Why does Columbus have an NHL team?

[No Fun Shogun]

It would probably behoove Columbus to one day rebrand as "Ohio" like what other regional teams do. I feel like if you're in Cincinnati or Cleveland you'd be much more willing to support them if they were "Ohio's team" and not "Columbus' Team".

The problem is that anything Ohio-related in Columbus is already dominated by Ohio State (all due respect to the Ohio Bobcats), so all that a rebrand to Ohio Blue Jackets would do is basically knock it down a peg search and marketability-wise.

Or heck, if you google searched "Ohio hockey schedule," you'd assuredly get a big fat, 'Did you mean Ohio State hockey schedule?'" message.

... and I used the word "Ohio" a few too many times and now the word looks weird to me...

 

[KevFu]

Having the "Columbus Blue Jackets" being Ohio's team in hockey is smart.

You want to capitalize on being the only Big Four Columbus team (due respect to the Crew) with the Columbus name.

You're not "offending" the hockey fans in Cleveland/Cincinnati with "Columbus is Ohio's team" even though they aren't named "Ohio" and "Columbus" is a different city.

Fans aren't stupid. If you like NHL hockey in Cleveland/Cincinnati, you're watching the Jackets because THEY'RE ON.

Cleveland/Cincinnati's OTHER Big Four teams don't compete with Columbus; the Cleveland/Cincinnati fans are USED TO rooting for a team in Columbus (Ohio State), and rooting AGAINST teams in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis and the entire state of Michigan.

 

[Bonk]

The problem is that anything Ohio-related in Columbus is already dominated by Ohio State (all due respect to the Ohio Bobcats), so all that a rebrand to Ohio Blue Jackets would do is basically knock it down a peg search and marketability-wise.

Or heck, if you google searched "Ohio hockey schedule," you'd assuredly get a big fat, 'Did you mean Ohio State hockey schedule?'" message.

... and I used the word "Ohio" a few too many times and now the word looks weird to me...

I agree. I think "Ohio Blue Jackets" might actually be a turn-off for some in the Cincinnati market because it has a significant number of Ohio State haters/rejuvenated University of Cincinnati fans that would associate a team with Ohio in the name with OSU.

The rest of the state is overwhelmingly pro-Ohio State, but Cincinnati is about a third pro-OSU, a third pro-UC and a third indifferent.

 

[squashmaple]

Having the "Columbus Blue Jackets" being Ohio's team in hockey is smart.

You want to capitalize on being the only Big Four Columbus team (due respect to the Crew) with the Columbus name.

You're not "offending" the hockey fans in Cleveland/Cincinnati with "Columbus is Ohio's team" even though they aren't named "Ohio" and "Columbus" is a different city.

Fans aren't stupid. If you like NHL hockey in Cleveland/Cincinnati, you're watching the Jackets because THEY'RE ON.

Cleveland/Cincinnati's OTHER Big Four teams don't compete with Columbus; the Cleveland/Cincinnati fans are USED TO rooting for a team in Columbus (Ohio State), and rooting AGAINST teams in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis and the entire state of Michigan.

Nah. The Blue Jackets are Columbus, not Ohio.

Columbus is a younger city largely made up of transplants from the other C's. I myself am mid-30s and from NE Ohio, so my other sports rooting interests are firmly Cleveland except football because I grew up in Canton and hate it. Columbus is growing at a time when the other two are shrinking, and it's good that Columbus has its own team in one of the major four sports (not to mention one of the most historic MLS franchises, even if ithat league is a distant fifth in popularity in the state). Even then, fandom for pro teams here is more heavily weighted toward Cleveland sports, especially among people my age. Cleveland and Columbus just seem to have more in common with each other than Cincinnati and Columbus, and not just because of the Guards/Clippers and Monsters/Jackets connections.

