pianoknight

5 hours ago, Clintau24 said:

I actually really like what Georgia revealed yesterday. I think the white throwbacks are beautiful and a wonderful look. I feel like I'm in the minority of liking the dog collar, though I don't care for the dog head logo. I never liked that logo when they first revealed it.

 

I've had many people tell me that Georgia copied Auburn for the white throwbacks, solely because of the sleeve stripes. And the connections to Ohio State have also been stated. Please. Northwestern Stripes are a common design, especially back in the day, and no one team "owns" them like some people like to think. It's always interesting to me what details some people like to grab on to.

 

Tell that to Tennessee and Kentucky regarding their turf war on checkerboard patterns. 

The sleeve striping on the white jerseys look too similar to Ohio State for my taste.

3 minutes ago, WSU151 said:

 

https://abcnews.go.com/News/history-clenched-fist/story?id=39006994 

 

I mean, they could also go with a decal that calls for the dismantling of the nuclear family.  

ESPN is launching a new graphics package for CFB this season.

 

https://www.espnfrontrow.com/2020/08/espns-creative-services-team-works-their-work-from-home-magic-with-new-college-football-graphics-and-animation/

 

23 hours ago, officeglenn said:

Since there's no original uniform or logo artwork going on here, I'm going to move this in with the realignment thread in SiG.

 

Good to know a project that I spent a week on just got buried onto page 121 of an endless thread.  Guess that provides all the incentive I need to not post this kind of stuff anymore. 

 

I suppose technically, you can argue there's not original artwork, but it wasn't exactly a two sentence text-only post saying, "move Arkansas back to the SWC!"

Maybe it'll work out better than the last time Wisconsin tried to shoehorn in support for black students.

 

4 hours ago, Punchy_Gungus said:

Wow. That's a lot of work you've done here. All of this is amazing. Huge fan of the tournament style postseason and geographical divisions. I would love to argue about which teams deserve spots more, but I can tell teams were omitted and included based solely on location, which is a difficult business to sort out. Amazing work.

 

Thanks. One of my main gripes is the non-regional ways conferences have evolved. WVU in the Big XII and Notre Dame kinda-in the ACC is just weird. You could loosely view this as sort of a return to a simpler time (Big 8, Big East, etc) but with some central scheduling and league sensibilities.

 

Also, I originally wanted to go with a baseline of 50 teams, with one in each state. Then obviously layer some also-great teams from that state as well (Texas AND A&M, for example) but the challenge there is that a handful of states just don't have any good candidates (ME, VT, AK, DE). 

Like a lot of us I've been wondering if we'll see a 2020 NCAAF season or not.  And, also like a lot of us, I'm finding myself having a bit more free time with lockdown.

 

So without further ado, here's my version of NCAA football.  This concept was build with a few ideas in mind.  First, it is loosely built on a Power 5 model.  I say loosely, because there are P5 teams who didn't make the cut, and there are some FCS / G5 teams who did (more on this in a minute).  Far more important than simply including all the existing Power 5 teams was to put a hard limit on the number of total teams, which I've capped at 60 teams distributed into 5 conferences (12 teams each).  This is largely because the existing FBS setup is already too massive in my opinion and lacks any sort of "central league" feeling like the NFL or other sport leagues.

 

With a hard number locked in, the next step is considering geographic distribution.  It's plainly obvious to anyone that the US has a much higher cluster of teams in the east, simply due to population density.  I wanted to stretch this a bit westward, so you'll note the promotion of Montana, North Dakota State and South Dakota State into this new division.  Likewise, Boise State, Nevada, Wyoming and Houston jump up from their G5 status, and Notre Dame is technically not a Power 5 team, but you know, it's Notre Dame.  When it comes to team quality, I'm sure someone will argue that Maryland deserves a spot over Wyoming.  You're probably right.  I'd encourage you to make your own concept if it bothers you.

 

This mapping also allows the conferences to largely be centered geographically.  It's a long way from Lincoln, Nebraska to Piscataway, NJ for a Huskers-Scarlet Knights game.  Same goes for Texas Tech fans traveling to West Virginia.  It really can't be overstated that geography plays an important part in building rivals. 

 

Here are the conferences: 

 

 

Moving onto scheduling.  Since we're creating a completely new animal, we're not locked into a standard 12-game season.  And nobody really cares about academics or students needing to make their final exams before winter break. This is about football and maximizing the number of football games.

