Ted Cunningham

Ah, neat. I didn't realize that either FAMU or Louisville had done this. The first (and to my knowledge up to now, only) instance I noticed it was the Ottawa Rough Riders back in the 60s. (I was bored once while working out and picked a random Grey Cup on YouTube to watch (1966). Ottawa was one of the teams, and that was the first time I'd ever seen forward-facing numbers like that.

Yes, that Twitter thing is happening to me too. While not a huge deal, it does mess up scrolling slightly. (And given that's a lot of the actual user interaction, that's a bigger deal here than it would be on other sites.)

Yeah, I'm right there with you. Those are some nice one-off uniforms.

Yes, Marshall has used the offset black-stroked green (or white on green jerseys) numbers off and on (more on than off) since they were a 1-AA school in the early/mid-90s.

Very nice work. Every transition feels very era- and trend-appropriate.

For sake of visual aid, because no one had posted yet (via UNISWAG):

Also, one other thing: these pictures were taken on the forest road leading to Coopers Rock State Forest. If ever you're driving through West Virginia (on I-68), take the 20 minutes out of your drive and check out Coopers Rock. There's an exit off the highway just for it, it's a short and easy drive to the overlook, and the overlook itself is spectacular.

That WVU alternate is certainly not terrible. Given the alts they've had in the past (Pro Combat coal whatever--incidentally used in one of the last iterations of the Backyard Brawl wherein WVU beat Pitt to a pulp at Heinz Field, various iterations of the grey uniforms, etc.), this is pretty nice. As @Bathysphere mentioned, if they're going to do an all-white alternative, this is it. And I like the flying WV in the state outline. Like @WSU151 said, WVU's away look should be blue helmets, white jerseys, and gold pants, especially for the first iteration of the rivalry game in 11 years. But I like this as a once-per-season alt, generally speaking. Sidenote: my wife and I are going to go to that game in September, and I'm REALLY looking forward to it. My dad and I were WVU season ticket holders through 2018, and I haven't been able to go to a game since.

This is such an interesting discussion to me. IATA codes seem (at least from anecdotal evidence) to be how many people abbreviate the names of entire cities/MSAs because they represent the point of entry and the shorthand by which some travelers identify their destination. Pittsburgh, for instance, is decidedly in the IATA =/= city abbreviation camp (as opposed to, apparently, Charlotte? according to the previous discussion). I've seen and heard it corrected many times: PIT is the airport. PGH is the city. (And Pitt is the university; some people have used that shorthand before too and have been corrected.) Sports teams add an interesting layer to it because of how media abbreviates the cities or placenames. Pittsburgh sports are almost unequivocally "PIT" in scorebugs, box scores, etc. where that abbreviation convention is used. So if the Pirates were to incorporate an abbreviation into their future City Connect plans, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised to see them use PIT, even though PGH would be the more-accepted abbreviation for local fans. And while, ha ha yes the Pirates are awful and how would they even have fans outside of the city limits, let alone inside (haha), would it be a better move from a marketing standpoint to use PIT since that's how out-of-market fans who didn't necessarily grow up in or spend significant time in/around the city identify the city in which the Pirates play? (To be clear, I'm firmly in the camp of PGH and/or using the generally accepted civil abbreviation instead of IATA codes. IATA codes were set up for a specific purpose. There are reasons why none of them start with N or why the letters don't line up with the city's name because of multiple airports in the area, etc. I certainly understand that in certain places they line up, one-to-one, or else the IATA code has come to be the city's abbreviation because there wasn't another abbreviation in common use previously or whatever. But those are exceptions. An IATA code is not designed to be an abbreviation for the city.)

Two things: 1) The uniforms (so far) have been well thought out and have kept things simple. Nice work all around. 2) I love the ideas regarding scheduling and the conferences. While I realize there are guidelines in place for not going too far away from aesthetics-based concepts in this forum, I'd love to hear/see an explainer on how you did all the scheduling and simulation work. This is very cool.

These concepts are wild. While not my taste, I do think there are a lot of interesting ideas here. And I appreciate contrasting pants and jerseys. From a general standpoint, I can get behind more aggressive or modern looks so long as the pants contrast with the jerseys. In particular, here: I like the black-over-white Panthers, the Browns, and the black alt for Washington is great. If they have their hearts set on a black alt, it should look like that. Also, I think the Cowboys look kind of like the LA Express of the USFL; that's fun.

It's a nice looking uniform for sure. (Of the red-helmet Falcons looks, I actually prefer this early version with the black jerseys compared to the all red 70s/80s iteration.) But being unintentionally forced into looking like the 90s Falcons because of the one helmet rule was an unexpected boon. I grew up in the 90s and I think that was the height of my NFL fandom, so of course that look resonates with me. And while what we've had for the past few years isn't a true 90s throwback, there's just something about the classic Falcon in black on black over a black jersey and white pants. Again, because of my own bias, I think the Falcons should be a black-forward team instead of red-forward. Either way, I do like the red helmet too. So I'm not going to complain about that look or the aesthetics-based potential for the game against SF in October.

The latest one gets it even closer; it's definitely a Tigers-esque D. The previous iteration looked like a D too, but more along the lines of Duquesne's latest rebrand. I really appreciate you posting all these process images. It gives an excellent insight into your design process and why the final products come out the way they do. Nice work.

