gosioux76

The armchair detective in me agrees with @Brian in Boston that it will be Saint Louis Stars FC. The TESS Database shows Saint Louis Stars -- both with and without the name Saint spelled out -- has an abandoned trademark. And the ICANN database shows someone registered the domain Saintlouisstars.com on June 26 and Stlouisstars.com on July 28. Those could certainly be domain name squatters. All of this is circumstantial evidence, and it certainly doesn't confirm anything, but they're some decent breadcrumbs to chew on.

The NBA owns the Spirits of St. Louis trademark, per the TESS database. And calling the team St. Louis City would be remarkably tone deaf. There's a huge divide here between city of St. Louis and St. Louis County, a division many believe is a driving force in many of this region's economic and political struggles. It would be an odd choice to pick a name that could stoke that divide.

From what I can see, there's very little orange associated with this city. It's such a huge sports town, that almost everything color-wise is influenced by sports branding, so blue and red are clearly prominent as identifying colors for St. Louis. The XFL BattleHawks' use of Blue falls in line with that trend, as did the Rams. Had the St. Louis Browns stuck around and not moved to Baltimore, it may be a different story. But these days, I see little to no orange. That's why I think we'll see some kind of combo of red, blue and yellow - the colors of the city flag. RSL and Chicago use similar colors, but it's been so pervasive in MLS4THELOU branding to this point that I'd be really surprised if they went a different direction.

Since I moved here a year or so ago, I've noticed a fair amount of "Saint" references. Some are more recent, like Saint Louis FC and Hotel Saint Louis, but others are long-standing and, in some cases, historic organizations: Saint Louis Zoo, Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis University. Unlike, say, St. Paul, where you rarely see the use of the word "Saint" in identifying the city, St. Louis seems to embrace both spellings equally.

A year ago, the region was debating a highly flawed campaign to merge the city and county. (The issue remains valid; the campaign was flawed.) Had that come to fruition, this might be the one city that could’ve justified being a “United” franchise.

But isn’t this essentially what they call back-to-back USL champions Louisville City? Would seem odd to take that name.

And I only moved here recently. I was skeptical at first, but I've come to appreciate Imo's. It's not for everyone, and it's not something I'd order every time I eat pizza, but every now and then I crave it. Also, so not to fully pizza-jack this thread, MLS4TheLou released a bunch of other names that didn't make the cut. https://twitter.com/MLS4theLou/status/1287852785552314368?s=20 Also, also: I clearly do not know how to embed a tweet in this message board, despite all my years of trying.

I actually like it. To each their own.

For the record, the Louligans' support of Lazersnakes has been entirely tongue in cheek. They also make references to chupacabras in at least one of the gameday songs, so these are largely a nod to the local supporters culture.

I've also come around to hoping they stick to red, blue and yellow. But I'd prefer they embrace red and yellow, a la Liverpool, with blue as a tertiary accent color. As a St. Louis resident for a year and a half, I've come to learn that this city has a sense of nostalgia like no other. But you could also argue that all that looking backward has a lot to do with the present not being so fantastic. That said, I wouldn't mind something that embraces looking forward rather than back.

The mark is owned by the NBA Properties, but prior to that it was the domain of the Silna family, the owners of the Spirits who famously struck a sweetheart deal during the NBA/ABA merger to receive one-seventh of the TV revenue generated by the four ABA teams absorbed into the NBA. Probably more than you wanted to know, but I'm a nerd about this stuff. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/sports/basketball/ozzie-silna-savvy-owner-of-the-st-louis-spirits-is-dead-at-83.html

Many describe him as a Nazi sympathizer. Others say he was simply a "pro-German" World War II isolationist. Seems like splitting hairs to me. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/charles-lindbergh-and-the-rise-of-1940s-nazi_1/ https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-22684773/charles-lindbergh-the-nazis-and-american-isolationism

Yeah, i just assumed that it's a foregone conclusion that it will be Sacramento Republic.

I agree with you 100%. I'm hoping they stick with the color scheme, but can find differentiation in the specific hues they choose (rhyming!). A Navy and yellow, with red accents would be nice. Or channel Liverpool and lean into red and yellow, with blue as an accent. It can work.

I'm choosing to think of this as a bonafide clue.

I was wondering the same thing. Feels like a placeholder, but I could be wrong. I think this club's in a difficult spot when it comes to color choices. It's embraced the colors of the city's flag so far, but it's a color scheme already used by RSL and recently adopted by Chicago Fire. It could work if they embraced yellow, with red and blue as secondary colors, which would give them similar color schemes to the Cardinals and Blues, with all three clubs emphasizing a different primary color. The drawback is the league already has two primary yellow clubs, including one of its newest, Nashville. There are relatively few other color references i can come up with that relate to St. Louis and are unique to the league. The old St. Louis Stars of the NASL (notable for favoring players from the city's Italian neighborhood, The Hill, over big names from Europe) were a red, white and blue team, of which the league has plenty.

The ownership group of the St. Louis Major League Soccer expansion franchise announced today that the club's name, color and crest will be unveiled Aug. 13. https://mls4thelou.com/?fbclid=IwAR0n5WcXSsJc-QIVDbFmmEZJierklSIIXTi5CQaptvuzNbZ5pzsoDcLxTbA This is notable because I think it's the first solid indication that all of these decisions (name/colors/crest) had actually been made. Some of the club's supporters discovered that the mobile version of the same page linked above initially included a date of July 15 for the event. That suggests they had perhaps intended to make this announcement last week prior to the league's decision to delay the launch of St. Louis, Sacramento and Charlotte by a year each.

I know that's supposed to be a miner's pick inside the C, but my brain only wants to see it as an airplane or a bird. Also, didn't realize how much the prior 49ers logo resembled the SF 49ers infamous one-day logo. Not perfectly, of course, but certainly in spirit.

I agree. Their only downfall is their location in the middle of a giant parking lot when KC has such a vastly improved urban core. That wouldn't be enough to raze Kaufmann -- it's a gem of a stadium -- but it will always be battling that debate over urban density.

I love everything about this, especially the name. It's perfect for community-based independent minor league baseball. It's certainly got more staying power than some names we've seen before, and seems to be far less of a novelty than other whimsical names that have since proven their worth (the Isotopes and Biscuits, to name a few.)

I'd also think that if the NFL wanted to take this on, that slapping an H and star onto the logo wouldn't be enough to deter them.

You don't think the big, giant H on the front is distinct enough?

You guys, this isn't that hard. I wasn't questioning the relevancy of a star for the Houston franchise. I get why they would have a star. It's Texas. You're big on stars. I was questioning the necessity of it. There's already too much going on with that uniform and logo. The star is extraneous. Not every Texas team needs to shoehorn a star into their look.

Yes, I recognize that Texas is the Lone Star State. But that doesn't mean the star needs to be forced onto the uniforms or the logo, which is the case here.

Pants aside, I'd hate the Roughnecks look far less if they removed that gigantic star from the shoulders. It's unnecessary, overly simple and, yet, somehow garish. And while they're doing that, they can also remove the star from the logo. I see no visual benefit to having an oil derrick topped by a star.