MDGP

The first nine schools of this project had a combined 0 national championships. The next two have 10. It's a Boston double special! The Boston College Eagles, New England's most hated* college hockey team! The Eagles were THE standard in college hockey from 1998 to 2016, with 11 frozen fours, 8 national title games, 4 national championships, and the dreams of countless young hockey fans brutally murdered. Despite being a veritable blue blood, BC tends to jump around with their uniform designs. Some years they've worn Penguins style stripes, they've worn numerous iterations of double stripe designs, they also have a five stripe design with a rangers style front? It's surprisingly a mess. So, I decided to lean into that with a sort of eclectic style of sleeve stripes reminiscent of early hockey jerseys that didn't quite land on uniform striping. This design is also meant to have the red portions sort of appear and disappear to give the home and away jerseys seemingly different appearances without actually altering the stripes in any way. The success isn't the only thing I hate about BC. I'm not at all a fan of BC's modern logo package; it's just a poor update of the classic version. So, I got rid of the identity entirely and brought back the classic logo in modern colors, and replaced the custom font with a more traditional block for the front jersey partial arch. ---------- Despite being considerably much more likeable* than BC, the Boston University Terriers are historically just as successful, themselves with 5 total national titles, though only one coming after the turn of the millennium. While I was growing up, BU wore two iconic jersey designs. The first a contrasting sleeve design reminiscent of the Detroit Red Wings, and a double stripe design they wore when they won the 2009 National Title. These designs are equally iconic to me, so I wanted combine the two looks into a jersey that still screamed Boston College. The solution was to create a contrasting sleeve block on each jersey with a double stripe that matched the jersey color at the bottom of the contrasting area. The hem stripe and socks eschew the the contrasting portion and just feature the double stripe. *Likeability may vary per person

Next up we have two storied championship programs... at lower levels, before rising to D1 in the 1999-00 season to mixed results. Bemidji State, a 5-time Division 2 champion, has had minor success at the top level, with several NCAA tournaments and a frozen four bid in 2009. Since then however, it's been mostly nothing. Despite this, Bemidji is an historic team with an iconic (general) look dating back to the 1960s. I have (partially) eschewed that classic look by combining eras to create a (partially) new, but familiar design. The home jersey goes from a single stripe to a single stripe on contrasting sleeves, as the team wore for about a decade in the 1990s. The Beavers won 3 of their 5 national titles in those contrasting sleeves, and the team has brought them back in some capacity many times over the years as an alternate. However, I decided to go away from the script design and combine the contrasting sleeve look with the modern look with the number bracketed (not sure what the actual terminology is) within the school name on the front. Ultimately the only changes to the away jersey is the new collar featuring a green-white-green pattern, as well as the significantly enlarged shoulder logos. If you'd like to view the jerseys I referenced, Vintage Minnesota Hockey actually has a great history of the team's jerseys that I used myself for research. Our second team tonight was a former two-time Division 3 National Champion who has done literally nothing of note since their move to D1, amassing a whopping one conference finals appearance resulting in zero conference titles and zero national tournament appearances. Bentley, another small school from Massachusetts you've probably never heard of, is actually a team I've redesigned in the past, which serves as the basis for this redesign. Like many small schools, unfortunately, Bentley's investment in their logos is basically non-existent. Their current logo, while better than the previous iteration, is the love child of the Brooklyn Nets and the logo for an unlicensed team in FIFA. Their alternate logo meanwhile would be right at home in a junior high school gym. For the new look, I placed the redesigned peregrine falcon on the chest and finally brought back the split shield design as @Jake3roo suggested all those years ago. The jersey design itself implements a split double stripe design with black taking primary status. Fun fact, change the pants stripe to a lightning bolt and swap in the proper logos, and this jersey design is basically how I'd outfit the Tampa Bay Lightning. That's all for today, I hope you enjoyed looking at some of the smaller and newer teams in college, because tomorrow the scourge arrives.