Ohio is definitely not homogeneous. There's like 12 million people in this state but we fall into four very distinct quadrants and there isn't much overlap between them except Columbus where they converge (Appalachian SE, Rust Belt NE Ohio, Faux-Southern SW Ohio, and NW farmland). NE and SW have obvious allegiances, SE tends toward Pittsburgh sports because that's who was on TV/radio there, and everyone I know from NW Ohio is a Browns/Red Wings/Yankees fan for some reason. Then you have micro demographic trends, like quite a lot of NE Ohio Millennials are Steelers fans because they're nearby, a) the Browns actually didn't even exist for a big chunk of our childhoods and b) when they have existed, they've sucked. A lot of people from SE Ohio switched to the Bengals because of Joey Burrow. OSU fandom stretches across the state, although mostly concentrated the closer you are to the capital, and even then OSU fans tend not to be professional fans and vice versa (there's also a lot of bad blood between OSU and the Jackets).

All that to say, there's no point in re-naming the Jackets to the "Ohio Jackets." They're not Ohio's team and never will be, and that's okay.

 

[KevFu]

Nah. The Blue Jackets are Columbus, not Ohio.

Ohio is definitely not homogeneous. There's like 12 million people in this state but we fall into four very distinct quadrants and there isn't much overlap between them except Columbus where they converge (Appalachian SE, Rust Belt NE Ohio, Faux-Southern SW Ohio, and NW farmland).

All that to say, there's no point in re-naming the Jackets to the "Ohio Jackets." They're not Ohio's team and never will be, and that's okay.

I hear you, I just don't think you were really disagreeing with me. I enjoyed the insight into the demographics and quadrants (I spent 6 years in Dayton).

I just meant that In the NHL's POV, the Jackets are "Ohio's Team" because the Jackets' secondary markets -- aka, where their games are broadcast into -- including Cleveland and Cincinnati.

We agree there's no need to brand the Jackets as the Ohio Jackets; The people of Columbus have their big four team. They'd want it to be Columbus and not Ohio.

For the people in Ohio outside of 'Lumbus who root for a hockey team, it's a non-issue. They are more likely to pick the Jackets than anyone else because they are the local team per TV: The same channel they watch the Cavs/Guardians/Reds on carries the Jackets, too.

I'm looking at it like: Browns fans hate the Steelers, the NHL would be really dumb to have a TV map that said Cleveland is "supposed to be Penguins fans."

Or maybe the NHL was really that dumb back then and it played into "Cleveland doesn't like hockey, but there's 12m people in Ohio, so let's try Columbus."

 

[squashmaple]

I'm looking at it like: Browns fans hate the Steelers, the NHL would be really dumb to have a TV map that said Cleveland is "supposed to be Penguins fans."

Or maybe the NHL was really that dumb back then and it played into "Cleveland doesn't like hockey, but there's 12m people in Ohio, so let's try Columbus."

I don’t think the choice between the three cities was that deep. In the late 90s, Columbus had an interested ownership group headed by a local self-made billionaire (McConnell Sr), an arena deal in place, and a local Fortune 100 company lined up with naming rights and location (and a major stake in the team itself). Cleveland, you would’ve had to use what was then Gund Arena and been the second tenant to the Cavs whose owners owned the building but no one looking to own a team, and Cincinnati had neither. Cleveland was also solidly a baseball town at the time, since the Browns didn’t exist and the Indians were a top three team in the midst of like 500 straight sellouts. The Barons and Lumberjacks had both failed. I don’t know enough about Cincinnati to comment on what was going on there in the 90s, but for whatever reason it doesn’t appear that there was pressure to create a franchise there. What I can tell you is if Cincinnati had gotten the franchise and not Columbus, I wouldn’t be a Blue Jackets fan. Not sure what my allegiance would be, actually. I got into hockey in college in the late aughts, and the Jackets already existed and I went to school within Columbus’s media market (not OSU).

 

[WarriorofTime]

The Cleveland AHL team is also affiliated with the Blue Jackets. That helps things a bit as well. If you go to Cleveland Monsters games, you see players that go on to play for the Blue Jackets and then you would make the occasional drive and watch Columbus. So you're likely already a Jackets fan.

Rockford, IL is a pretty small city relatively speaking, but I always encounter a fair bit of Hawk fans from there at Hawks games that will go the AHL affiliate's games. I imagine this is a common experience with hockey fans in AHL markets that are located close to the NHL parent.

