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The same thing happened with the Browns redesign. People on twitter kept saying that the sales numbers proved that any criticism was wrong. Of course we all know how that ended.

They'd never let him say the actual team name in that press conference. 32s confirmed!

It'd have to be some pretty insane maneuvering to make pre-relocation Sonics not be the same franchise as pre-relocation Sonics.

To be fair, that last one is true no matter which side of the argument you’re on.

You'd think that people on this site would have learned by now that "I heard this from reddit" means that it's definitely fake.

Well, he did design the '93 Clippers logo and his whole shtick is sniffing his own farts, so I think that's safe to assume.

Since it's come up multiple times, the name squatters thing is a trademark issue, not a copyright issue (at least not at this stage), which makes a big difference since there isn't a guaranteed right to a trademark like copyrights. If you hold a copyright, it's yours assuming there isn't some agreement limiting your right, and you hold that right for a set period. Unless you violated copyright law in obtaining it or you don't actually hold the copyright, it generally can't be forcibly taken away until it goes into the public domain. A trademark however, you must show that the mark is actually being used for trade (hence the name). If you just purchase a domain name and apply for a trademark, but don't actually use it, you will lose that trademark if someone who legitimately wants to use it makes a challenge. And since it'll get brought up, a guy purchasing a bunch of names immediately after the team announced they were changing and then selling a t-shirt design with the names to like 20 people almost guaranteed wouldn't prevail in a challenge by Washington. That's pretty much the trademark equivalent of someone posting full episodes of a TV show on youtube and then saying "this video was posted to foster discussion and analysis therefore no copyright infringement is intended."

Seriously, the idea that it takes YEARS to come up with a identity is ridiculous. Hell, there are current and former members of this site that could probably put together a solid identity in a week under the right circumstances. But, I guess people just don't understand that the NFL 2 year (or however long it is) advance deadline for new identities is both a supply side thing and a risk aversion thing. Obviously, these franchises are putting a ton of money on the line designing a new identity and don't want to risk screwing it up, so they have a ton of safety measures. The team has to like the design and if they don't it's back to the drawing board for alterations or entirely new designs, then the fans have to like it and if they don't love it 100%, back to make more changes until everyone is happy except the designers. Then there are the legal processes of applying for trademarks, etc. Again, under the right circumstances, I'm positive that one of the professionals on the site could get a solid identity out the door, including the testing and legal stuff in a matter of months if everyone's on board. As IceCap noted, the Elks did just that. But, by making a team do it so far in advance, the NFL guarantees that 1) a team doesn't just rush something out without full coordination with the league, and 2) even if someone drags their feet during the process, it can be ready on schedule for the manufacturing and distribution of merchandise. That manufacturing and distribution is the second consideration. The NFL clearly wants to have everything ready for sale the moment an identity or jersey is properly unveiled. You can't exactly call up your suppliers out of the blue and expect for tens to hundreds of thousands of pieces of merchandise to be ready in a few days. There are an astronomical number of things they need to have and know in order to get things prepped and out the door. Getting them all that information takes time, and it all needs to be done well in advance. TLDR, The creative process doesn't need to take years. The NFL and its teams are afraid of losing money so the 2 year rule allows them to be cautious about the process to make sure everything is done correctly with plenty of time to spare (making it extra infuriating when they inevitably screw up). (This post isn't directed at you, IceCap. I know you know all this already).

Boston College aren't the Golden Eagles. Only the marching band's dance team and sports media outlets with bad editors use that moniker for them.

Oh right, I changed my profile name awhile back; I used to be Lafarge (I guess I removed that from my description at some point) I did one of the universes you mentioned as an inspiration in your first post.

I've been looking in on this thread and have meant to leave a comment for about 5 years now. I think it's about time I actually do so. Wow. This thread might just be the single best soccer concept thread I've ever seen on these boards. Honestly it's too bad the board doesn't do the Creamer Awards and Hall of Fame anymore, because this would be a candidate for both. Every logo is so well designed and grounded in reality to the point I think you could easily trick the average soccer fan into believing many of these are real clubs. I apologize for not having any individual critiques, but there are so many standouts the post would be way too long. Bravo! (It delights me every time I see the general team information layout that I used in my own alternate universe has found its way into your considerably better universe)

The guy who said that was American. Ultimately I have to imagine he said that at the time because they were (and clearly still are) doing everything they could to mimic Apple's process, including skipping windows 9 entirely so they could get to windows 10, matching OSX. Now that Mac has moved onto 11, there's suddenly a rush by microsoft to do the same. Pretty astonishing to see the company with something like 85% of the PC market share trying so hard to be more like their competitors in such superficial ways.

