Brian in Boston

Arlington: The logo’s a downgrade, as is unnecessarily switching to the Arlington place name.

DC: The logo is a downgrade.

Houston: A slight improvement over the previous logo, which isn’t saying much.

Orlando: The logo’s a downgrade and the  Guardians identity doesn’t fit the Central Florida market as well as the gargoyle-driven theme fit New York City.

San Antonio Brahmas: Meh.

Seattle Sea Dragons: A wash to, maybe, a slight improvement.

St. Louis Battlehawks: A wash.

Vegas Vipers: The name fits the Las Vegas market better than it did Tampa Bay, but the logo still looks like that of a third-rate sportswear brand.

Bottom line? The on-field play had better be electrifying, because the branding isn’t going to put fannies in the seats or generate much in the way of merchandising revenue.

So, with the St. Louis Knights becoming the Nashville Knights, how crazy would it be if the Memphis Showboats steamed on up the Mississippi River to Missouri and became the St. Louis Showboats, St. Louis Steamers, or St. Louis Steamwheelers?

On 10/14/2022 at 5:16 AM, WideRight said:

From 2002-2010 we will have 4 clubs relocate.

Three of those cities will get replacement teams in a 4-team expansion.

1 new market will get an expansion team. 

Of the 4 relocated teams, only 1 will create an entirely new identity.  

Of the cities getting relocated or expansion clubs, all 4 are current NFL cities. 

One of the new cities will lose their team in the decade of 2010-2020 but will get an almost immediate replacement as another team will relocate late in the 2010's. 

All signs point to the Portland Thunder and St. Louis Knights relocating. Each of those market seems likely to receive a replacement team  via the 4-team expansion.

Other teams that strike me as being strong candidates for relocation are the Atlanta Fire (irrelevant in their market), Memphis Showboats (suboptimal stadium situation and low discretionary income in market), Oakland Invaders (city trails San Francisco and San Jose in relevance within Bay Area market), and Ohio Glory (suboptimal stadium situation).

Whether Atlanta, Memphis, or Oakland  would receive a replacement team would depend upon whether the problematic issues in their respective markets were resolved and/or whether a USFL franchise was likely to encroach - via relocation or expansion - on their territory. On the latter point, if the Showboats were to relocate to Nashville, I'd say that USFL leadership would be unlikely to expand/relocate back into Memphis in the near term, if at all. Ditto for Oakland getting back into the USFL if a team were to set up shop in San Francisco or San Jose. As for the Glory, I'd envision them most likely retaining their branding and relocating to either Cincinnati or Cleveland simply to escape the cavernous confines of Ohio Stadium. That said, I could see the team heavily marketing itself throughout the State of Ohio, including to Columbus-based fans.

New markets entering the USFLas part of the flurry of activity you've described between 2002 and 2010 will include Boston, Dallas, and Miami. I could also foresee Charlotte, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Nashville, Salt Lake City, and San Diego being given consideration.

I can't wait to see what's coming down the pike.







   

 

Columbus Crew 2 have captured the inaugural MLS NEXT Pro Cup championship via a 4-1 victory over St. Louis CITY2 at Lower.com Field in Columbus, Ohio.

Isaiah Parente (45' PK), Marco Micaletto (45'+3'), Jacen Russell-Rowe (58' PK), and Ryan Telfer (83') scored for the victors, with Celio Pompeau (80') notching the lone goal for St. Louis. Micoletto was named the MLS NEXT Pro Cup MVP.

Attendance for the match was reported to have been 7,446.

1 hour ago, WideRight said:

 A.  Tampa Bay moves to a black helmet?

B.  Jacksonvile moves to an orange or maroon helmet?

C.  LA moves to a navy or speed blue helmet?

D.  Baltimore moves to a royal blue helmet?

Option C. 

Tampa Bay's silver lids are too iconic to lose. Similarly, when I think of the USFL's Blitz, I can't help but visualize them in silver helmets. As for an orange or maroon helmet in Jacksonville, neither would be as attractive as the silver the Bulls currently sport. 

All of that said, speed blue helmets would look outstanding on the Los Angeles Express.  

On 9/15/2022 at 7:25 PM, DG_ThenNowForever said:

That NerdWallet commerical with the guy on the fence and the lady from the Verizon commercial makes me uncomfortable in how much the wife despises her husband. If she had a choice to make in her character, she chose open hostility towards her doofus soyboy husband.

On 9/16/2022 at 4:04 AM, Sport said:

Maybe he hangs out on the fence to get away from the mean wicked witch he lives with? The actress is channeling deep disdain for some dude somewhere in her past there, needs to dial it back by like 25%.