Cincinnati is a bit more of a "southern" city, not all that different from a place like Louisville, I don't think hockey is particularly popular there, but to the extent it is, Columbus would be the nearest team to support.

Ohio isn't a big youth hockey hotbed, but there is some good youth hockey there based around Cleveland and Columbus. J.T. Miller started there until going to Pittsburgh prior to his time at the NTDP. Hopefully that can be a growth area for USA Hockey. It's a large state and the population responds well to hockey, just gotta give the infrastructure for players to get there without having to pack their bags before middle school.

 

[Look Up]

delete

 

[Brodie]

Columbus was one of the smartest moves the NHL ever made. look at how the NBA expanded to relatively small western markets in the 60s and 70s. Nobody was in Phoenix when the NBA got there. Nobody was in Portland. Now you have generations of fans in big cities, deeper roots than any other big league teams in those markets.

getting into rapidly growing rich markets like Columbus, Nashville, and Raleigh was brilliant

 

[aqib]

Just refreshing my memory - Columbus announced they would build a brand new arena May 31, 1997 - and June 25 that same year it was announced they would get an expansion team. The team had to pay an $80 million dollar expansion fee (that seems ridiculous in 2024) fronted by John McConnell (his son, also named John, currently owns the team).

So the basic answer is they picked Columbus because someone was willing to pay $80 mil to put a team there. I don't think the same existed for Cincinnati or Cleveland.

But just looking at the market though - yes both Cinci and Cleveland had multiple pro sports teams, while C'bus "only" had Ohio State (I say "only" because that might as well be multiple pro teams). It was also a centralized location that could potentially draw hockey fans from the Cinci and Cleveland as well as C'bus itself.

There are assorted rumors around Cleveland that the NHL was eyeing Cleveland before picking Columbus, but there was the arena lease issue (more on that in a second). Cleveland was getting a lot of hype in the mid-late 90s as a comeback city and the IHL Lumberjacks were drawing about 9K a night.

However, when luring the Cavs from what was still a perfectly functional arena in the next county the city gave them a lease that made it impossible for an NHL team that wasn't owned by the same ownership group to make it in the arena. Well the Gunds owned the Sharks and they probably had no interest in owning an NHL team in Cleveland after failing the first time. Had the Cavs been owned by a Dan Gilbert type person at the time I think he probably would have made a bid.

Now would Cleveland have embraced them? Sure. Cleveland loves sports. Would it have been worked financially long-term? Probably not. For the following reasons:

1) The population of Cuyahoga County decreased 12% since then
2) In the ensuing years the area lost several corporate headquarters including: TRW, BP America (the last piece of Standard Oil that was still in Ohio), and LTV by 2001. They then lost OfficeMax in 2005, MBNA in 2006, and National City Bank (then one of the 10 largest commercial banks in the US) in 2008

So you wouldn't have the population and corporate support anymore. Most of those corporate HQ losses were due to mergers. If at least a couple of them had resulted in the combined company being headquartered in Cleveland the outcome might have been different.

 

[patnyrnyg]

No idea if it was really a factor or a talking point after the fact, but when Columbus was announced I remember Bettman saying a big part of it was they were the largest market in the US that did not have a professional team in any of the 4 big leagues.

Nah. The Blue Jackets are Columbus, not Ohio.

Columbus is a younger city largely made up of transplants from the other C's. I myself am mid-30s and from NE Ohio, so my other sports rooting interests are firmly Cleveland except football because I grew up in Canton and hate it. Columbus is growing at a time when the other two are shrinking, and it's good that Columbus has its own team in one of the major four sports (not to mention one of the most historic MLS franchises, even if ithat league is a distant fifth in popularity in the state). Even then, fandom for pro teams here is more heavily weighted toward Cleveland sports, especially among people my age. Cleveland and Columbus just seem to have more in common with each other than Cincinnati and Columbus, and not just because of the Guards/Clippers and Monsters/Jackets connections.

