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How did you track uni/logo changes before the internet?


Waffles

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I recently ordered something from eastbay.com and, as a result, I've been getting the Eastbay catalog again for the first time since I was a kid. This has brought back a flood of memories for me, reminding me of how I fed my budding sports logo obsession before the internet (and before I found sportslogos.net).

When I was younger, I would devour the Eastbay and StarStruck catalogs that came out before each league's season, looking for new uniforms and logos. Logo/uniform changes wouldn't really get a lot of news coverage unless it was a local team (the New York Giants' change in 2000 is the last one I can remember getting most of my news about from traditional media), so the catalogs were really the only way I could find out about changes before Opening Day highlights showed up on SportsCenter.

So, for those of you old enough to remember a time before the internet, how did you get your fix?

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Definitely my favorite catalogs in the 90's were StarStruck, Manny's/1-800-PRO-TEAM, NFL Proline, SportsSection (out of LA) and Eastbay. Eastbay was awesome in the 90s when they would show EVERY jersey or jacket or shirt in stock (not just one or two photos and a list of teams). I think Manny's was pretty good at showing new logos, especially football and baseball. The Hockey News yearbook showcased some of the new jerseys from 95-98 or so, just in the preview articles.

Smart is believing half of what you hear. Genius is knowing which half.

 

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Good thread topic.

Being 47 yrs. old, I go way back with this. And let me tell you, before the advent of the internet, it was pore over the news, wherever you could get it.

Shortly before the rise of the internet, probaly one of the best sources for future names, logos, colors, etc. was "The Sporting News". I can remember finding out stuff on the early 90s expansion flurry through that journal. Sometimes there were pictures of new logos or jerseys (black and white, of course); other times theree might be a uni/name/colors related blurb at the end of a columnist's column (sort of like Paul Lukas's ticker)..

Late 1980s, I knew of the expansion team locations in the NBA via Sports Illustrated, local news, and The Sporting News, but the first I saw of the logos was in the program of the Atlanta Hawks' first game in 1987, with articles talking about the upcoming new teams.

I still remember the first time my friend Mark and I saw the new tiger striped Bengals helmet, presented as a logo as part of a game preview on "The NFL on CBS". We were both like "WHOA! Did you see that? Bengals got some crazy new striped helmets!" We were floored.

In the late 1970s, I got into soccer, and watched some NASL action on TV. The standings and stats were in the newspaper, but we didn't know all the team nicknames. It was our quest during the summer of '78 to find out everyone-- we even had a standings paper that we filled out as we found a new name. We'd pore over the transaction lists in the paper, listen for team name references on TV broadcasts, etc. It took us about a month (the last team name we found out was Portland TIMBERS, oddlly enouhg from a brief line in an old issue of "Dynamite!" kids magazine.)

It is what it is.

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I have a memory of sitting and drawing all the different baseball team logos from my little league and my mom would say "thats the only thing you can draw" and it was true. Because I liked it!

Before I found the boards, I remember sitting and looking at the mothership for hours discovering old logos and alternates I had never seen. But then again, I'm 16 and that was like 4 years ago.

concepts: washington football (2017) ... nfl (2013) ... yikes

potd 10/20/12
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Catalogs, baseball cards and Sportscenter

You nailed it for me.

During those times when baseball cards were limited to one main set and one Traded/Update set, you pretty much never saw an updated logo or uniform in the main set.

For me, it was just watching the games and seeing something I didn't recognize. I remember in 1989 when the Phils switched their road unis from powder blue to gray and I thought something was wrong with my TV reception. ^_^

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Pre-internet, it was pretty tough to keep up, especially living here in the UK. I used to get Sport & Inside Sports magazines, which were about the only US publications regularly available. I also used to get the yearly NBA preview mags - Lindy's, Street & Smith - which were the best place to see logo changes. I also used to collect the Panini NBA sticker albums when they started in the early 90s (I still have them somewhere!).

One thing I used to do starting around 1990 was draw each team's uniforms & logo, kind of my own version of a style guide. I used the same template every year and kept them in a folder, never knowing that there were others like me out there... Did that right up until 1996 or so.

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I used to pick up NFL preview magazines back in the mid-90s and flip to each teams preview page. It seemed every year, at least one teams helmet graphic would change, but I vividly remember seeing the 2 big WTF changes of the 90s: the Bucs and the Broncos that way.

For baseball, I was also in the StarStruck crowd.

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i didnt care so much about sports design before college, but always thought it was interesting when i saw something new. i remember hearing a radio show talk about the Buccaneers re brand and one guy was trying to explain what pewter was or what it would look like. random stuff like that, or i would just see it on game day.

 

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BEHANCE  /  MEDIUM  /  DRIBBBLE

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This actually wasn't too long ago, maybe 10 yrs or so, but my brother had always subscribed to eastbay so I was always pumped to see the new cleats gloves etc. and I remember the nfl section would have a little "new" bubble on the new jerseys. I wanna say the bengals and eagles got new jerseys the same yr? And I really couldn't tell the difference for the eagles so I figured it was like a mistake or something.

Around middle school I came across some of oil Lukas's page 2 articles which I loved and eventually started to read the blog daily. AND THEN I found sportslogos.net and would just marvel at all the logos and uniforms and wordmarks etc. and eventually I came to the boards when I was like 15ish? And now I'm 19 fwiw.

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Going back to the 1960s, each season I would buy two copies of each of the annual preview publications (Sporting News, Street & Smith's, and so on). One would be kept intact for reference. The other would get cut up for my logo collection. I would carefully cut out each logo and paste it on thin cardboard so that they could be sorted and stored as needed.

CK3ZP8E.jpg

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I always watched the drafts for "first look" at logo changes. I distinctly remember finding out about the Broncos' now-current look and the HAR/CAR move by seeing a strange banner during the draft.

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Anyone heard of John Fulgaro's Sports Logo Guide? It was printed in 1998 in black and white and probably laid out in MS Word. Still, it was a really great resource for sports logo histories. I still look at it time to time.

WAIT- I know it was after the internet became widely available. I just consider it a tool that was antiquated, yet effective.

Yeah, my bad.

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I think the first time I saw the new Buccaneer logo was when Warrick Dunn and Reidel Anthony were rookies and they were at the photo shoot. While everyone else was in their new uni, they ran around in T-shirts instead because the uniform wasn't ready until the summer... :grin:

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