No.

"Brand Synergy" between major and minor league affiliates can :censored: right off. That's two teams this year alone that had their unique and fun branding ripped away (the other being the AHL's Bridgeport Sound Tigers becoming the Bridgeport Islanders) so they could share a name. Celtics doesn't make an ounce of sense for a team in Maine, a state in which Irish heritage and culture isn't exactly a big deal like in Boston. Red Claws acted both as a reference to the Celtics (Red Auerbach) and a strong tie-in to the local community,

There's a lot of SoundOfThrowingPennies too. To be fair, I'm still not convinced they aren't all the same person.

I choose to believe this is Cody21 making his triumphant return to the boards. That offseason was the best.

Of course, and not liking something because you don't like it is perfectly reasonable. Although, I personally think that the change in athleticism in players has started making smaller numbers more viable. Obviously, cornerbacks are many times the smallest and quickest players on the field so in my mind it would make sense for them to wear smaller numbers. Meanwhile, we've had 3 edge rushers run a 4.40 or quicker in this year's pro day workouts. If these guys can move like receivers and running backs, I don't have an issue with them wearing those numbers as well.

Do the traditional rules even do that though? Outside of o-linemen who have very specific rules about where they can line up and when they can move downfield, there really aren't any rules that would be affected by players wearing different numbers. It would be one thing if there was a rule requiring a quarterback to receive the snap or that a wide receiver couldn't play cornerback, but there aren't any rules like that for non o-linemen. And in modern football we have so many players that don't play just one position, it really doesn't make sense. That's not even that new a phenomenon. Troy Brown spent a whole season playing cornerback, and Devin Hester wore 23 for years as a wide receiver, and there are plenty more examples. I'm willing to bet that in none of those cases did anyone go "Oh no! I can't tell what position they're playing!" Regarding tradition, there's also a long history of not having these rules in the NFL as people have noted above. This really honestly comes down to people whining about how the NFL isn't the NFL they grew up remembering, which can be a valid point, I guess.

Next up: The AFC West, the only division made up entirely of original AFL teams. Chiefs: Kansas City has one of the most consistent uniform histories in the NFL, having made only two or three major changes in their 61 years of existence. Because of this, I wanted to create a design that was drastically different from any of their actual uniform designs. To do this, I decided to once again travel to the 1920s and feature a design inspired by old school leather strips. The strips on this jersey are designed to emulate the heart/fountain symbol on the Kansas City flag, extending from the waist before splitting and then dropping back down on the sleeves. Raiders: This is a design where I took some historic liberties. Nobody in NFL history has worn diagonal sashes, however, the phenomenon of diagonal striping isn't that uncommon. Many designs featured upside-down chevrons and others had designs creating an upward facing chevron. I decided to combine the two ideas to create an X-shaped design inspired by the crossed swords on the raiders logo. The helmet features a front panel helmet design inspired by the famous Las Vegas sign. Broncos: The Broncos orange crush uniforms are iconic, and I wanted to make a design based around their design but an earlier era. Before the packers used it in 1960, the color-white-color stripe design was actually very uncommon, so I decided to make the design with the traditional three stripe design and blue socks with orange stripes. The helmet design is a front panel based on the mountains from the Denver Flag. Chargers: Though the color-white-color stripe design wasn't common, it was used briefly in the late 40s by the Boston Yanks. This design is built around creating an earlier version of the Fouts era design, featuring a blue-yellow-blue sleeve stripe. This design, like many chargers designs is built around the lightning bolt design. Here, the stripes are inspired by Dartmouth's unique helmets, and combine that stripe design with a lightning bolt design.