Ohio is definitely not homogeneous. There's like 12 million people in this state but we fall into four very distinct quadrants and there isn't much overlap between them except Columbus where they converge (Appalachian SE, Rust Belt NE Ohio, Faux-Southern SW Ohio, and NW farmland). NE and SW have obvious allegiances, SE tends toward Pittsburgh sports because that's who was on TV/radio there, and everyone I know from NW Ohio is a Browns/Red Wings/Yankees fan for some reason. Then you have micro demographic trends, like quite a lot of NE Ohio Millennials are Steelers fans because they're nearby, a) the Browns actually didn't even exist for a big chunk of our childhoods and b) when they have existed, they've sucked. A lot of people from SE Ohio switched to the Bengals because of Joey Burrow. OSU fandom stretches across the state, although mostly concentrated the closer you are to the capital, and even then OSU fans tend not to be professional fans and vice versa (there's also a lot of bad blood between OSU and the Jackets).

All that to say, there's no point in re-naming the Jackets to the "Ohio Jackets." They're not Ohio's team and never will be, and that's okay.

Never heard this before. What is the issue? I have never been to Columbus, but a few times thought about making the trip for Rangers-Jackets. Twice were saturdays in the fall and in both cases OSU football was either off or on the road that weekend.

 

[BMN]

Nah. The Blue Jackets are Columbus, not Ohio.

Ohio is definitely not homogeneous.

You mean it isn't oVe? Sami Callihan lied to me?!?

 

[aqib]

I hear you, I just don't think you were really disagreeing with me. I enjoyed the insight into the demographics and quadrants (I spent 6 years in Dayton).

I just meant that In the NHL's POV, the Jackets are "Ohio's Team" because the Jackets' secondary markets -- aka, where their games are broadcast into -- including Cleveland and Cincinnati.

We agree there's no need to brand the Jackets as the Ohio Jackets; The people of Columbus have their big four team. They'd want it to be Columbus and not Ohio.

For the people in Ohio outside of 'Lumbus who root for a hockey team, it's a non-issue. They are more likely to pick the Jackets than anyone else because they are the local team per TV: The same channel they watch the Cavs/Guardians/Reds on carries the Jackets, too.

I'm looking at it like: Browns fans hate the Steelers, the NHL would be really dumb to have a TV map that said Cleveland is "supposed to be Penguins fans."

Or maybe the NHL was really that dumb back then and it played into "Cleveland doesn't like hockey, but there's 12m people in Ohio, so let's try Columbus."

I literally never met a Blue Jackets fan in 13 years living in Cleveland. If you take out the people who were transplants from elsewhere and brought their existing fandom with them it was mostly Pittsburgh (yes somehow people were able to still root for the Penguins despite being Browns fans), Detroit, Buffalo, or Toronto.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

I think catering to Columbus as their base makes sense, but that being said they could dip their toes into a more state-oriented logo. Imho, Columbus's branding has always been pretty meh, but there's a decent change that they could do by taking the outline of Ohio and turning it into a shield of sorts, maybe with design features from the flag as well. I think a template for an iconic design that get folks on board with a shirt or hat would be there that'd otherwise not really care about the NHL.

 

[squashmaple]

I think catering to Columbus as their base makes sense, but that being said they could dip their toes into a more state-oriented logo. Imho, Columbus's branding has always been pretty meh, but there's a decent change that they could do by taking the outline of Ohio and turning it into a shield of sorts, maybe with design features from the flag as well. I think a template for an iconic design that get folks on board with a shirt or hat would be there that'd otherwise not really care about the NHL.

The logo is literally the state flag. That's what the swoosh is.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

The logo is literally the state flag. That's what the swoosh is.

I'm aware, but I'm saying it's just not a good logo, again in my opinion. I'm suggesting a different look that maybe also includes the flag.

 

[DudeWhereIsMakar]

Columbus is soon to be the new Arizona Coyotes in terms of dumping contracts.

That being said, they're existent because they needed something to be at Nationwide Arena considering that place is a beautiful arena. Plus, Columbus is a good sports town but it's mainly focused on Ohio State. They also believed it would attract football fans that wanted to watch pro sports and didn't want to drive a long ways. Although, it would be a longshot, but I'd love to see Cleveland and Cincinatti get teams one day.

