When I joined the Onward State Fantasy Baseball league a few weeks ago, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Because there were still a few open spots, I was asked by a few fellow writers to join the league. Being the baseball fanatic that I am, I couldn’t say no, despite the fact that I have never participated in any type of fantasy league before.

I imagined it would be an easy task — I do follow the sport closely — but there was one task that I was absolutely not prepared for: picking a creative team name. I looked at the names chosen by the few people who signed up before me and realized that the bar had already been set pretty high. However, when all was said and done and everyone had finished signing up, the team name that I eventually picked (Moves like Jeter) was acknowledged as one of the top three in the league.

Because of this distinguished honor, I decided to share a few simple things to consider when picking your team name. Picking a team name is no joke, and arguably the most important part of the fantasy sports experience. With that said, prepare to impress everyone in your fantasy league.

1. Check out FantasyTeamNames.net 

This is a website where people from all over submit the fantasy team names that they are the most proud of. Now, don’t cheat and just steal a name from this list, but I would definitely recommend using it for inspiration.

 2. Decide who your favorite team is.

Once you have this decided, you can then figure out if you want to take the “praising your own team” route or the “ragging on your team’s enemy” route. For example, anyone who knows me knows that I obviously picked the Yankees in this step. I then had the choice to either come up with an affectionate name associated with a Yankee player, or a sarcastic name associated with a team like the Mets or the Red Sox.

3. Pick out a few players to focus on.

Once you have your team picked (or your team’s rival), think of a few players that would be possible inspirations for your name. These players should be some of the most well known names on the team so everyone else in the league understands and appreciates the creativity that will undoubtedly follow.

4. Brainstorm popular phrases, TV shows, song titles.

This is the most important part of the name selection process. On FantasyTeamNames.net, I saw names like “The Braun Identity,” “Sexy and I Cano it,” “Choo and a Half Men,” and “The Melky Way.” This inspired me to think of some of my favorite movies and TV shows, but when I couldn’t fit any of my favorite Yankees into them, I decided to open up Spotify and go through the Top 100 Chart to find a song that I could use. Looking at every song title, I tried replacing each word with one of the players I had in mind. The key to this step is finding a phrase or song title that everyone is familiar with, but also one that you will be able to change without making it unrecognizable.

5. Make your final decision.

You will know when it comes time for this to happen. You finally found the most compatible song title, the perfect TV show name, or the popular phrase that sounds like it came right out of a twitter hashtag. If you have utilized your resources (IMDB, Spotify, etc), your fantasy team name will basically fall into your lap at this point (as mine did as I came across “Moves like Jagger” but actually read it as “Moves like Jeter” because I had been thinking about this for such a long time).

Now, if you aren’t exactly receptive to the witty pop culture references when playing fantasy sports, you could always take the traditional (read: lame) route of making your team name related somehow to a player or a team in general. Or you could always just name your team after your dog, or if you’re feeling super lazy, yourself.

Ultimately, you can draft whoever you want, but the credibility of your team will be perpetually debatable unless you have an awesome name.

What is your fantasy team name this baseball season? Let us know in the comments.