gosioux76
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Everything posted by gosioux76
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This is a really inventive approach to baseball uniform design. It uses the whole body as a canvas, which is really intriguing. I could do without the hat, though. Not that it's terrible on its own, but it doesn't seem to match the rest of the look. This might be the first and only time where I'd advocate for an all-white hate to continue the color pattern of the full set.
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I'd love it if the Rays came out with a City Connect jersey focused on their sister city of Montreal.
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It would certainly be a risk. But it's also important to remember that a move like that isn't just about the team, but the real estate opportunity. If such a move means it would allow Moreno or whomever to invest in a massive mixed-use project with year-round revenue streams, then that might offset some of that risk exposure. At that point, you might be willing to gamble that you can retain some of your core fanbase while also building a new, sustainable one drawn to that new location and its related entertainment options. Sometimes, it's just a bonehead move, like we've seen with the Chargers, which are a tenant in a venue they don't own, nor do they control the revenue streams. That might likely be the case with the Angels should the scenario @Brian in Boston suggested -- the Anschutz/Moreno partnership -- come to be.
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Hell, they could probably just buy a couple of used charter buses and do better than break-even.
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That's a great point, and makes a lot of sense. Though I wouldn't be surprised to know that four-hour bus rides from Dallas to Houston/San Antonio would equal a boatload of savings relative to flights.
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I should be clear, my comment was NOT an endorsement of the idea. I'm just predicting a similar reaction to what we've seen with the Miami Heat and its Vice set.
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If those location predictions bear out, it'll be an awfully Texas-heavy league, which could also help explain why its operations would be centralized in Dallas. But you'd think having more than one-third of the league located in a single state would be risky when trying to draw appeal from a broader nationwide audience.
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Good lord. The Padres appear to have used 1980s tourist t-shirts as their City Connect inspiration. Approximately one hour after these uniforms are revealed I expect to hear cries of "they should adopt these full time."
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I agree on this that, at first glance, they're unnecessary. My first instinct was that these were designed primarily because of an upcoming City Edition design. But then some of you smartly pointed out that the SATX could be an amalgam of San Antonio and Austin, rather than the standard airport code abbreviation elsewhere. Now it all makes a lot more sense. New secondary marks on their own might be unnecessary, but knowing they're likely part of a brand extension designed to make a claim to the Austin market makes a lot more sense. The Austin metro area already nearly rivals the size of the San Antonio metro area in terms of population, and since it's likely to keep growing at a rapid pace, the physical dividing lines between the two will continue to edge closer. It's not unreasonable to think that, one day in the near future, it could evolve into some form of joint MSA -- maybe not exactly like Dallas-Ft. Worth due to the greater distance between them, but for marketing purposes, something treated as a single media market. So how's this for a nutty prediction: Within 10 years, we won't have the San Antonio Spurs anymore. We'll have the Texas Spurs.
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I get what you're saying, and I'm sure there is probably even a certain amount of local pride in using that abbreviation, but you can pretty much say something similar for every major American city at this point. It's not unique. But perhaps it's better to think of this in the same way we think of the various City Editions in NBA and MLB. The idea isn't to market the brand to a broad audience, but to a hyper local one. So the SATX logos might not work for me, but they're probably not supposed to.
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I really like the Texas mark, but this demand for abbreviated nicknames is getting pretty old. Do San Antonians really refer to their town as SATX?
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That's logical, but only from the perspective of trying to retrofit an existing logo to an existing name. If the exercise here is to somehow simulate the USFL as if it had continued, and the goal of the brand was to elicit winged helmet imagery a la Mercury, I'd have to think the designers could have come up with something a little more direct. Using logos from the leagues that weren't or might never have been created is certainly an understandable convenience, but if you have to do some mental gymnastics just to understand how the logo connects with the name, then it just doesn't work.
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Yes! Those were the seats we bought. My kids aren't really football fans, but the spectacle of it all, plus the inexpensive tickets, made it seem worthwhile. It's not very often that a spring league football team generates so much fan interest that local vendors produce gear based around a chant created by fans. I've never quite seen a new team from a fringe league take a city by storm the way the BattleHawks did.
