Soccer Columnist Steve Davis

The local soccer team has been around for 11 seasons.

So why is there so much consternation and confusion about FC Dallas' name? And what in the world are these Hoops, anyway?

Isn't that basketball?

And what about a Toro? Is a Toro a Hoop, too?

Part of the ongoing identity crisis has to do with soccer's continued growing pains. But FC Dallas gets some of the blame for wading into the tricky, ad exec-infested waters of "branding" and "imaging."

Here's the background:

The Dallas Burn was born in 1996. As with many new team or stadium names, some people liked it, some people didn't.

But the brand grew as local fans rallied around the moniker, a playful, self-effacing poke at the tenacious Texas heat. To fans, it was like family: Maybe "Dallas Burn" wasn't the Sunday-best of names, but it was theirs, and nobody else got to make fun of it.

In 2004, then-GM Greg Elliott and Hunt Sports Group drove a controversial reimaging campaign. Officials rechristened the team FC Dallas to coincide with a move into its new stadium. Elliott said the club wanted something that said "soccer."

Only trouble was, FC didn't say "soccer" to very many people. In America, only the sport's core fans got it.

Everyone else said, "Huh?"

The Dallas Morning News still routinely receives e-mail queries about what, exactly, the FC stands for.

(The FC stands for "Football Club," a Euro throwback of sorts. Clubs once grew out of local athletic clubs, something like our country clubs. So many professional clubs now carry the "FC," such as FC Barcelona or Chelsea FC.)

Never mind that "football" over here is something different. The Americanized version of FC is SC (Soccer Club), which some forward-minded youth clubs have adopted.

While the general sporting public sorts out that one, diehard FC Dallas fans remain divided over nicknames. The club elected not to assign an official nickname, recognizing that many traditional handles evolved organically from fans.

"Hoops" was among the first candidates, mostly rising from a small group in the blogosphere and not necessarily from the stands at Pizza Hut Park.

Lately, the club, in a reversal of philosophies, has gently pushed "Hoops" – leaving plenty of Internet surfers who stumbled upon the name to contort their face and ask, "What?"

That name, too, is an obscure reference to foreign soccer – Scottish soccer, of all things. Never mind that Latin American futbol has far more influence in the area, or that Scottish soccer, for all its wonderful tradition, has little relevance to Dallas, Texas.

The Celtic Football Club in Scotland is recognized – but by only the inner, inner circle of soccer fanatics – for its traditional, horizontally striped jerseys. When Elliott oversaw the team's reimaging, he pushed for similar jerseys.

In Scotland, they call this style "hoops."

Perhaps because Scotland is a far-flung destination, the name has not resonated locally. Or maybe it's just because over here, we say "stripes."

But neither has some other fans' choice of nicknames, the Toros, seemed to cling.

The 2004 reimaging included a newly designed logo. Like the jerseys, the logo seemed well received by fans. And that logo included a bull, which, in Spanish, is a toro.

FC Dallas is running away from the pack in the MLS West. So it's giving fans plenty to hoot and holler about – even if it's not so easy to know which name to scream out.

E-mail stevedavis@dallasnews.com

Keeping score in area soccer:

1. SMU women's soccer: Entertains No. 1 Notre Dame on the Mustangs' new field, 1 p.m. Sunday.

2. Nikki Washington: Barely 18, UNC freshman from Mesquite has started all five games for powerful Tar Heels.

3. Adrian Chevannes: SMU junior is C-USA Offensive Player of the Week.

4. DaMarcus Beasley: U.S. midfielder leaves Dutch team on one-year loan to Manchester City. Bonus: Local fans can see him now since EPL games are easier to find.

5. Dax McCarty: FC Dallas rookie scores for U.S. under-20s in 3-1 win over Argentina.