman kitsch, at once! The original Ottawa Senators, whose legacy the modern-day franchise is always trying to conjure with its Silver Seven brew pubs and “O” shoulder patches and glorious banners of cups won long ago, were named after the local variety of Senator, found on the banks of the Rideau, and not the Roman kind once found along the Tiber.

That is, Sens Army should be celebrating the Red Chamber cigar-smoking plutocrat fatsos riding around in limos and bedding call girls, or doing whatever plutocrats did in the 1920s, and still do today. The Ottawa Senators of old were not named for the colleagues of Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Tullius Cicero. They were named after the proud and sovereign (and, of course, corrupt) Canadian senatorial class.

You see, nobody who works in the marketing departments of professional sports (or probably anywhere, for that matter) has any knowledge of the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, beyond the historically-inaccurate idiocies paraded by Hollywood and Disney. They don’t teach the classics to marketing students these days. So that’s how you get such travesties as the much-lamented opening ceremony from game 3 of this year’s playdowns.* Which brings up another important point. What does a soldier have to do with the Roman senate? And why is the Sens logo a Roman soldier? It would be like the Toronto Maple Leafs sporting an oak leaf. You see, a Roman senator was a wealthy, land-owning orator politician who waddled around in togas, whereas a Roman soldier wore a helmet and fought in battles. Two different things!

*lamentable pre-game ceremony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi5nCd1ZVrw&eurl=http://theuniversalcynic.blogspot.com/

And by the way, enough of Spartacat the Lion! Yes, we get it. Lions ate people in Ancient Rome. But, once again, what does this have to do with the City of Ottawa? Or even the Roman Senate? If you want to stretch the correlation that much, why not make the mascot an wild ibex, since Romans used to hunt them? Or a giant olive, since Romans ate olives? If you want to stick with the Roman theme, at least a orator in a toga would fit the senate narrative.

Rather than the dumbed-down, mockery of history and good taste that presently defines the Sens brand, may we suggest a much more appropriate alternative. The infamous Ottawa fatcat of yesterday and today, living high off the taxpayer hog. A lovable villain who we sort-of-picture looking like this guy:

Comments

[northCoaster]

Sparta was in Rome? Why not Romacat then? How about Ottacat? Or Fatcat?

[northCoaster]

or is he named after Spartacus? I'm confused. Give me BJ Birdy or Moon Dog - mascots I can understand.

[wb445@shimpe.ca]

I think it's supposed to be a derivative of Spartacus. Which is funny, since the real Spartacus was a mortal enemy of Rome, rather than its cuddly mascot.

[northCoaster]

but maybe the Sens are the mortal enemy of the State?