That set of numbers is kind of like the "McAuliffe" numbers for football: A fair few teams used it, but because of its recent use, it's associated with one team. The Titans/Jets also used a serif block font similar to that, correct?

Eghhhh. Why did they put a stroke on it for the helmets? One of my favorite looks out of the MAC in recent years has been the gold shell on gold mask helmets with navy marks that Akron has been wearing. The stroke somehow overly complicates it or something. (I can't quite put my finger on it; something about it feels overwrought.) While I have no connection to Akron (outside of having friends who are from the area and/or live there now), and thus no strong sentimental feelings about their looks, I liked where their branding was over the past few years. All of it is and has been pretty bland for a while, certainly. But it wasn't terrible either. And this is no different; just kind of a lateral move from one fairly safe look to another.

That is the logo of the entity sending the C&D to the XFL. While I personally don't think there would be any confusion, I suppose this is like most of these situations: Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe (founders of Togethxr) felt it was a necessary step to protect their brand.

I quite like that otherwise blank helmet with the crosses swords in the back. Is there a reason you didn't use the swords from or ones similar to those in the primary Raiders logo?

Yeah, I've always been fond of "Athletic Gothic" (as I've seen it called in various places), too. Fun fact, the 0 in that Washington set was different than those in other versions of that set of numbers: I guess the 1s are a little different too. I think Nike has a version of this set, where the Titans' Oilers throwbacks are truer to the original numbers. That's just my own judgment/based on what I've seen, though.

It's blue. It's dark, but it's blue. (HEX #03142E)

I realize 1) this was a couple pages back, and 2) it's not relevant, and 3) it may be an unpopular opinion, but the Oilers in white on white like this is far superior to them on white on blue. It's something about how balanced the blue and red look in this application.

That Tortoise album is excellent.

I'm noticing a trend here, Cardinals... (I'm genuinely curious, and I don't know if we can answer this just by speculating: A lot of these feature monochrome looks. Does this indicate a general panning of monochrome football uniforms? Or is this a more-traditional bias among the board's members?)

So my apologies from the top since I've only really been following this series for the concepts themselves and I haven't read all the backstories. But I'm curious: any reason you chose to highlight Blennerhassett in this concept? (Does Parkersburg have it's own school in this series, for instance?) I ask because people don't really refer to anywhere using "Blennerhassett" as a placename (even though it's technically a census-designated place). There's Blennerhassett Heights which overlooks the island or Blennerhassett Middle School (to which about a sixth of the kids in the county go), but otherwise, most people from around there would say they're from Washington, South Parkersburg, Lubeck, or else that they "live on Blennerhassett Heights". I'm interested because I grew up in Parkersburg and I think it's kind of neat that someone would pick out Blennerhassett of all the various placenames around there. I think the colors are really nice, and they avoid the color dichotomy that Parkersburg has based on its high schools. (PHS is a red-first school and Parkersburg South is a navy-first school. And some people wear those colors year-round to show their allegiance or alma mater, etc. While the rivalry is just that: a high school rivalry, I can hear some old cranks I know complaining if ever a higher-level team like a college or pro outfit based in Parkersburg used either red or navy. Ha.) I'm not entirely sold on the mascot given that the fossil was found in Monroe County (which is about as southeast you can in West Virginia; not terribly far from Durbin, actually) and has only been the state fossil for roughly 15 years. I suppose it depends on how old the school is. While it would be a pain to get there, I also appreciate that you put the arenas on the island itself. Haha. Any reason there's a notch in right-center field in the baseball stadium?

Now, the question is: will they use the above iteration of the red/white uniforms (2009 throwback to 1963)? Or will it be the 1985 version (below)? I like elements of both of these uniforms, but I don't feel more strongly about one over the other. If I had to guess though, I'd guess the 1985 version or perhaps an early 90s one with the red facemasks.

I don't know that I ever knew San Francisco had a wordmark that used the older "hand-lettered" style of keystone serifs. Putting the two side by side shows how the older version is better. 1) Even though the characters have obvious inconsistencies, it feels easier on the eyes (and therefore more pleasing), especially in situations like "SAN FRANCISCO" where there are so many letters. The consistency in the newer version between the letters almost makes it harder to read because the serifs run together. To be fair, I like the F better in the new one, but otherwise, the older mark is superior. 2) At a more base level, the preference should skew more to hand-written/hand-drawn lettering in baseball simply given 1) the age of the sport, and 2) how many of the sport's iconic marks are not from "fonts" but from hand-drawn/-cut/-stitched marks. 3) I am a Pirates fan. I've seen a lot of 3rd-party/local vendors put out t-shirt designs using either the same font as the more modern San Francisco example above, or one that is similar. I suppose that means I'm conditioned, but that much consistency from letter to letter screams off-brand to me. ("We can't actually use the name of the team, but you know who we're talking about by using this font!: PITTSBURGH BASEBALL") To be clear, I don't think every team should look like they play in 1942. For instance, the Blue Jays look great, and their lettering matches their identity. But it's also not trying to look like a typical baseball script, etc. If you're designing an identity that includes script marks, letter marks for hat logos, or something else traditional to baseball like keystone serifs, etc., those should have a human/hand-rendered look because there's a precedence for that. Marks like the older SAN FRANCISCO have a certain soul that ready-made fonts can't replicate.