The Scottsdale Community College “Fighting Artichokes” have one of the weirdest team names out there.  Inquiring minds want to know how this all came to be.

Scottsdale Community College came into existence in the early 1970s.  It was the peak of hippie-dom and yet the “suits” at the college wanted to have a happening athletic program.

The details of exactly what took place vary.  The nice version is the administrative staff had “different budget priorities” than the student body and were allocating a little more scholarship money for the athletic candidates.

The not so nice version is that they were routing money intended for native American scholarships into what were basically “bribes” to recruit athletes.

Either way, the student body didn’t have much actual power to do anything, except that they were asked to vote on the team name.  As such, they decided to sabotage the athletic program by picking the dorkiest team name possible.  And they selected team colors of pink and white.

After they voted to become the Fighting Artichokes, the faculty declared the election invalid and refused to adopt the the chosen name, and instead stayed with a team name of  “The Drovers” (cattle drivin’ dudes, a Cowboy theme) and team colors of red, white, and blue.

But finally after another election confirming the name they switched, although eventually going with team colors of green and gold.

These days they’re actually quite proud of their unique team name and ironically it may actually be a plus for an athlete to be able to say, “yeah, I was on the ‘chokes!”