When coming up with the name of this very blog, the NBC brass had it narrowed down to two names: CLAWS AND ANTLERS, and well, you guessed it, RED FEVER.
Thanks to the research of NBC Universal's legal team, we found that on Oct. 27 of last year, Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington did something incredibly wise in that he filed a trademark application for "Drop the antlers on em, drop the claw on em," which was a phrase he uttered on a radio interview that caught fire.
This was, of course, after the Rangers' fun, happy-go-lucky clubhouse began the "Claw and Antler" celebrations where they used hand gestures to signify "the claw" and "the antlers" for big plays, or speed plays.
The last time a major professional sports head coach did something like this, it made him a lot of money.
It was back in the early 1990s when then-Knicks head coach Pat Riley trademarked the word "three-peat". Then, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls went on to do that twice, coming a couple of times at the expense of Riley's Knicks. But Riley still made bank.
The now prevalent Claw & Antlers T-shirts that were seen so abundantly around the Metroplex back in October were the most sold MLB T-shirts in 2010, and the Claw & Antlers thing certainly hasn't gone away overnight.
You can bet Washington will be pushing for it to continue in 2011.