 

[Yukon Joe]

Although, it would be a longshot, but I'd love to see Cleveland and Cincinatti get teams one day.

Longshot is being kindly.

So look - I've long said that if you have a prospective owner willing to pay a ridiculous price almost anything is possible, but both cities are fairly small, have multiple sports teams, no hockey-ready arena, and the league has far more promising potential locations (Houston, Atlanta, Quebec City, Portland, back to Phoenix - even Hamilton). And that's before you consider an objection from Columbus.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

Utah was brought up as an expansion or relocation candidate in a few topics on this board over the years before Ryan Smith bought the Jazz, and it'd be overly polite to say that most of the board viewed the chance of that happening as a longshot for the forseeable future.

All it takes is one rich dude wanting a shiny franchise and even longshot cities can become a pretty likely thing.

Not you, Omaha and Saskatoon.

 

[WarriorofTime]

I literally never met a Blue Jackets fan in 13 years living in Cleveland.

Did it come up in conversation often? They've been a bad team basically their whole existence so there hasn't been a ton to rally behind for people to get really into it.

 

[Yukon Joe]

Utah was brought up as an expansion or relocation candidate in a few topics on this board over the years before Ryan Smith bought the Jazz, and it'd be overly polite to say that most of the board viewed the chance of that happening as a longshot for the forseeable future.

All it takes is one rich dude wanting a shiny franchise and even longshot cities can become a pretty likely thing.

Not you, Omaha and Saskatoon.

I mean I literally said exactly that...

 

[aqib]

Did it come up in conversation often? They've been a bad team basically their whole existence so there hasn't been a ton to rally behind for people to get really into it.

The Browns had losing seasons in 12 out of the 13 years I lived there. The Indians had 8 losing seasons in the first 10 years I was there. The Cavs only had winning seasons when LeBron was on the team. So being a bad team is not a deal breaker for Cleveland fans

 

[WarriorofTime]

The Browns had losing seasons in 12 out of the 13 years I lived there. The Indians had 8 losing seasons in the first 10 years I was there. The Cavs only had winning seasons when LeBron was on the team. So being a bad team is not a deal breaker for Cleveland fans

Cleveland is the local team, not a secondary market. NFL is King in America.

 

[Bonk]

Columbus is soon to be the new Arizona Coyotes in terms of dumping contracts.

That being said, they're existent because they needed something to be at Nationwide Arena considering that place is a beautiful arena. Plus, Columbus is a good sports town but it's mainly focused on Ohio State. They also believed it would attract football fans that wanted to watch pro sports and didn't want to drive a long ways. Although, it would be a longshot, but I'd love to see Cleveland and Cincinatti get teams one day.

Cincinnati has two cheapskate owners in the Browns (NFL) and the Castellenis (MLB) and just added an MLS team, plus the CBJ would probably object on territorial rights and the owner building of that size whatever they're calling Riverfront Coliseum this week, and it's a 1970s fossil.

Based on the population numbers I've seen quoted here, I think Louisville would be a better option. It's a growing city and untapped big four market.

 

[KevFu]

Cincinnati has two cheapskate owners in the Browns (NFL) and the Castellenis (MLB) and just added an MLS team, plus the CBJ would probably object on territorial rights and the owner building of that size whatever they're calling Riverfront Coliseum this week, and it's a 1970s fossil.

Based on the population numbers I've seen quoted here, I think Louisville would be a better option. It's a growing city and untapped big four market.

Definitely Louisville over Cincinnati if the NHL were talking about another team in that arena.

Cincy would probably be "more loyal to Columbus" as a secondary market... but Southern Indiana could go Louisville over Chicago.

Also, the boondoggle of funding Cincinnati's NFL stadium is still a huge thing for the taxpayers; building a legit NBA/NHL arena in Cincinnati would be a really tough sell. And when talking arenas, Cincy doesn't have the demand for an "AHL sized venue" and has let Riverfront Coliseum become a fossil because Xavier and the University of Cincinnati both have new (or renovated) 10,000 to 13,000 seat arenas for basketball.