 

Each team plays a full 11-game, round-robin conference schedule.  That's right.  12 teams in each conference and your team is playing every single one of them.  No more divisions.  While I like the concept of divisions within a conference, each conference has historically evaluated their divisional standings different.  Some count all conference games for the record.  Some prioritize in-division games above cross-over games.  And then some years you get the wonky 3-way tie like the famous Big XII South example when Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech were all locked in a rock-paper-scissors match and we allowed the freaking BCS to determine who "mathematically" won the division.  Funny enough, that same year Nebraska and Missouri tied for the Big XII North, meaning that 5/12ths of the conference was a Divisional Champion for that season.  Shoot me.

 

Each team gets 14 games overall, meaning three non-conference games are on the docket.  And yes, this means that your team can schedule their traditional rival who is now in a different conference.  Schedule the non-cons however you like, because there are only 59 other teams in the whole of this league.  Also, while there are a few (potential) cupcakes like Wyoming, there's no more scooping up teams from the NAIA, D3 or local YMCA to pad your schedule.  I'm mostly looking at you, SEC.  Time to divorce yourself from the annual Citadel-and-Grambling-but-really-a-Bye-Week games.

 

Speaking of BYE weeks, each team gets three of them, to accommodate for a longer schedule.  I suppose technically, teams get a bit of a rest during the current Conference Championship Week and then waiting period until the bowl games, but ideally, a team shouldn't have to go on some 7-10 game slog before a BYE.  Generally, you'll see 4-6 game chunks before a BYE, which seems reasonable.

 

Here's a sample schedule for Nebraska and Texas.  Note that UT is free to schedule Oklahoma (non-conference game) as an annual rival.  Non-cons are in red, post-season is in yellow.

 

 

On the subject of the post-season, here's how that plays out:

 

At the end of the regular season, the top three teams from each conference qualify for post-season play.  The team with the best record is, obviously, the conference champion.  3 x 5 gives you fifteen teams for the bracket, which means a sixteenth team is chosen as the lone wild card.

 

The ranking/seeding works a little differently as each team is evaluated against their "peers" from other conferences.  For example, in the graphic below you'll see that Washington, Oklahoma, Ohio State, LSU and Florida State are the five conference champions.  Thus, in the final ranking/seeding, those five teams will be ranked #1 through #5 (in some order).  No other team can jump up from their "tier" to usurp one of those #1-#5 rankings.  In other words, Georgia is your 2nd place Eastern Conference Team.  As such, the absolute highest that Georgia can be ranked is #6.  They cannot jump into the #1-#5 tier as that portion of the bracket is reserved for conference champions.

 

Likewise, the 2nd place finishers are ranked in the #6-10 range, and third place finishers are in the #11-15 range.  Finally, the wild card gets a #16 ranking regardless.

 

Effectively, what this does is ensures that Conference Champions are always starting off their bracket against a 3rd place (or 4th place, for the wildcard) team.  Yes, there will absolutely be discrepancies in how strong each conference is from year-to-year.  But essentially, we're awarding the conference champs a slightly easier road for having won their conference.  In spirit, it's similar to the NFL model where divisional winners get a first-round BYE, except we're making them actually play a game.  This also opens up massive potential for Cinderella-style upsets which are more common in things like the current FCS Tournament or even March Madness.  

 

 

 

Once teams are seeded, we move to the playoffs.  

The bracket operates exactly as you'd expect (1 vs 16, etc) and we borrow the CFP New Year's Day Six model with bowls.  The Fiesta, Peach, Rose, Orange, Cotton and Sugar all rotate as the four quarter-final bowls and two semi-final bowl games each season.  The only change here is that the first round is played at the home stadium of the higher-ranked team.  Again, an incentive for teams to finish highly in their conference as all 1st place conference champs are guaranteed a home game against a low-ranked opponent, while the 2nd place finishers have a 3/5ths chance of getting a home game for the first round.

 

So that's it.  That's the concept.  

 

Comments welcome unless you're going to gripe that Oregon State or Vandy deserves a spot over Houston.

37 minutes ago, lilben777 said:

Nope the  eyes and the ears make it waaay not close. Even the jawline. It’s not close at all.

 

Seeing them side by side makes me think Baylor is the Bears and UCR is the St. Bernards. It looks more like a big shaggy dog than a bear. 

 

It's like a straight-to-VHS copy of Beethoven 7, Dogs In Scotland. 

On 7/8/2020 at 5:46 PM, Dynasty said:

The outline between the C and R is an eyesore. The secondaries are better anyway.

 

The C should be on top.

 

5-second MS Paint fix:

 

Wait, so they're rebranding as CLT and the school's predecessor was CCUNC? 