While I can understand why people would find that NerdWallet spot to be polarizing, there is 0% chance that the actor chose to portray the wife in that manner solely of her own volition. While the spot was being shot, she'd have been receiving feedback from the director, who - in turn - would have been discussing ideas with the advertising agency creative team responsible for writing the commercial, and representatives of the client. Frankly, I would say that it is more likely that the actor was directed to dial her performance up during the shoot.

I'd suggest rendering the tape on the blade of the hockey stick in a color other than white. As it stands now, the white tape gets lost in the white underbelly of the shark. I'd be interested in seeing how the dark teal found within the secondary logo would work for said purpose, as it would introduce a bit of that color into the primary logo.      

On 8/15/2022 at 9:15 PM, Burmy said:

The PBLA has officially announced their team names...

New England Chowderheads

Ah, yes. Nothing quite like the bracing salt air that greets one’s nostrils during a morning of clamming in Manchester, New Hampshire  or Springfield, Massachusetts! There’s a sense of satisfaction that one derives while harvesting clams from the tidal sand flats of the Merrimack and Connecticut Rivers as they flow through the respective cities, exceeded only by bringing a heaping haul of said bivalves home and whipping up a batch of the “chowdah” these communities have become famous for.
 

Of course, one could have embraced the pejorative sense of “Chowderheads” and just dubbed the team the alliterative New England Nimrods, Nincompoops, or Numbskulls.

Any way you cut - pardon, ladle - it, Chowderheads is an idiotic name.

5 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

When was the last time Man U wasn't in the top level?

They played in The Football League Second Division during the 1974-75 season, winning its championship and earning promotion back to the First Division. They remained there through the 1991-92 season and became an inaugural member of the Premier League in 1992-93, where they've maintained membership ever since.

On 8/8/2022 at 9:45 AM, WideRight said:

I know where [the Portland Thunder] are going to end up in the late 2010's,  but I am trying to figure out where they might go in between.  Here are some contenders.  Let me know your thoughts and any suggestions.  Remember that the idea is that this will be a 12-18 year home, but that they will leave again late in the 2010's again because the conditions are not ideal for a profitable endeavor.   And I would want them to stay in the West so as not to force another team to realign or switch divisions.  So, thoughts on possible intermediary locations?

 

• Honolulu, Aloha Stadium
• Las Vegas, Sam Boyd Stadium
• San Jose, SJSU Spartan Stadium
• Dallas, Ford Stadium (SMU)
• Salt Lake City, U. of Utah Stadium

Due to the issues that location would cause with regard to travel and national broadcast schedules (the time zone difference with a significant portion of the continental United States would require all manner of machinations in order to fit Hawaii-based games into a reasonable time slot for mainland USFL viewers), I don't see Honolulu realistically gaining traction as a relocation destination with the USFL's owners and executives.

I also don't think the league's owners - particularly those in Oakland - would be keen on having the Thunder relocate a 38 to 40-mile drive from the Invaders home at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

So, as I see it, the most realistic scenario will see the Thunder relocate to one of the three remaining cities on your list - Dallas, Las Vegas, or Salt Lake City - for "12 to 18 years" before ultimately relocating to one of the other two. Personally, I see Dallas factoring in one way or the other. "Big D" - given its population, media market, and love of football - could be the team's initial destination, only to be found wanting due to the Cowboys' stranglehold on the hearts and minds of the region’s  pigskin fans, as well as the competition for the sports dollar with the region's other major-pro teams. Or, rather, Vegas/Salt Lake City is where the Thunder land first, prior to moving to the football-mad DFW Metroplex after one of the two smaller markets underwhelms league leadership.

It will, as always, be interesting to see how you opt to have things play out.  

A, hands down.  
 

I was never a fan of the branding utilized by the XFL’s Las Vegas Outlaws to begin with. As the centerpiece of your option B, the horns forming a stylized O make no sense, given that neither the place name nor team nickname begin with the letter.

As for option C, the dream catcher just doesn’t tie-in to the Wranglers team identity. 

11 hours ago, the admiral said:

HEY BRANDINE

I was thinking Peter Stormare as Czernobog in American Gods. In any event, the Packers enter camp with either a slack-jawed yokel or dirtbag Slavic deity of evil as their signal caller.

Unless my club of choice is about to wind up on the wrong side of the score line, I’m always pulling for the “underdog” in a national knockout tournament. Here’s hoping that Sacramento Republic hoists the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup trophy this year!

