According to an e-mail I received from Justin Moody, the name comes from the burning of Columbia during the Civil War. We all know about General Sherman burning Atlanta on his way to Savannah, but not many people except for Civil War buffs (which I'm not) know that after Savannah, Sherman headed north and captured the capital of South Carolina. I've read a website or two about it and there seems to be a certain amount of controversy as to whether Sherman torched the town (during the surrender he had promised not to), whether retreating Confederate troops did it, or whether it was a poorly-timed accident.

I'm not particularly interested in arguing that sort of thing, so let's just stick to the facts: While Sherman was in Columbia, roughly half the city burned to the ground, and the people of Columbia remember it.

Thus ends our history lesson. Now let's get back to the hockey team. We'll start with the logo, and come back to the name in a bit.

The logo is either irritating in a clever way or clever in an irritating way, and I'm not sure which. Long term readers know my opinion of throwing animals into logos when the team name isn't the animal in question. And this one is no expection, for the most part. But it's that "for the most part" that gets me.

You see, I generally can't figure out why the team chose the animal in question. What, for example, does a bear have to do with Aces? What does a shark have to do with Barons? You get the idea. It's not just a matter of asking "Why are they sticking an animal in the logo for the Checkers?", it's a matter of asking "Given the fact that they decided to put an animal in a logo for the Checkers, why did they choose a bear?"

But even I have to admit that the Dalmatian for a team called the Inferno is kind of clever. And I don't like having to admit that someone who does something this cheesy and cliché has actually managed to find a way to be clever about it.

That being said, it is about their only moment of originality. The color scheme is very predictable: flames, red, orange/yellow; dalmatian, black, white. Ho hum. And worse, it's pretty much the same color scheme as the Pee Dee Pride, one of their closest rivals. The style of the numbers, from the pictures I've seen, isn't even all that different (and neither uses the "classic" athletic font for numbers). Games between the Inferno and Pride must get hopelessly confusing for the players. I suppose I could actually watch one and find out, but that would require going into South Carolina, something I generally try to avoid.

In fairness, I have to concede that "Inferno" is one of those names that's very hard to make a decent logo for. Flames are about the only thing you can do if you want to stick to topic. And a logo that's nothing but flames doesn't look very good (although that didn't stop the Oklahoma City Blazers). You're pretty much forced to put either the team name (*yawn*) or some random element into the logo if you don't want to have something that looks really stupid. So I'm going to cut the designer of the logo a little slack here.

But just the logo designer. As far as the team goes, even knowing the history of the name doesn't explain it. Why so many teams feel it's a good idea to name sports teams after local disasters is beyond me. The team name is supposed to inspire fear in the other team's hearts, not your own. When the Inferno host the Johnstown Chiefs, the people of Columbia are more scared of citywide fires than the people of Johnstown. I'm sure there's better things in Columbia to name a team after.

Then again, Columbia apparently had four different baseball teams at various times in the early part of the century named the Columbia Comers. No, that's not a typo.

So while they could perhaps do better, I have to concede that they could do a whole lot worse.

NOTE: The logo was awarded the "anthropomorphization" penalty because of the obviously human-like eyes and teeth.

Final Score: 49 points.
Penalties: Singular, 6 pts; Cartoon, 17 pts; Anthropomorphization, 10 pts; Irrelevance (half penalty), 7 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts; Yucky-Logo, 5 pts; Yucky-Name, 5 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -3 pts.