"Who the hell is Augustana?" was the question I asked earlier this year. The Augustana Vikings are one of D1 hockey's new teams for the 2023-24 season, and the first team in this project to get a full logo redesign as well as a new jersey! Augustana's logo is loaded with problems. First, it is much too wide, and one side heavy to be an effective sports logo. Second, it depicts what I would describe as a hay demon in a helmet rather than a Viking. However, I do think there is a base to work with. First, I reduced the with of the flowing hair to still allow for the logo to be visually centered on the face without it being egregious. Second, I cleaned up the beard and face, maintaining aspects like the general nose and beard shape, shadowed eyes, and the helmet shading style, while cleaning it up overall. I also liked the kind of overlap effect with the hair blowing in front of his beard, so I kept a version of that as well. For the changes, I gave the viking's face actual structure, cleaned up many of the unnecessary details on the helmet, and added some war paint to further accentuate the shadowing on the face. I did debate adding yellow to the left hair, but it never looked correct with how the shadowing works. For the Jersey's Augustana currently uses a script above the current logo, which is a pretty weird and unique look I can appreciate. I decided to alter the look however, as I felt that a baseball style number fit that spot better than a detailed logo, and fit the wordmark-number aesthetic that is prevalent in college hockey. With a navy and yellow color scheme, I wanted to be careful to not have the look appear too much like Michigan. So, I altered the team's current thick yellow-thin white-thin white striping patter into an asymmetrical triple stripe. The home jersey features contrasting sleeves, while the road look is all blue. Finally, I gave the Vikings a floating outline look to further set the identity apart from those of other navy/gold teams.

I'm aware that the color cardinal exists. I'm just saying that I've heard the apocryphal story of [insert team] wears their colors because the jerseys faded so many times that it's pretty clear that it's never been true for any of them. Honestly, as with a lot of these names from the time it was probably some random newspaper reporter who came up with the name and it stuck. I'm also aware of the supposed quote by the owner, about them being Cardinal red, but there are also 10 million quotes commonly attributed to Abe Lincoln too that he never said.

Overall a pretty nice set, however I've got to agree with Wide Right on the logo. When it comes to face cards (at least on modern playing cards), a beard is pretty much exclusive to the Kings, while the jacks tend to only have mustaches at most. Honestly you're like 90% of the way there. Converting the beard to the chin would almost certainly alleviate the problem entirely.

On day 3 we move on to some teams that people actually know! First up, NCAA hockey's resident Southwestern weirdo, Arizona State! Sparky makes his full time return to this set, as I much prefer him to the rocket trident they currently use. Mascots playing sports are always great, so I've altered sparky's trident (pitchforks aren't supposed to have barbed prongs), into a hockey stick. The ASU sun logo from the 70s comes back because quite frankly it makes a great shoulder logo. Arizona State recently unveiled a design called the digiflame, a design that I personally dislike (it's a bit too much). However I do think there's potential in a more subtle/simpler approach to the maroon to yellow "gradient." While I generally try to avoid non-team colors, Arizona state has basically made copper a school color at this point, and it fits perfectly as the middle color in this design. This is featured throughout the jersey, on the sleeve and hem, collar, and name/numbers. The angular striping design is inspired two-fold by the Tempe Butte (also known as "A" Mountain) and the calgary flames jerseys of the early 2000s. The road jersey was originally maroon but I just liked it too much in black. Finally the equipment all maintains the maroon look. Initially I tried black on the road, but ultimately felt there wasn't enough of the team's primary color to make it worthwhile. Our second team, is the US Military Academy, or as we actually call them, Army. In my opinion, army should always sport a simple, classic look similar to the football team. The hockey team has generally followed that idea, but bounced around a bunch, at one point wearing an idealized version of the awful Dallas Stars unis. I don't stray too far from their current looks, but I removed all traces of silver, and settled on a basic triple stripe sleeve and hem design with a black yoke on the home jersey. The road eschews white entirely and keeps this triple stripe design. However, the black disappears on the black jersey, leaving the appearance of a sole gold stripe. The road jersey also changes the yoke to gold, just to get a bit more of the color in there. Finally, the helmet on both jerseys is changed from black to gold, in a move that numerous other NCAA hockey teams have made to mimic their school's famous football helmets (though these do not include the black helmet tripe).

