Random Pro Sports Team Generator

Real franchises, drawn without replacement

This draws from the actual current franchise lists of four leagues — Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NFL and the NHL — rather than generating names. Set Count above one and the picks are distinct: the tool draws without replacement, so a five-team draw returns five different franchises rather than five independent picks that might repeat.

Draw exactly two and the display changes to a head-to-head, which is what the tool assumes you want when you ask for a pair. Any other count comes back as a numbered list.

What people actually use it for

• Picking a team to follow for a season when you have moved somewhere new and have no allegiance.
• Assigning franchises for a fantasy league, a sweepstake or a season-long prediction game.
• Choosing a matchup to watch when you have no stake in any of it.
• Naming rec-league sides by borrowing a professional identity, which saves a committee meeting about the team name.

The limits of the list

The pools hold the current franchises and nothing else: no historical teams, no relocations, no minor leagues, no international clubs, and no record of how good any of them are. A draw treats the reigning champions and a rebuilding side as exactly equally likely, because to this tool they are two strings in a list.

League sizes are what they are — thirty or thirty-two teams depending on the sport — so asking for more teams than a league contains returns the whole league rather than repeating any. Leagues do occasionally add or move franchises, so if a name looks out of date, it is the list that needs updating rather than your memory.