gosioux76

If this was a read-the-tea-leaves post based upon 2024 season ticket sales for the XFL, it's worth noting that they have 2024 season ticket sites up for every team, including Las Vegas and Houston.

MLS, though, has proven to be the one professional league that has been a reluctant exception to this sort of pattern. The fact that Chicago and Montreal back-tracked on new logos in the past two years suggests to me that San Diego could do the same. I wouldn't be surprised if they do.

Just because you have one outlier doesn't mean it can't still be true.

The Creamsicles might be the only entry in a rare category of uniforms that are a thing of beauty but also don't belong on a football field. I'm never one for the macho notion that uniforms need to look tough, but I was reading a news story from 1996 in which Trent Dilfer said something to the effect of his linemen looking and feeling inferior in wearing those uniforms playing such a tough and aggressive game. From that perspective, I can kinda see it. It makes you wonder whether the uniforms didn't contribute to those years of being a laughingstock.

I thought they looked great. And the result was incredible.

But that's tantamount to saying those Gibbs-era helmets look better without stripes, which is absolutely not the case. The identity may have been abhorrent, but the helmets have always been gorgeous. I'm actually not bothered by the two-striped pants with a three-striped helmet. It would be worse if they both had three stripes and were mismatched, but I don't see it as an issue as it was at the time.

University of North Dakota going with throwback lids against rival North Dakota State this weekend.

A color like this needs to be paired with something more vibrant to avoid coming off as drab and muted. But even then it still might not work. Those 2000s Seahawks uniforms had lime green accents but they were still among some of the most lifeless uniforms in the NFL.

If you want to dig even further, the USFL website has live links to buy season tickets for the Stallions and Showboats, as well as for Canton but doesn't identify any teams associated with the site. The season ticket links for the other teams aren't active.

Seems to me like a missed opportunity that the Mets weren't named the Narcissistic Bungholes instead.

Florio is also the guy who reported that NFL owners were considering throwing an expansion franchise to St. Louis as a way to settle the city's litigation over the Rams move. He loves to throw crap out there to see what sticks.

I was watching a replay of a Cubs game from the '80s, with the pullover blue jerseys, and it occurred to me how strange it looks to have a logo on just the left side of a baseball jersey. I realize it's become a standard practice for baseball, but seeing it on that Cubs jersey just made it seem so random, especially because it was a pullover rather than the buttom-up style, which I'm sure why the logo-on-the-left thing became so common. Anyway, after seeing the Cubs jersey that way I now look at all baseball jerseys with only a logo on the left as sort of odd an unbalanced. That's why I prefer the Arizona's abbreviated D-Backs wordmark over this example.

These are really nice -- everything we'd want in a baseball uniform. Simple, with a distinct typeface. No clutter. Even the colors are right for Arizona. At least thematically, you can't argue that Sedona red and sand aren't an ideal palette for a team in Arizona. The issue is that it's just kind of drab overall, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there's nothing surprising about those colors. The Astros spent a decade wearing nearly identical colors, so by the time the Diamondbacks switched the colors weren't anything we hadn't seen before in baseball. Personally, i didn't like the franchise's original uniforms. I thought the original shades of purple and turquoise felt too much like a '90s-era novelty than anything that could stand the test of time. But I'd also like to see how some version of those colors, perhaps darker shades, would look on the current uniform template.

That's an interesting point, but as @GDAWG noted, that apparently didn't deter Knight from making continued attempts at acquiring the Trail Blazers. That bid was made in partnership with Dodgers co-owner Alan Smolinsky, so maybe the addition of a partner was enough not to trigger any conflict? And to this point, not only was his bid not accepted, it wasn't even acknowledged. This really great report by the Wall Street Journal in June shows that Blazers owner Jody Allen won't even take Knight's calls.

He's a fan of any and all sports, and he's also proven his interest in investing billions into Oregon and its institutions. The head of the Portland Diamond Project, Craig Cheek, is also a former Nike executive. So it's 100% possible that Phil could be the money behind any MLB project in Portland and that he's keeping his name out of it until it's more of a sure thing. But if that's the case, then they've made it really hard to legitimize this bid publicly. Then again, maybe they don't need to. If Phil intends to finance and own a Portland MLB team, the only people who would need to know are Rob Manfred, the members of any eventual expansion committee, and a handful of Portland stakeholders, such as the mayor.