Meanwhile, on the soccer stadium front, the latest news seems to indicate that New York City FC is headed to Queens. 
 

The New York Post is reporting that New York City Mayor Eric Adams is prepared to announce that he supports plans for a 25,000-seat stadium for NYCFC  being built on land within the 61-acre Special Willets Point District. The privately financed facility would be sited on property leased to the soccer team by Sterling Equities and Related Companies.

There are still hurdles to be cleared, including successfully navigating the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, but team officials are hopeful that they could begin construction within a time frame that would see the facility completed by 2025.

There's much work to be done, but it strikes me that this bodes well for professional soccer's prospects in New Orleans.

Jamie Guin is a native New Orleanian whose experience as a sports and entertainment executive has included time in the front offices of the NBA's New Orleans Hornets and Pelicans, Major League Soccer's LAFC and Sporting Kansas City, and - most recently - serving as the Senior VP of Global Partnerships at Legends. Meanwhile, Warren Smith played a key role in the launch of two USL Championship sides, Sacramento Republic FC and San Diego Loyal SC, as well as Triple A baseball's Sacramento River Cats

Here's to NOLA getting the chance to embrace successful clubs in both the USL Championship and USL Super League!   

Santa Barbara Sky FC is joining  USL League One. The team, which will play out of Santa Barbara City College’s 10,000-seat La Playa Stadium, will take to the pitch in 2024.  A Santa Barbara Sky FC women’s USL Super League side will also be launched.
 

Former Liverpool FC CEO Peter Moore is the venture’s founding investor.

If George Washington University is determined to drop Colonials as the nickname for athletic teams, I say they just revert to their old Buff and Blue moniker and call it a day.  If adopting your color(s) is a good enough naming convention for the likes of the Wellesley Blue, Stanford Cardinal, and Harvard Crimson - to say nothing of the Dartmouth Big Green, Cornell Big Red, Wisconsin-Eau Claire Blugolds, Chicago Maroons, and NYU Violets - its good enough for GW.

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

If they think their target audience would be strictly suburbanites, then Villanova field (maybe - I don't know if any sprint sports like lacrosse are played there) or maybe the Union's field, which again would have conflicts, and is in a crappy area that people probably wouldn't want to go for to see something like a USFL game.  Also not sure how the Union would feel about the grass being torn up.

My nephew played football for Villanova. According to him, not only does Villanova Stadium play host to football, but during the USFL's season it would be - as you suspected - the home facility for both men's and women's lacrosse, as well as track and field and intramural competition.

As for Subaru Park, though the stadium was designed with the idea of hosting concerts and sports besides soccer (football, lacrosse, rugby), I'm right there with you when it comes to questioning how welcoming the Union would be to a USFL franchise setting up shop in the facility.   

3 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

It's a shame you couldn't just start a successful football league for 18- to 22-year-olds, and that it has to operate under the veneer of amateurism to actually work. Universities shouldn't be in the business of professional sports during a student loan crises, yet they are. Athletes are just now finally able to sign NIL deals, but it's at least two generations too late. And universities are at each others' throats to more successfully monetize young, underpaid men hitting each other in the head.

 

If we didn't pretend college football had anything to do with colleges, the whole thing would fall apart.

 

It stinks.

Spot-on.

The migration of UCLA and USC to the Big Ten Conference is - like so much else about the world of "big time college sports" ™ - yet another example of pure, unadulterated, unfettered greed and self-promotion. Not one of the coaches or athletic directors involved in the remaking of the "big time college sports" ™ landscape cares one iota about anything more than their own enrichment and aggrandizement. They certainly don't give a **** about the education of student-athletes. As for the administrators of the colleges and universities participating in "big time college sports" ™, they've done nothing less than enable the prostituting of their academic institutions.

Here's how out of whack the priorities are in the good ol' U.S. of A.: the last time I checked, the highest-paid public employee in 40 of the 50 United States was the head coach of either the football or basketball team at a state college or university.  Not a governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, or treasurer of a state.  Not a chancellor, president, provost, or dean at a state college or university. Nope. An intercollegiate coach.  What does that tell you about where our collective focus is trained as a society?

Insane.

2 hours ago, Sport said:

From my seats the refs were atrocious. 

To my mind, the quality of MLS officiating is the league's greatest weakness. It ranges from mediocre to downright miserable.

2 hours ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Is the part that I bolded actually true?

 

Even if it is, it has no bearing on the second half of that sentence.

