Remember When Our El Paso Buzzards Changed Their Name For a Day

Growing up in El Paso, Texas, my life has been centered around local hockey teams. My father worked as an off-ice official for the El Paso Buzzards (from 1999-2002) when they played at the El Paso County Coliseum. Not to mention I LOVE seeing a Rhinos hockey game. I still have the Army Appreciation jersey given to me by my dear ol' dad.

But for one game, in 2001, The El Paso Buzzards hockey team played under a different name...

When looking through a list of the 25 ugliest NHL jerseys on Bleecher Report, there is one particular photo of a jersey belonging to our very own El Paso Buzzards. Except they weren't CALLED the Buzzards.

In fact they weren't even named after a bird.

They were called...

The El Paso Cow Pattys. And yes...the cow looks EXTREMELY similar to Cow from Cartoon Network's old show Cow & Chicken.

So how on Earth did this name change & jersey come from? In a March 2001 interview with The Baltimore Sun, marketing consultant John O'Bryne said "They nurture the earth around them...Cow patties are even round and flat like hockey pucks!".

Meanwhile Buzz says the team wasn't actually serious about the name change; he claims it was all a publicity stunt to bring more people to come out to the games.

So what did the players think of the Cow Pattys jersey? My father WORKED at the game & he remembered the players not minding at all; they thought the game "was all about fun" & that this would be the only time it would happened.

And indeed... it was a one-off. They continued playing as the Buzzards the Central Hockey League closed down in 2002. As for the Cow Pattys, there only exists the one photo of the jersey online & the only other mention about them is in a book called "The Making of A Name".

HOWEVER... supposedly the El Paso Cow Patties played in 2012 in a men's hockey tournament & WON. Most likely they was another hockey team that happened to be named the Cow Patties but it was so interesting I HAD to include it here.

For now there's very little information available about the original 2001 Cow Pattys team.

I'm sure somewhere out there, there are more jerseys that exist and maybe we'll find out more about this story in the future. But until then, I'm going to keep wearing my Rhinos jersey any time I go to a game.

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