Football at The Pond to Have Some Bite

Nearing the fifth anniversary of its fortune-making groundbreaking, the audacious, ostentatious Pond of Anaheim today finds itself the somewhat unnatural habitat for ducks, bullfrogs, clippers, splashes and, very possibly, very soon . . . piranhas.

Or tiger sharks, if the new arena football entry carries out its ominous threat and the name-that-franchise balloting bounces the wrong way.

Is this what the founding fathers of Anaheim Arena--as the place was called before Michael Eisner got his hands on it--had in mind in November of 1990, as the first shovelful of dirt was turned on the lot at Katella and Douglass?

I think not.

I was there among the gold-plated spades and pinky rings that historic day and the only animal species I remember being bandied about was the white elephant. Pro hockey and basketball were dueling pies in the sky. Roller hockey was nonexistent. Indoor soccer? Sure, that would be one way to fill a few dates on the event calendar. But what about the other 354 each year?

Well, there’s always arena football.

That one got a few laughs on groundbreaking day, but that was when we still had the Rams, who still had a rock-solid lease with the city of Anaheim, before Disney and the Ducks came and spun everything 180 degrees.

Now we have NHL hockey, and NBA basketball on a sporadic basis (they are, after all, the Clippers), but no NFL football. This supposedly created an irreparable void in our lives, although speaking only for myself, I’m enjoying my Sundays much better this year.

Still, a void perceived is a void indeed, and guess who’s riding to the rescue to throw themselves into the breach?

The Anaheim Piranhas of the Arena Football League.

Or the Anaheim TigerSharks.

Or the Anaheim Crush, or the Anaheim Commandos, or the Anaheim Americans, or the Anaheim Beach Dogs, depending on how the popular vote, if that’s the term for it, plays out.

The six nickname “finalists” and their accompanying logos were unveiled at a media briefing-and-feed last week at The Pond. It was quite an event, obviously inspired by Eisner’s infamous introduction of the words “Mighty Ducks” and “Pond” into the language, except without the confetti and Gary Bettman honking on a wooden duck call.

One by one, large renderings of each logo were carried out by attractive women and placed on easels while ultra-promoter Roy Englebrecht, now wearing the hat of Orange County Arena Football team president, read from a breathlessly written script:

“These fish will take you to school! They’re tough. They’re aggressive. They’re mean. And when you enter their domain, you’re just fish food. So, when the water churns and seems to come alive to swallow up any living thing--count your toes. When all that washes up to shore are bare bones from last night’s feeding frenzy--beware. The Anaheim Piranhas are in the Pond!”

Pro football fans of Orange County, this is your future.

Goodby Melonheads, hello Velcro piranha fish--which fans will be able to buy, stick all over their bodies and wear as fashion statements to home games if “Piranhas” wins the extremely heated nickname run-off.

Englebrecht beamed as he inspected the logos.

“Better than the MLS, don’t you think?” he asked with a laugh, and it was tough to argue. Unlike the collection of Rorschach inkblots Major League Soccer will attempt to market next year, none of these emblems seemed to be cribbed from German war propaganda posters or Village People album covers.

The six, Englebrecht said, were culled from “more than 100” nominees. “We asked kids, people in the street,” Englebrecht said. “I went to the Thomas Guide and looked at street names. Street names can give you some great ideas. Fifty more names jumped out at me.”

And in the end, the Anaheim Beach Dogs just edged out the Anaheim Brookhurst Dogs.

Also trimmed from the roster were the Pond Scum, the Pond Monsters, the Octopi, the Spinnakers (“We tried to keep to a water theme,” said David Korobkin, whose graphics design firm created the logos), the Mermaids (“Not for a football team,” Englebrecht noted), the Smog, the Leeches, the Swamp Thing, the Mighty Pelicans and the Licks, as in the Anaheim Licks, who would maneuver to avoid any and all choking down the stretch.

“I kind of like the Commandos,” said team owner Dave Baker, staring at the khaki-green face of a linebacker with camouflage netting on his helmet. “We’ve talked to the National Guard about letting us borrow some tanks and park them outside the arena. It’d be just like a Raiders game.”

Baker gestured toward the star-spangled red, white and blue Anaheim Americans banner.

“It was almost the Orange County Republicans,” Baker mused.

Korobkin: “But that’s redundant.”

Baker: “How about the Orange County Derivatives, then?”

“Arena football is a wild event, a high-scoring event, a rock and roll event,” Korobkin explained for the benefit of those who hadn’t yet witnessed one of the league’s famed 42-41 defensive struggles.

“We wanted to try to capture that spirit with these names and logos . . . Have some fun with it, not take it too seriously.”

Orange County stopped taking the Rams seriously somewhere around 1990, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

The Anaheim Still-To-Be-Named will begin play next May and Baker boldly promises a winner on the 50-by-28.3-yard field and in the stands.

“We have been told, ‘You don’t deserve football, you can’t support football,’ ” Baker said. “Well, people here have shown they will support the Angels and the Mighty Ducks. If you have a good product, people here will support it.”

If it’s the “Piranhas,” Korobkin already has the merchandise line planned. Velcro fish. T-shirts dotted with piranha-bite-sized holes. Baseball caps with chunks of the bill “bitten” off.

Which would be a departure from the chomp marks you normally see on pocketbooks and purses at Mighty Duck home games.