Remember that original team of 8? Well, they landed a once-a-month Friday night performance at a Christian Club called Club 316, and realized they needed a name for themselves. “Eight chaps who went to school together and are funny,” didn’t seem appropriate and would be hard to put on t-shirts.
 
The location: a basement apartment.  The strategy: passing around a dictionary, they took turns blinding flipping the pages and randomly stabbing their finger to a page. Using this ultra-improv method each person chose two words, for a total of 16. Each word was then written on a slip of paper and placed in a hat. The team decided that the first two words drawn would be the new team name. They were…drum-roll please...”LAW” and “INSTITUTE!” Amazing how they went together but not exactly a great name for an improv comedy team. “Ladies and Gentlemen! Put your hands together for…Law Institute!”  Right. Try again. The next 2 words drawn were “Squad” and “Panic”.  After a brief, excited discussion, the new team name was “The Friday Night Panic Squad” As they began to get gigs on nights other than Fridays; they changed the name to The Panic Squad.
 
Over the years we have been mistakenly referred to by others as…  Panic Attack, Power Squad, Panic Room and Panic Squat. At one point, while re-evaluating the team name, Scott, Andrew and Dave almost moved forward with the name Biscuit.  Cliff says he would have never joined a team by the name “biscuit”…”cookie” maybe, but certainly not biscuit.