Ottawa Rush name strong candidate to stick for good

The group bringing CFL football back to Ottawa in 2014 has yet to officially pick a team name, but it appears Ottawa Rush is a leading candidate.

Earlier this month, Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, which is embarking on a half-billion-dollar partner- ship with the City of Ottawa to redevelop Lansdowne Park and start expansion franchises in the CFL and North American Soccer League, launched a contest asking fans to help “name our teams.”

The Ottawa Citizen is reporting the group subsidiary company created to operate the CFL team has already applied to trademark a handful of variations on the Rush name, including Rush Football Team, Ottawa Rush Football Team and Rush.

The company is also in the process of trying to secure the trademarks FC Ottawa and Ottawa FC, potential names for the soccer team, though efforts to grab those started back in 2009.

Applications for the Ottawa Rush monikers were filed with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office on Nov. 29, about a week before the team name contest started.

Sports franchises commonly snap up potential trademarks and Internet domain names, some of which are never used. The Ottawa Senators, for example, created a logo during a recent redesign that never made it onto a jersey.

The football company hasn’t moved to register any other possibilities, however.

In an interview Thursday night, OSEG partner Jeff Hunt confirmed the Rush name is a strong candidate.

“I can say that’s a name that has been suggested,” he said from Las Vegas, where he was attending CFL presidents’ meetings.

So far, there have been more than 3,000 names submitted to the website nameourteams. com.

The branding company the team hired is expected to be in Ottawa for meetings early next week to go through a list of suggested names.

Hunt said the group is in the process of whittling the names down to the strongest dozen or so possibilities.

“Obviously, it’s our intention to select a name that we think is most representative of what we’re trying to achieve and go forth. Really, the branding company can’t start to do their real magic until we have the name,” Hunt said.