Why Say New York "Football" Giants?

Terry L. Mitchell
I´m curious as to why people continue to refer to New York´s NFC East franchise as the New York "Football" Giants? Why not simply call them the New York Giants? There was once a need for this kind of disambiguation. That´s because the there was also a Major League Baseball team called the New York Giants.

However, in 1957, the New York "Baseball" Giants moved to San Francisco. That removed the necessity to distinguish between the football and baseball Giants. Yet people continue say New York "Football" Giants. Are they trying to be funny? Or perhaps acting like wise guys? Maybe they just don´t want to give up a tradition that began long ago.

However, it´s interesting that I never hear anyone say Colorado "Baseball" Rockies or St. Louis "Baseball" Cardinals, for example. There was once an NHL franchise called the Colorado Rockies and an NFL franchise called the St. Louis Cardinals. That is, until the NHL´s Rockies moved to New Jersey in 1982 to become the New Jersey Devils, and the NFL´s Cardinals moved to Phoenix in 1988 to become the Phoenix Cardinals and later the Arizona Cardinals.


Yes, for some reason or another, people don´t emphasize the fact that the Colorado Rockies and St. Louis Cardinals are baseball teams, even though the need to do so disappeared much more recently that the necessity to say New York "Football" Giants. Go figure!
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Terry L. Mitchell

Terry L. Mitchell is a software engineer from Hopewell, Virginia. He's been in the software development and engineering line of work for over 27 years.



In addition to his day job, he is a freelance writer (his articles have appeared on hundreds of Websites) and an avid blogger. He is also an expert on all types of insurance and is the owner and operator of FoxRater, a site that allows U.S. citizens to find affordable insurance in their region of the country.