1.
Boom!
That’s the sound the area’s newest team hopes to conjure with its nickname: the Portland Thunder.
Thud!
The Arena Football League franchise that will begin playin March clearly chose to highlight the area’s wet climate, even though thunderstorms are relatively rare here.
Guess the Portland Drizzle didn’t make the cut.
Actually, the other finalists were Sasquatch, Enforcers, Stomp and Growlers, so it’s not like there were any great monikers that were passed over.
Growlers is Talking Points’ preference, especially with the potential to tie into the area’s craft beer scene à la the Hillsboro Hops (a great nickname, by the way).
All snarkiness aside, there are some interesting storylines brewing with the team. Former Oregon quarterback Darron Thomas has been signed. And Damian Lillard’s brother, Houston, will be given a tryout.
So, like everything, we’ll wait and see. But the track record for second-tier Portland sports is not good.
2.
This investment would have brought bad returns.
A season-ending injury to Houston Texan running back Arian Foster has also sidelined an IPO proposing to sell a stake in the football star’s future.
Tuesday’s postponement of the initial public offering comes less than month after San Francisco startup Fantex Inc. announced an unusual deal that would have allowed people to invest in Foster, one of the top running backs in the National Football League.
Fantex warned prospective investors that the IPO posed significant risks, a point that it didn’t take long for the violent sport of football to vividly illustrate.
Foster, 27, suffered a hamstring injury in his first game after Fantex began promoting the IPO. When he returned to the field for the Texans next game on Nov. 3, Foster hurt his back so badly that it will require season-ending surgery.
