Digby

In design, but not sports. Didn't go to design school. Now I do more UX/UI work instead of graphics/branding. All of that is to say I've had a weird career path and maybe not what you're looking for, but most people do truthfully. It's a challenging field to break into, there's a lot of nepotism and there are always people who want the work but don't want to pay for it. It's important to have a portfolio, but also to have a network. Putting your designs on Behance or whatever is obviously necessary but it's also the easy part. The tougher part is having a network of people who will employ you or recommend you for employment. Take relevant internships (but make sure they're paid). Be communicative with fellow designers, but also non-designers. Consider your skillset T-shaped; it's good to demonstrate real expertise in one or two things, but also competency in other related things. Consider whether you want to work for an agency, in-house, or as a freelancer. (And be realistic that freelancing is NOT for everyone or even most people.) I don't have sports design-specific suggestions, but these are just ideas for the field at large.

How do these Celtics lose to these Lakers, at home, on a night without James OR Davis? 4 to 6 weeks later than usual, but the midseason mental slump that defines these Celtics teams has arrived again.

I suspect they just don't sell a ton of MLS merchandise even compared with their B-tier teams internationally. If third kits used to sell so poorly that they're only just coming back after a 10-year hiatus, and the league/Adidas has still resisted the temptation to do anything more than a single new jersey per year for each team. Would love to see the sales numbers leak sometime for MLS teams and teams internationally to compare. (The holiday/charity ones are easy, since the expensive and logistically difficult parts are the same and it's just the printing (cheap and quick) that has to change between teams.) Adidas has certainly been investing more creativity and bespoke-ness into its designs for MLS these last couple years, with the leaks from this year suggesting this might be the best yet, so we'll see if that also prompts a wider bloom of more merchandising.

There's a long thing on MLSsoccer.com explaining the formulas of putting the groups together but I couldn't make any sense of it. Sure, why not.

There are sort of parallels, but the GSW second peak after the first apparent fall wasn't as long and sustained the way the Patriots' was. What are the parallels? Brady/Curry surprisingly leaves, also surprisingly ushers new team to title. Draymond sort of fits the Antonio Green or Aaron Hernandez, but has contributed substantially more while also not doing anything THAT bad (that we know of). Maybe Kerr would be left exposed by his former bestie the way Belichick was, but it's hard to see him looking as old and behind-the-times the way BB does now, short of a radical and unlikely rules reinvention that drags the game back to pre-LeBron defense and physical play. Plus, Kerr started his head coaching career relatively late, so in theory he could catch the Popovich/Nelson class of most wins if he coaches mediocre teams for 20 more years, but I don't really see him doing that the way Belichick wants the Shula record. (Does Kerr have the highest win percentage among coaches now? 2nd place behind the guy the Bucks just fired?)

Didn't hear much more about the Celtics vs Pacers uniform matchup being put to a public vote, so not entirely sure the NBA followed through with it, but either the suits or the general public decided this should be a white City uniform vs. a black City uniform in the end.

Whatever happened to that event where they'd make 3-person teams with an NBA player, a WNBA player and an old head? Bring that back, give me something to actually root for.

Not only that, but they're also doubling down on mixing the Real Madrid-cribbed name with the Barcelona color scheme. Blech. I think the way they handled the mountain + stripe thing juuust about works... but for me, the contrast raglan sleeves are the one extra element that's simply too much going on.

I logged into Twitter so you don't have to.

There, I fixed it.

The uniform matchup for this Tuesday's Celtics/Pacers game is up to a FAN VOTE. Green vs gold, please. https://gamecenter.nba.com/nba-fankit-v1/production/index.html?h=cdn-us.monterosa.cloud&p=4ca0b70f-3991-4dcf-9505-693efcaa9477&e=7fbb7280-614c-4ec0-9188-37e7c510fda3#/?cid=NBA:interactive experience:OwnedSocial:Team Social:celtics:Team Social:App Download:AppAcquisition:content Consumption:t-cont:social:social:appdownload:interactive experience&ko_click_id=ko_8r23tc8ae68mbcaov

In general I like the occasional use of minimal, alternate logos on some of these jerseys (i.e. last year's aways for LAFC and Minnesota), but I don't think Toronto's is strong or interesting enough to use in this way. And the graphic just looks like a big shrug of a design. Glad to see the red trim back but I'd like to see more of their charcoal as a tertiary color too, maybe pairing this with charcoal shorts for a change?

The whole Bay FC approach to branding is really confounding to me. The aesthetics of the Bay Area are colorful -- the natural elements, the architecture, the annoying loudness of Silicon Valley culture. Why are they trying to rep staid old-timey New York City on a grey winter's day?