Today we head to the NFL's winningest division, the NFC East Eagles: This matchup takes us to the mid to late-60s at the beginning of the Eagles “lots of stripes era.” Though not as wild as the striping on the 1970s uniforms, these uniforms feature their own unique design, featuring both shoulder and sleeve stripes. This became a bit of a challenge, as current sleeve lengths required the stripes to be condensed, creating a sort of frame around the numbers. Ultimately, I think it works since the actual design would be impossible on most jersey cuts. Here's a disappointing fact, we missed out on the Double Jurgensen by a mere two years, so instead you get to see what Bob Brown's jersey looked like. Washington: Due to the recent name change of the Washington Football Team I felt that bringing back imagery of the offensive name would undermine the name change, so I decided to alter the ideas behind the imagery into a design that fits the new name. In the 1960s WFT had two different helmet designs, a feather that acted as a helmet stripe, and an arrowhead similar to that of Florida State. While examining these design, inspiration struck. I took the long stripe element of the feather and combined it with the point and the color scheme of the arrowhead, creating a helmet stripe representing the Washington Monument. The rest of the uniform remains unchanged from the original design. Modeled by the third best quarterback your grandpa ever saw back when football was truly great, Sonny Jurgensen. Giants: The chest stripe design has long been popular for concept artists and here I decided to bring it back. While this version was the lesser worn of the chest stripe designs of the 1930s, legibility concerns led me to pick the version without any white on the chest. Modeled by New York Yankees but not those New York Yankees legend Ray Flaherty. Cowboys: Originally this was designed to feature a large star centered on the chest. However, the shape did not work with numbers.To deal with this, I decided to make the star smaller and placed it on the upper left chest, in the same position as the Steelers, Jaguars (former) Jets’ (former) patches. This obviously mimics the imagery of a sheriff’s badge, which has regularly been associated with cowboy culture for decades. The sleeves and socks feature multiple thicker stripes as was popular in the era. Finally, while drawing wing designs on the helmet of another team, I realized that when straightened, the lines and points form the top of a star.

While the NFC North designs were almost entirely historical throwbacks of the 1930s, the AFC South teams has allowed (and in two cases, required) entirely new designs for each team and providing a bit more creative freedom as I re-imagine the NFL's youngest division as 1920s squads. Jaguars: During the 1920s and 30s several teams wore two diamonds on their chest and Jacksonville felt like the perfect franchise to incorporate that design. Downtown is home to the James Weldon Johnson Park, which has a diamond shaped fountain at its center. The use of a black diamond was informed by the Jaguars actual use of the color as well as the park's history, as it has been an historically popular location for civil rights rallies. Johnson himself, a Jacksonville native and leader of the NAACP, should be known to NFL fans as the writer of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" also known as the black national anthem, which was played prior to all Week 1 games and the Super Bowl this past season. A white number on the black diamond was chosen for legibility purposes, as many uniforms in the past did not include front numbers. Titans: Where the Jaguars uniform design is a reflection of history, this Titans design is the exact opposite. Here, I decided to completely ignore the existence of the Oilers and pretend that the Titans existed. A large part of this project was examining ways to incorporate outdated 20s designs to work on a modern template. Ultimately, taking a cue from northwestern, I determined that high contrast between the front number and the stripes was the way yo go, with the jersey color acting as an outline to increase legibility. The vertical stripes mimic the common style of the era. Here, both stripes run perpendicular to the horizontal chest stripes, each creating the letter T. The helmet is based on the design of helmets that featured colored front patches with a tail (The most famous variation being the Princeton/Michigan design). The shape itself is a reference to the shape of Titans' current T logo. While brown pants were far and away the most popular choice in the era, some teams, most notably the Packers chose for Navy blue, so navy blue makes its appearance here to round out the set. Colts: In their first ever game in 1953, the third (and current) iteration of the Baltimore Colts wore a rather bizarre helmet design that feature two stripes crossing at the top of the helmet. It was the only game they wore that design before going to a traditional helmet stripe, but that design reminded me of the old panel leather helmets, and seemed like something an identity could be built around. This design is fully designed around the idea of crossed stripes. Most notably, the shoulder stripes, which are based upon the design of the Indianapolis flag, a symmetric cross meeting a circle with a star inside. While the city flag includes red, I decided to keep this design solely in Colts colors. This shoulder design combines two commonly used elements from the 20s, the shoulder stripe, and the shoulder logo. Texans: Since the Texans have practically no actual uniform history, I decided to enact a change that I've wanted to see the actual team make for years, promotion of red to primary status. During the 1920s, most uniforms consisted of only two colors, so I wanted to incorporate that here. Initially, the uniform featured red strips on the front that formed an H, but that created legibility issues with the numbers. Therefore, I transformed the red H into a sublimated design on the white jersey and changed the numbers to red, with the sleeves featuring single thick red stripes. The helmet takes on a minimalist rendition of a common painted leather helmet style, with the top painted white featuring similar sublimated strips, and the bottom painted red.