Two more coming today, first up, the newly revived Alaska Anchorage Seawolves! Like Alaska Fairbanks, the Seawolves currently sport very generic uniforms with a basic triple stripe design. For the new design I took inspiration from the stripes in the Seawolves logo, creating nine thin, alternating dark/light stripes and a contrasting shoulder yoke on the home design only to really emphasize a balance between green, yellow, and white. Finally, the number font was designed taking inspiration from the angles of the logo's indigenous art style without straying into the problematic 1970s Cleveland Indians territory. Our second team today has (until recently) the dubious distinction of being the worst team in D1 hockey history, American International College Yellow Jackets. First, I reverted AIC back to their previous logo, which I find superior to the recent change. However, I made some minor adjustments that I feel clean up and improve the look. On the jersey side of things, a team called the Yellow Jackets basically designs itself; alternating black and yellow striping. Here, I go with another barber pole style sleeve design (I promise there won't be too many of these) reminiscent of the recent alternate designs worn by fellow in-state hockey team, the Boston Bruins. Finally, AIC retains the yellow helmets they currently wear.

Next up: The University of Alaska Nanooks. Alaska Fairbanks over the years has converted to just referring to themselves as the University of Alaska, but that doesn't mean I couldn't take inspiration from their classic designs. First and foremost, Alaska is one of the rare instances in which the school's academic logo is a better sports logo than the actual athletics logo, so I made a few alterations to fit the athletic color scheme. For the jersey I took inspiration from the team's barberpole sleeve throwbacks and the Alaska Nanooks throwback. Rather than stick with the blue and yellow only design, I also incorporated white into the sleeve stripes with the alternating colors continuing from the stripes to the names and numbers as well as the jersey collar.

I recently designed a new jersey template for hockey and decided to test out my new design with a large scale project. The NHL and international hockey have been done to death, but Division 1 college hockey remains for the most part a fertile ground, in particular because it is one of the weird sports that includes otherwise D2 schools while most powerhouse schools do not even field an NCAA level team. I set myself a few goals for the project: 1) Give every team a unique look; eliminate NHL uniform copies, reduce the number of teams with the same elements. 2) Respect a team's history where applicable; While each uniform is new in some way, historically dominant teams will be less likely to veer into wild designs. 3) Two jerseys only per team; I might make alternates later, but for now I just want primary looks for each team. 4) No jersey manufacturer designs; This exists in a world where MDGP got the contract for all of D1, and I prefer jerseys without the manufacturer logos. NOTE: Primary and secondary logos in the presentation do not necessarily correspond to their location on the jersey or real life designations, rather what I chose as the primary and secondary as the design was being made. NOTE 2: Where there are two different colored helmets in a set, the helmets are considered interchangeable between the jerseys. The helmets will be placed in the more conventional arrangement of light jersey with light jersey and dark helmet with dark jersey, unless otherwise specifically specified. With that, let's get started. We're gonna do this alphabetically (with preference to main campuses)... First up, the Air Force Falcons! Air Force has worn a few designs over the years generally featuring asymmetric striping designs on the shoulders and sleeves. I created a design that combines a double stripe commonly used by the team with gray shoulder stripes that I've used in the past. The shoulders continue to feature the team's traditional Captain America shield logo and the chest/numbers feature a font inspired by fonts used on air force planes. The design also includes my redesigned Atlantic Hockey logo on the chest, which can be found here!

It makes me think the "he picked the color to match Notre Dame" is just another thing made up by someone years later. Reminds me of how when I was at Penn State, there was this persistent myth that they switched from Black and Pink to Blue and White because the colors faded in the sun (I want to say that's the same myth surrounding the Arizona Cardinals' name origins too) Speaking of yellow vs. white, I've always loved the Michigan Heritage Jersey mix-up. Despite the guy who runs the site explicitly saying he messed up and the jersey was actually white, I still see people use this image as proof they wore all yellow in the 60s.

Ironically the Packers and Eagles both switched from Blue and Yellow to Green in 1935. Honestly, uniform histories are weird like that. Most teams didn't really settle into their classic identities until the 50s and 60s and so there's a lot of random, obscure things like that. Off the top of my head, the lions started out in purple and then primarily wore red one season, the Steelers didn't start wearing their famous jerseys until the late 60s, the Bears didn't settle on their look until the 50s and even then the current orange wishbone didn't show up until the 70s.

