List of open team names

Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process. - E.B. White

Open teams do not have the requirement of mentioning an institution, leaving the door open for creative references to pop culture, academic content, and in-jokes. This page collects team names with explanations of their meaning and omits straightforward ones with no obvious reference.

For a similar list, see forum threads named for things.

2024 Chicago Open

Main page: 2024 Chicago Open

Team name	References
LMM's LLM MLM	A juxtaposition of three similar initialisms: LMM - Lin Manuel Miranda LLM - Large Language Model MLM - multi-level marketing
sticking out your guyot for the ridge push; you're so seafloor spread, you're so fracture zone	A variation on the common TikTok parody of "Ectasy" by Suicidal Idol with the lyrics "sticking out your gyatt for the Rizzler; you're so skibidi, you're so Fanum tax" that replaces the references to brainrot with terms from oceanic geology: a guyot is a seamount with a flat top due to wave erosion ridge push is the force exerted by a plate sliding down a raised mid-ocean ridge seafloor spread is the creation of new oceanic crust at mid-ocean ridges fracture zones is a strike-slip fault formed by from relative motion at mid-ocean ridges
Punished "Venom" BHSU	A variation on the BHSU team name referencing Punished "Venom" Snake, the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid V and one of many characters called Snake in the series.
The Dyatlov Passement incident	A mashup of the Dyatlov Pass incident (an infamous unsolved case in the Ural mountains) with team member Raul Passement.
I’ll take a quiet 10 / A handshake of CO (Chicago Open)	A quiz bowl-ification of a line from "No Surprises", a single from Radiohead's album OK Computer. Hinges on the double meaning of "CO" as carbon monoxide (the original line) and Chicago Open.
it's the great pumpkinification objection, charlie brown	A three-parter: the classic 1966 Halloween special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown "The Great Pumpkin objection" to Reformed epistemology, raised by Alvin Plantinga to dispute that belief of God is "properly basic" the Apocolocyntosis Claudii or Pumpkinification of Claudius by Seneca the Younger satirizing the apotheosis of Emperor Claudius