There’s a new trophy to be won in Texas: an 18th-century mountain howitzer.

The Hoops and Dynamo will play four games this year - the first of the Texas rivalry - and the home team for each game this season will maintain the cannon and be able to fire it as it wishes. At the end of the 2006 season, the team that has won the season series will keep the cannon for all of the 2007 season, with the trophy then only changing hands after each season.

In true MLS style (oh, no, not again) they’re holding a (rigged and/or inconsequential) “contest” to name the cannon.

There is, without a doubt, an absolutely perfect name for this new Texas prize. The cannon should be called “Gonzo” or “The Gonzo” in commemoration of the famed Battle of Gonzales “come and take it” cannon. But I suspect, in another case of major league cowardice marketing Major League Soccer will (again) shy away from any name that might possibly be offensive to anybody. It’ll surely be called something warm and fuzzy - like Dynamo.

And that is a shame. The historical reference would lend a certain depth to the rivalry. I’d like to see Dallas and Houston trade “come and take it” jabs back and forth. I’d like to see some “come and take it” flags in the stands. But after the league’s spineless reaction to the 1836 controversy I simply can’t imagine it happening.

Deprived of any historical relation Major League Soccer’s newest trophy will be little more than a contrived (and strangely Freudian) spectacle.