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Are pirate nicknames OK? (Half-serious)

By Rick Karcher, Michael McCann, Geoffrey Rapp, Greg Skidmore, and Howard Wasserman

The ongoing story of the Somali pirates has brought the serious legal issue of piracy to the fore, with commentators repeatedly noting the heinousness and seriousness of piracy as a crime, which is lost in the mythos of eye patches and bottles of rum and parrots.

So that led me to wonder, in only half-seriousness (maybe only 37 % seriousness), whether pirate nicknames for sports team have become inappropriate. Obviously they are not racially or ethnically charged or offensive, so people are not going to get worked up about this. Still, it does refer to a class of anti-social people who commit what are widely regarded as crimes against the entire world. Isn't calling your team "Pirates" equivalent to calling it "Hijackers" or "Guerillas" or "Terrorists"? Or at the very least "Armed Robbers"?

Full post as published by Sports Law Blog on May 12, 2009 (boomark / email).