The two purple jerseys they've got outside of the "standard" set are going to combine to get nearly as much run-out as the black and white ones, so I wouldn't go that far just yet. They seem pretty clearly in damage-control mode.

There's something deeply unpleasant and clash-y I find about the Mariners' teal and standard-issue away jersey grey. I don't feel that way about the silver accents in their logo package, especially when the silver is shiny. But saturated, bright colors pop in an uneasy way when mixed with grey, for me. Maybe in this brave Nike retro-future of teams not needing a grey jersey, that will be a solvable problem, though maybe it'll cause new ones too.

These three post-ring coaching gigs he's got have always been with front offices that I would, charitably, say have championship ambitions but a lack of smart and rational thinking. Also, messy bitches who love drama are always drawn to each other. I'm still in disbelief at this business about under-the-table working for/maybe undermining the previous coach while also analyzing that team on TV. I do think he was a good coach for that Celtics team, but that Celtics team was also the end of an era of the NBA, and the rest of us have moved past that template/system.

I would die laughing if they tried to pull a chop shop aesthetic off. They should have a Disney World-ified "chop shop" concessions row of $20 chicken sandwiches and acai bowls at Citi Field, if they don't already.

Bucks fired Adrian Griffin. For those keeping score at home, that's two coaches they've fired in the past 6 months or so despite being a 2nd-place team. Trying to hire Doc Rivers as his replacement. Apparently he's was being an informal associate for Griffin. Not that I hold ex-jock, ex-pro TV commentators to some lofty journalistic ethical standard, but doesn't this seem a little weird?

I don't know much about Front Office Sports as an outfit but they seem to have even more detail. Apparently the content-farm current publisher missed a licensing payment, which caused the weird IP holder operation to revoke the licensing (but they were thinking about doing so anyway). Also the guild employees still have 90 days to work while the others get laid off immediately. Unionize your workplaces, kids! If you'd like to read several layers of sordid, gross, boring business machinations by suits who add no value: https://frontofficesports.com/sports-illustrateds-publisher-lays-off-entire-staff-future-unclear/

This latest Revolution stadium push has gone quiet since the attempt to get first-level state approval got dropped at the end of the last state house session, but the current governor has been low-key signaling support to resolve that via a standalone bill, so it's not dead, just in stasis with a renewed push coming in next session. It would be very weird but funny to me if the Krafts never managed to get state support for a stadium when it was a long line of Kraft's milquetoast corporate country-club bros as governor, but the progressive lesbian manages to help make it happen. I'm increasingly suspecting that the Boston NWSL team will end up there too, if they ever exist at all. I have a bad feeling about the Franklin Park stadium project. (Also the Revs quietly announced Richie Williams as their new Revs II coach, which is interesting as the rumor mill has suspected him of being the one whose HR complaints got Bruce Arena forced out by the league. But nobody really knows.)

I don't know what equivalent we have to SI in modern times; every second of every game can be archived on YouTube and yet that has nothing to say and feels like a substantially worse way to catalogue an era. There's no particular reason this has to happen except that robber barons got put in charge of the thing.

I knew she's been having knee problems since basically the 2019 World Cup but still, bummer news for Sam Mewis at age 31. A sad day for (half of) the pride of Hanson, Massachusetts.

Orlando's stadium is being renamed to Inter&Co Stadium. I am losing my mind at how dumb this is. What a time to be alive. https://www.orlandocitysc.com/news/inter-co-naming-rights-orlando-soccer-specific-stadium

Siakam is probably a good get for this particular Pacers team. Three firsts is overpaying for him and whatever contract they throw at him this summer will probably also overpay, but what else are they gonna do? They're playing with house money, which is the only way they'll compete these days, so you may as well.

I know we're past the era of American soccer fans as the hipster set, but in this case the soccer crowd has had needless money-suck Peacock exclusives AND leagues/networks as 100 percent state-run media before they were mainstream. Those poor, poor MLS Extra Time dudes having to deal with the Open Cup abandonment with the vibes of a hostage tape. I guess the good news is that Peacock has gone through every possible channel to offer free or heavily discounted subscriptions. I think I'm currently getting it for free through my credit card. As long as you're setting reminders to cancel once a month, it's still basically free. But the principle of it remains dodgy as hell. We don't need to feel too sorry for Tony Dungy either, the man gets a multimillion salary to be a part-time talking head despite being the sort of person who believes that purple-haired teens are using litter boxes in high school.