This is VERBATIM what Bradyismyhomeboy said about my Seahawks concept in 2013. He said it was leaked by the Seahawks around the internet and forums in order gauge their opinions. The prodigal son has returned!

From what I understand the league doesn't want old logos to be reused because it allows them to sell more hardwood classics merchandise with the old logos.

I believe you're thinking of the NBA.

It's like a horror movie monster. You can never truly kill that alligator wearing sunglasses in a car.

I personally love when terrible changes are always joined by shills that repeat the same BS "Oh you just don't get it, it's NEW, it's INNOVATIVE, get with the times GRANDPA" before the design is scrapped as soon as possible. The NFL examples have all been the most obvious, but my favorite was definitely when someone on the diamondbacks was adamant that everyone would be using their ugly dark grey within 3 years because some marketing executive with their nose firmly planted in their rectum told them they would. And then they quietly phased them out after everyone hated them.

I really wish the people that made sports jerseys were actual jersey manufacturers and not third-rate wannabe hypebeast apparel designers.

Correct, 2008 was the first season the Titans wore Columbia full time.

With the Women's Beanpot being hosted at the TD Garden for the first time this year, the arena added its 47th banner last week before the semifinals.

I've been on this site for over a decade and literally every year people fall for the reddit hype that ends up being laughably false. You'd think at some point they would learn, but alas.

A revival of the name of a failed football league not actually associated with the original failed football league created by combining the revival of the name of failed football league not actually associated with the original failed football league with the revival of a name of a failed football league league no longer associated with the original failed football league. Brilliant stuff.

His dad's a huge Sammy Baugh fan so he started wearing the number as a kid

College hockey, like many of the smaller and/or regional sports sanctioned by the NCAA, is structured much differently than the more familiar sports. Division I Men's Hockey features only six conferences, with the Big Ten being the only conference to host universities across multiple sports. The other five exclusively host hockey, being: Hockey East, CCHA, ECAC Hockey (not affiliated with the larger ECAC), NCHC, and Atlantic Hockey Association. Of the conferences, the Atlantic is by far the worst by just about every metric, with the 16th and final seed in the National Tournament colloquially referred to as the Atlantic Slot. This is due to its eleven member teams being so noncompetitive that, usually, its only representative is the the conference's autobid champion in that final slot. The conference also has the absolute worst conference logo I've seen in college sports at any level. This logo is not a joke, it is actually what a Division I conference uses to represent itself. Needless to say, this logo barely befits a youth hockey league let alone an actual collegiate conference. I decided that I was going to take a shot at designing a new logo that isn't a complete embarrassment. The best conference logos are generally simple, easy to read, and identifiable even in smaller applications. I also wanted to make it quickly apparent that this is a hockey specific conference. I took the conference's little used acronym "AHA" and made it the focal point, with the A's titled towards the center and the outer legs designed to appear like a hockey stick. Ultimately the design is simple, but easily recognizable and versatile in its application. Below is the new logo side by side with the other current conferences, and below that a patch version of the logo in the various color schemes of its member schools. Let me know what you think! C+C is always appreciated.

Halifax Town FC is one of the newer teams in professional football, founded in 2007 after the former team folded, and almost certainly takes the cake for one of the worst, most generic crests in sports, there's pretty much nothing interesting or unique about the design. For my design I wanted to keep in line with Halifax's teams histories of simple crests. However, I still wanted to give the squad a design that doesn't look like it was designed in Microsoft word. The main design uses an HT letter lockup on a half navy, half light blue shield. Upon the top of a shield is a Yorkshire rose, because apparently every team from Yorkshire is legally required to have one. The jerseys continue the half blue style, with the primary kit mimicking the style of the crest, while the clash kit utilizes the pattern on a center stripe and sleeve cuffs. Halifax is the city where the popular british candy Quality Street was created by Mackintosh's. Eventually the brand was sold to Nestlé, so it made sense as the sponsor for the squad.