The inclusion of Russell and Ciara Wilson into that so-called "ownership group" is ceremonial at best. The problem with Portland is that nobody knows where the money is coming from. Russell Wilson's a well-compensated pro athlete, but neither he nor his pop star wife have the kind of scratch to be majority owners of a multi-billion-dollar sports franchise. At this point, they're nothing more than ornaments to present a facade of legitimacy to their effort.

I'm sure there's a soft spot for this name in San Diego, but the old NASL names that treated the sport like a cute novelty just don't work for me. Sockers and the Minnesota Kicks (as much as I loved them) are two brands that should stay retired.

And it's a shame. I've always felt like that was a unique look, and the subsequent shift toward dark green seemed like too hard of a turn from the relative brightness of the expansion unis. But the biggest issue with that set -- and likely why they never stuck -- is the hard-to-define color palette. When your primary visuals use a purple/blue/green/yellow/gradient, it becomes hard to discern which color is the base and which are accents. It's a neat idea with a lot of potential, but you could really see the problem on display last night. Seemed like some players embraced the purple with their choice of accessories and baselayers. Others had neon green accessories, some navy, etc. They all looked good on their own, but there's no cohesion.

I’ve seen a lot of debate over the current health of both leagues or which one initiated merger talks, but I haven’t seen a single post saying — or even implying — the merged league will be successful. This post was made just so you can come back if this league fails and quote yourself saying “I told you so” to a fact nobody was arguing. This post is like saying, “You’re delusional if you think Starbucks will stop selling pumpkin spice lattes” or “you’re delusional if you think this country will outlaw cheeseburgers.”

I presume you've taken this directly from their business plan? I'm guessing it's right there in the summary: "we don't want to play in front of people because it's a blueprint for failure." I'm not sure I follow the logic of letting existing XFL brands fold just so you can create new ones in those same cities to replace them. There's a lot more value in expanding into, say, St. Louis and D.C. by taking on the Battlehawks and Defenders than investing capital to create entirely new entities. You seem pretty hellbent on this "we were all destined for failure" narrative without having any direct knowledge of whether that's the truth. There's absolutely no doubt that it's a big investment, but that means you also need to have a capital source that's patient enough and willing to take a lot of losses in the short-term to realize that long-term ROI. The USFL strategy, which is a prudent one, wasn't built around eschewing the idea of playing in each team's given market, as has been suggested in this thread, but toward working gradually toward that objective. It was pretty clear: play entirely in hubs in year one, then add more cities in year two, and continue to extend yourself gradually. So rather than requiring patient investors, it was asking its fans to be patient so it could grow at a more reasonable pace necessary for sustained growth. Based on this thread, it seems like the fans aren't willing to have that patience.

True. But we also don't know that "both leagues were losing money." In fact, we know relatively little about the motivations behind this merger outside of a lot of unverifiable reporting from alt-football blog sites. But when it comes to the USFL profit and XFL loss narratives, those have come from reputable publications like Sports Business Journal, Axios and Forbes. So if I'm going to speculate, which is all this really is, then I'll do so while leaning toward the more reputable sources of information.

But how do you know they're merging "to stay afloat?" I mentioned this earlier, but every indication has pointed to the fact that the XFL initiated these talks, not the USFL. There's a difference between agreeing to a merger out of desperation and merging because you see a growth opportunity. It's possible the USFL saw a little bit of both in this opportunity. And @McCall, you're right. I don't think year two was as successful as year one, so I'm sure the model wasn't likely to be sustainable. I just don't think that we can call the hub model a failure if it, in any way, can be attributed to Fox's ability to avoid operating at a loss.

Like most of you, I also don't care for the hub model, but we're also purists when it comes to sports leagues. Justifiably, we're used to the convention of teams representing cities and playing in them, which is why the hub model is so frustrating. But you have to ask yourself, in the case of these leagues, how do you measure success? If it's true, as Fox claims, that the USFL is profitable (especially compared with the XFL's massive losses) while working within a hub model, how exactly would that be "league suicide?" It seems pretty clear that the USFL was, from the start, a made-for-TV league and that Fox's motivation was to have pro football content on the air during the NFL offseason. If they're profitable, that suggests Fox has succeeded in generating substantial ad revenue while keeping the costs low enough to generate a profit. As a fan, the hub model stinks. But as a business, it seems to be working fairly well for Fox.

Sounds like a great idea, until you realize that the NFL has no need or apparent desire to have a league like this exist. It certainly doesn't want to cede any potential TV air time to a minor league, even if it's a feeder to its own product. If they wanted it this badly, they'd have adopted it stateside 20 years ago rather than letting the NFL Europe fold.

BREAKING: The XFL and USFL just confirmed their merger, but offered ZERO details.