In July of last year, Sportico ran a piece in which the average Major League Soccer franchise value - based upon information gleaned from "60 stakeholders inside and outside MLS" by reporter Kurt Badenhausen - was pegged at $550 million. Los Angeles Football Club  had the top valuation at $860 million, while the Colorado Rapids were ranked lowest in value at $370 million. The piece set the collective fair-market value of the league's franchises - including team-related businesses and real estate holdings - at $14.9 billion.

Sportico's full list of team valuations was as follows:

1) LAFC - $860 million
2) Atlanta United - $845 million
3) LA Galaxy - $ 835 million
4) Seattle Sounders FC - $705 million

5) New York City FC - $655 million

6) Toronto FC - $650 million

7) Portland Timbers - $635 million

8 ) D.C. United - $630 million

9) Austin FC - $575 million

10) Sporting Kansas City - $550 million
11) Columbus Crew - $540 million
12) Chicago Fire FC - $535 million

13) Philadelphia Union - $530 million

14) Inter Miami CF - $525 million

15) Minnesota United - $520 million

16) San Jose Earthquakes - $510 million

17) New York Red Bulls - $505 million
18) FC Cincinnati - $500 million
19) New England Revolution - $480 million
20) Nashville SC - $460 million
21) Houston Dynamo FC - $425 million
22) Real Salt Lake - $420 million
23) FC Dallas - $415 million
24) Orlando City - $400 million
25) Vancouver Whitecaps FC - $385 million
26) CF Montreal - $380 million
27) Colorado Rapids - $370 million    

Indy Eleven's on-again, off-again quest to secure a soccer-specific home seems to have made some progress. A 20,000-seat stadium - targeted to open in 2025 - would be part of a mixed-use development in downtown Indianapolis.  

http://uslchampionship.com: Indy Eleven secures downtown location for Eleven Park development

Indianapolis Star: Indy Eleven announces big development for downtown

WISH-TV: Developer secures land for $1B Indy Eleven stadium and neighborhood project

 

4 hours ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

@Dilbert raises a good point on public transportation access. It's... not at all there for Gillette

There is public transportation access to Gillette Stadium. The Foxboro stop on the MBTA Commuter Rail's  Franklin/Foxboro line from Boston is a 5-to-7-minute walk from Gillette Stadium. Service to Patriots games and other special events at the Foxboro stop has been available for years. A daily commuter pilot program - subsidized by the Kraft Group - began in 2019, only to be put on hold within a year due to the COVID pandemic. The Foxboro stop can also be accessed - and has been - by special event trains running out of Rhode Island on the MBTA's Providence branch of the Providence/Stoughton Line.

I would be shocked if the Kraft family and the powers-that-be within Massachusetts state government don't already have the wheels in motion - no pun intended - to provide MBTA rail service to Gillette Stadium for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.       

2 hours ago, Seadragon76 said:

The format should be easy for each city: Each one gets a group (which means three games at a site) and a First Round Knockout game. This gives each site a minimum of four games.

 

From there, you make sure that a Mexican site and a Canadian site (probably Mexico City and Vancouver) get at least two more games - a Round of 16 game and a Quarterfinal.

My understanding was that FIFA and the United Bid Committee has settled upon a schedule that would see 60 matches contested in the United States, with 10 matches each played in Canada and Mexico. The format you propose wouldn't square with the 60-10-10 split.

Of course, they could ultimately end up moving away from the schedule they were said to be eyeing. Time will tell.

On 6/17/2022 at 10:57 AM, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

It's not going to happen in the US. Especially not after the NFL successfully hurdled the whole concussion thing a few years back. If that didn't slow the league down, nothing will. 

 

... American football isn't going anywhere.

The future of American football on the professional level has less to do with how successfully the NFL handled "the whole concussion thing a few years back" than it does with how said issue is dealt with at the youth through high school levels of competition moving forward. Further, gridiron football has always been amongst the most expensive of sports in which to launch and maintain a program (equipment costs, the size of rosters, etc.) at the youth club and interscholastic level.

American gridiron football's prospects for future survival are linked to parental concerns over the safety of the sport, as well as whether or not youth athletic organizations and elementary through high school athletic departments feel the cost of maintaining a program is a worthwhile expenditure. If participation in American gridiron football declines at the youth through high school levels, then it is going to eventually have an impact on the quality of the product at the professional level.

What will the NFL be willing to do to step-up and protect its status as the top-dog amongst major pro sports in America? We'll see.

12 minutes ago, TBGKon said:

IDallas might get the opener in the US since I feel like NY or LA gets the final.

I've been hearing quite a bit of chatter that AT&T Stadium and MetLife Stadium are the frontrunners to host the final. We'll see.