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I agree. I have the same issue with the Panthers helmet. As great as it is, it would be even better if they filled made the panther head solid like the original. Also, on a separate topic, I've come around on the Pittsburgh Maulers look. It might feel lesser compared with some of the other designs, but I tend to think it's quite nice. I find myself drawn to them when they're on my TV. Admittedly, it could have something with the fact that it offers some variety in an otherwise red-heavy league, but I find myself enjoying the look.
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I’m not sure how a space that small can be described as “empty.”
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I suppose that's fair. But even then, I would presume contract length in these circumstances is as much a marketing ploy than it is a guarantee. Having a five-year deal in place might be enough to get sponsors to come on board, or make them willing to hear a pitch.
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Here's a closer look (click on the picture in the bottom tweet):
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First off, brilliant execution on balancing out the EE primary with continued use of elk imagery. The use of the elk horn football logo is such a smart choice, and a very cool logo. I love how how they used it on those sleeve stripes where many of us just assumed they would duplicate the EE there, as they've done historically. My only qualm is whether the use of the elk-horn football on the pants is a bit too much. Hard to tell from these pictures.
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Did you expect them to put together a strategy that's predicated on the likelihood of the league not lasting that long?
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I hope that's true. The excitement here in St. Louis for that team was surprising and incredible. I bought tickets to bring my boys to their next home game until the pandemic killed it.
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Which trend are you speaking of? The 1970s sansabelt polyester pullover era or the more recent modern embrace/reintroduction of powder blue? At this point, because the Cardinals are one of the teams that switched to powder blue road uniforms so effectively in the '70s, I don't feel that the color is at all misplaced within their brand. Now, I might have thought differently when it was introduced in the '70s, but as of today it feels natural.
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Sure it’s a trend, in so much as teams embracing novelty uniforms is a trend. The trend doesn’t need to be the look; it can be the act of creating them at all.
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I mean, this is kind of how the cycle begins, right? A team switches to a wholly new visual brand identity to chase trends, then after 5 to 10 years misses the old look and ends up changing back. Call it Teal Pistons Syndrome. I realize the Heat have done nothing to suggest they would ditch their core brand (thankfully), and that this is merely a thought exercise, but you can sort of see the forces at play that would cause a brand to make such a move. The list of teams that have gone through this exercise is practically infamous. The Pistons, Buffalo Sabres, Atlanta Hawks, Milwaukee Bucks, Phoenix Coyotes, Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres. It's like these brands go through their own freshman year of college where they take a sojourn to find themselves and suddenly come home with long hair and tattoos. Not to say that no change is good. In fact, these teams' odd choices and bad decisions sort of add to the colorful palette of sports. But there are sometimes when you just have to think, this could all have been avoided.
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I feel like many people are coming to these conclusions because the alternative to the core brand is something much livelier than the original. It's a lot easier to label the Heat brand as mid-level appealing when the alternative is a hot-pink novelty look meant to emulate a 1980s TV show. It's like looking at two Mustangs side by side -- one is black, the other is neon green. Your first instinct might suggest you love the neon green because it's fresh, new and will get a lot of likes on Tik-Tok without realizing that you actually have to drive the thing and, after about six months, you'll get tired of it and wish you'd picked the black all along.
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This is spot on. It also represents the conundrum the NBA and other leagues create for themselves with these uniform programs that veer from core brands. Sometimes, the designs are really good and big sellers, which inevitably prompts these existential questions of whether they should follow that revenue and adopt a new identity. We also see it with the red-rocks look in Utah and the Valley looks in Phoenix. Of those, only the Phoenix example could be adapted to still bear resemblance to the core brand. With the others, you'd be, as you said, supplanting 30+ years of brand equity. It takes discipline to disregard something that's popular for the higher purpose of protecting something like brand equity. I'm now sure how many owners these days care about such things. It's all about what's shiny and new.