 

Please tell me they have a gynecology program.

Objectively better design. It's also such a nitpicky thing. I'm not saying that the original walls weren't built for racial reasons, but this feels like a thousand times more trivial than fighting about more overt things like "Washington Redskins."

18 hours ago, Dilbert said:

Not as confusing as Grand Canyon University, which is located in Phoenix,almost three and a half hours from the Grand Canyon

 

It's not like they could have a university IN the Grand Canyon, though.  I suppose Flagstaff is a larger city that's closer to the GC than Phoenix is. 

So... Oregon State, umm.. Lady Beavers?

On 5/28/2020 at 1:18 PM, GFB said:

It’s a great wordmark in theory, but it could really use a pro’s touch to clean it up. 
 

For example, the awkward spacing between the outline of the A and the crossbar of the T’s is smack dab in no man’s land, the joint of the inner curve of the E is weirdly angular and all wrong, and NEW MEXICO needs to be shrunk down by about 20% because there’s more space between the W and M than between the wordmark and the edges of the crossbar.

 

The kinda-serifs on the S bother me, too.  In a vacuum I like them, but I wish the E had something at the end of the word to match.

 

It feels like this tug of war between serif/sans or curvy/sharp right now.

On 5/25/2020 at 11:05 AM, L10nheart404 said:

Easy with the undertones, dude.

 

It's not meant as an undertone of anything.  But they've literally made movies about this.  It's just the basketball version of a rags-to-riches story.

 

Same as the starving artist who picks up his Fender and rides a Greyhound to Hollywood because he's gonna be a star.  Don't forget to wait tables by day and serve drinks by night at some upper-crust party.  And one night, he gets a random opportunity to sing in front of the crowd when the featured performer got held up.  Of course there's an agent in the audience... 

 

It's just become a trope more than anything. 

Making your own logo is such a basketball thing. Like it's just the next step in a streetball kid's dreams.

 

Play in college, draft early, hit the league, win some hardware, drop an album and make a brand. 

 

It feels so formulaic and overplayed. 

10 hours ago, oldschoolvikings said:

So am the only one who still thinks a logo featuring a basketball player looks pretty stupid on a football jersey?

 

Beyond stupid. Like MJ-baseball stupid. 

I like Sam Houston's retro logo. Nothing like a pantsless animal in a sailor hat to scream college football. 

7 hours ago, radchad said:

Cal used to give the QB and punter the same number.  It allowed them to pull off fake punts every once in a while, including this beauty by Jared Goff:

 

That's ingenious.

 

Annexation of Puerto Rico level stuff right there.

On 2/29/2020 at 7:41 PM, WBeltz said:

One is usually on offense and the other on defense. That way neither player is on the field at the same time, which is why it was a thing.

 

Sometimes you have duplicates on special teams, though. It's rare, but I recall a few times in the past that Nebraska had two special teams guys with the same number. Usually like a TE and then a LB or DB. 

23 hours ago, Jungle Jim said:

 

You are right on both accounts.  The checkerboards are an homage to Secretariat, and they seem to be very unpopular among UK fans.    I referred to them as the "Tennessee checkboards" as sarcasm.  AD Mitch Barnhardt has taken a stance that they're not going anywhere and it's not up for discussion, so I guess it's settled for the foreseeable future.

 

 

That's a dumb thing to object to. It's a great look, visually, and it's not like Kentucky has some Penn State-level history of tradition with their uniforms. 

17 hours ago, Jungle Jim said:

Kentucky will wear 13 combinations in 13 games.  All will include Tennessee checkerboards.  About half of them will look good.  All 13 will have looked better without the checkerboards.  #StubbornMitchBarnhardt

 

Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I like the blue and white checkerboard pattern for UK.

 

They may have stolen it from Tennessee, but when I think of blue and white checkerboard patterns I immediately think of Secretariat, horse racing and the Kentucky Derby. 

 

10 hours ago, upperV03 said:

That tweet about the return of white numbers was from this past August. Since firing Taggart they’ve completely stopped using the “Do Something” mantra. I don’t even think Taggart has been using it at FAU since being hired there. 

 

Good catch, and thank God.  It's such a lame catchphrase.  It's like after Notre Dame and all the other schools took things like "Play Like A Champion Today," the only phrase left was "Do Something." 

Looks like FSU kept the Willie Taggart era, "Do Something" mantra.  He had that here in Oregon, too, and it was stupid.

 

I get that it's supposed to be like...

 

But it comes off like...