I actually didn't clarify that in the rules, because these are meant to be modern throwbacks, current uniform rules, particularly with numbers size will apply here. In regards to the number font for the Packers, that's a good call. I think I looked primarily at the throwbacks when doing this design, which probably should've been a red flag. I'll get that fixed up for you.

I knew I'd forgotten something. Linked in the original post, and also right here.

We begin our journey in the oldest division in the national football league, the NFC NORTH. Lions: This throws back to an oddity from the Lions’ days as the Portsmouth Spartans. Though records of the 1931 Spartans are scarce, pictures from their road matchup against the Giants show the team wearing several different designs, one of which, became the concept above. Most notably, the uniform featured a quite ridiculous striped design that converts well into a shoulder yoke for a modern template. Modeled by Hall of Famer and coach in pretty much every pro league you could imagine, Dutch Clark. Packers: We’re all aware of the Packers’ blue circle throwback from the early 2010s, and history generally remembers those as the correct uniforms. However, a colorized picture from a Milwaukee newspaper exists, showing the team in yellow, a source that gridiron-uniforms lists as correct. Whether it’s correct or not, this uniform felt like a more interesting option than any of the other yellow Packers jersey of the era and serves as a fun reference to Green Bay’s sheer inability to not screw up a throwback uniform. (Now featuring a more era accurate number font, thank you packerfan21396) Modeled by Johnny Blood McNally, who is listed as wearing 24 for the Packers, but his individual picture had him wearing 27, so that's what you're getting because weird historical quirks are fun. Bears: A simple throwback to their oft-used dark uniform during the 1937 season. This was the only time the Bears have ever worn an Orange-Blue-Orange helmet-jersey-pants combination. Modeled by hall of famer Dan Fortmann. Vikings: This design is a play on the Vikings’ color scheme and the origins of real life Vikings. As any child would know, the Vikings primary color, Purple, is created by combining red and blue, making the Vikings’ color scheme Red+Blue, Yellow, and White. Likely not coincidentally, the Scandinavian Nations, from which real life Vikings originated, each feature a national flag consisting of a nordic cross featuring some combination of red, blue, yellow, and/or white. Those flags are represented both by the color scheme of the uniform, but also by the cross-paneled leather helmet design. Tomorrow, we head down south, to the league's youngest division!

In 2012, a young board member known as Lafarge ended a small NFL fauxback uniform series to take one a new, grand project. His vision? A series chronicling what the NFL might be like had all 32 teams existed since the 1930s. Consisting of hundreds of new designs, templates, and histories, the project would become the greatest concept thread in the history of the boards. Why do you not remember it, you ask? It was never finished and the idea lay abandoned for nearly a decade. However, in 2020, @mcrosby made a call into the ether for its return. And so, the Lost History of the NFL was reborn. Before I get into the concepts themselves, the series consisted of several rules in order to keep the series manageable. 1. Each team has three uniforms, worn once against each division rival. The teams shall wear uniforms of the same era. No repeats. 2. All uniform designs must be plausible for their era. 3. Uniform selection is prioritized as follows: Throwbacks, amalgams (combining elements of multiple real throwbacks), and fauxbacks. 4. All designs must be from before the AFL-NFL Merger and have not been worn as a throwback in real life. 5. Teams shall wear at least one dark and one light jersey. A color jersey may suffice as a light jersey in a color vs. color matchup. 6. No one-helmet rule. Hey would you look at that, I took so much time off that the NFL itself decided to make this rule obsolete! 7. If a team existed in real life, they will be given a real impact player who wore that jersey. If the team did not yet exist, the number will represent the approximate year/era I am attempting to replicate. Like any good NFL rule, the above rules shall be enforced inconsistently and at my own discretion. The first division shall be posted momentarily in the next post. UPDATE: Hi there, if you're new to this thread and wondering why people have been talking about using only the number 11, that's because I initially used only the number 11 for each jersey for no reason and agree in hindsight that it was stupid, so as commissioner of this thread I suspended myself indefinitely (reduced to 8 games by an arbitrator) and then went back and changed all that, and added rule #7 above.