What's my name?

"What's in a name?" may be the most overused Shakespearean phrase of them all. But bear with us -- it's warranted this time. For while Juliet notes "That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," she doesn't go so far as pushing that roses (or dingleberries or whatever we'd call them) should have no name whatsoever.

That's where Frank Vuono comes in. The Chief Operating Officer of the San Francisco-based United Football League told SF Weekly that, as recently as April, the league actually planned for its franchises to have no names. Keep in mind, the UFL's unique first-year template calls for its four teams to play in seven cities -- so if you just went by cities, that which we call cumbersome by any other name would still be just as onerous. Not much spare room on the scoreboard for the New York/Hartford/Orlando vs. San Francisco/Sacramento game, is there?

"Until we had real owners for each team, we didn't want to have names for the teams before an owner came on board. So now we have owners on board," said Vuono, who confirmed this happened "just recently." By the way, not only is Paul "That Paul Pelosi" Pelosi one of the league's initial investors, he's the lead investor for the San Francisco team. What's the name of that team? That's yet to be determined. While we noted last week the "name that team!" function was still up and running on the UFL's Web site -- and Vuono confirms the league is still looking for team names -- the Web page's submissions section appears to have been discontinued as of today. (Hope they got some good suggestions; Vuono wasn't too impressed with SF Weekly's offering of "The San Francisco Values."). 

Had the UFL opted to go nameless this year, incidentally, teams would have simply worn helmets adorned with the league's logo in differing colors (since, as we noted earlier this year, the logo resembles a well-endowed star engaging in intimate relations with a clam-like football, we're glad this isn't the game plan).

Other interesting tidbits about the UFL:

• Teams will be stocked by players from cities' surrounding regions; San Francisco's team will feature footballers who played for west coast colleges or, more likely, were cut by west coast NFL teams (players cut by the 49ers, Seahawks, Chargers, and Raiders will be the ones to pop up on the S.F. UFL team's roster).

• Sixty players will be invited to each team's preseason camp following the final cut of the National Football League preseason. The salary structure allocates each team $4 million to pay for 50 salaries (that's an average of $80K per player, for a six-game season with the top two squads playing Game No. 7 for the championship, tentatively set for Thanksgiving Weekend).

• Vuono says we'll find out what the teams are named in two months' time. He says the submissions for the San Francisco team have been "right down the middle. You can imagine some of them. Lots are about heritage and what the roots of San Francisco are all about." Actually, we can't imagine them and Vuono won't help us. And the first reader submission we got on our post here suggested the "San Francisco Fudgepackers." God damn is that clever!

We don't think that's what Vuono meant by "right down the middle."