Kansas City Wizards Ready To Rewrite History

It doesn't take a genius to read much into the Kansas City Wizards facebook announcement that a "major Kansas City Soccer Announcement" will take play on Wednesday.

Notice the oh so clever lack of the word "Wizards" and the rampant rumors that the team will undergo a rebranding leading up to the opening of their new stadium.

Andy Edwards of the Daily Wiz has put 1+1 together and come up with the seemingly obvious answer:

    Not much is to be said about the event itself, because well, this has been about as terribly kept of a secret as Thierry Henry-to-New York Red Bulls was. It's long been known that the ownership group OnGoal was looking to rebrand, and that Sporting KC had become the front runner for the new name.

Supposedly, this is just part of a larger effort to expand the brand beyond soccer. We can probably expect to see "Sporting KC" to encompass teams in other sports, which would give some legitimacy to the name.

There have been plenty of people decrying this particular name. The main criticism is that this is just another attempt by a MLS team to appeal to European soccer fans by picking a name that sounds more old country.

In their defense, there seems to be little harm in the move. A name like "Sporting" lends itself to assigning a separate nickname and you can bet they'll still be called the Wizards by lots of people. The only difference is that it won't be plastered across their shirts and other merchandise.

In a bigger sense, OnGoal is obviously intent on starting a new era for their soccer team. There are few ways to accomplish that more clearly than by changing the team's name.

Of course, whether or not this is a success will be determined by fans of the team, not by pundits opining from afar. You can bet that a new stadium, re-energized efforts to reach out to supporters and, ideally, a winning team will go much farther toward accomplishing that goal than any name could.