Waffles

That's a shame. I've always felt like there was a strong marketing/recruiting opportunity for the Blackbirds in dropping or de-emphasizing the LIU and positioning themselves as just Brooklyn.

This may or may not have implications for their branding, but Syracuse is expected to announce their next shoe/uniform/apparel deal this fall.

Not only is it stale, it's not particularly Staten Islandy either. The Pizza Rat was such a uniquely subway phenomenon, and Staten Island, despite its MTA-administered railroad, does not share in the rest of the city's subway culture.

Whoever suggested they lose the lox and onions from the sketch on the bottom right needs to be fired.

I'm a Charlottean by marriage, and I've become a fan of the crown over the years I've been visiting. At first, I thought it was kind of dated and corporate, like Uptown Charlotte. But it really grew on me (along with the city) and I appreciate it as an ahead-of-its time, iconic work of urban branding that has and will continue to have longevity. The tourism board rebranded last year, and incorporated a version of the crown into the logos: I think they could definitely do more with the flag - something like the above to give it some contrast or dimension, or a pattern or design added to it would maybe would loosen it up a bit. I totally agree with you about the color of the flag. Charlotteans seem to identify with teal from rooting for the Hornets and Panthers, so maybe this is a tail wags the dog scenario where the city adopts the sports team colors.

I'd only been following this from the Brooklyn side so I didn't know about his back history with the fans from even before the move. It's hard to blame them for being leery of him after that. I'm still split on whether a perfect union of the Islanders and Brooklyn was ever possible even if some of the decisions had been handled differently. Certainly they messed things up, but it's hard to envision a realistic scenario where it's 2018 and Islanders fans feel at home and Brooklynites are at least beginning to identify with them.

I agree that a portion of the blame should fall on him, and I wish I'd touched on that in my post, as well has the way he phrased his comments to make it seem like it all just passively happened. I'm not sure how much of it was a fundamentally untenable situation with no good solutions, or how much of it was about the strategy he oversaw and executed, but he does need to own it, if for no other reason than that's what people with power/responsibility should do when things go bad. I hope I didn't give off the impression that I resented the Long Island fans at the games or the fun they were having. I've enjoyed the environment they create at the games I've gone to (except on weeknights when people don't make the trip in from the Island and the arena is DEAD except for pockets of visiting fans). For me, it just felt being dropped into a party where I didn't know anyone, and everyone else had been friends for decades and had their own language and common history that was foreign to me. It was fun, but in the way it's fun to go to a game in another city you're visiting. I don't know if pushing Brooklyn harder would've been a more successful strategy for them, and I don't know what it would have even entailed. Who knows if anything would have truly alienated a significant number of Long Island fans, or if they'd eventually get used to and go along with it because it was better than Quebec/Kansas Cities. It takes a long time to build a new fanbase anyway, even if they weren't going up against the the Rangers' generational equity. And very significant portion of the Barclays is not a good place to watch hockey, and that also has to come into play. I also agree about his snark toward the new arena, which gratuitously unconstructive and and unnecessary.

Staying in the tri-state area, Brett Yomark has some thoughts on his soon-to-be-former tenant: https://www.newsday.com/sports/hockey/islanders/islanders-brett-yormark-1.16958293 I can see his point, but I don't see the point in actually saying it out loud, especially with an indefinite number of years remaining in their relationship. It was an awkward arrangement from the beginning, even without factoring in the Barclays Center's massive deficiencies as a hockey venue. Yomark's team took over marketing for the Isles, and had to preemptively declare that they wouldn’t be adding Brooklyn to the depiction of Long Island on the logo, and then abandon the new goal horn they developed as an homage to the LIRR linking Brooklyn to the rest of the island. From that point on, it doesn’t seem like they were ever able to figure out how to change the game experience or the way the team was packaged to attract new fans from Brooklyn while still placating the Long Island fans who loudly demanded continuity with their traditions and culture. Contrast that with the Nets, where the same marketing department felt almost no need to preserve any continuity with their history and fans in New Jersey and got to work from a nearly clean slate to build their identity and connect with their new fanbase. You could feel it at the arena. I went to a few Islanders games as a very, very, very casual hockey fan curious to check out the team playing in my borough, and they felt like total Long Island invasions. The culture and traditions of the fans seemed fun and it was a decent environment, but it was like an impenetrable inside joke we weren’t a part of, and there wasn’t a lot for me to connect to or identify with. It seems like the only thing that worked from this shotgun wedding were the black alternate jerseys, which you see a lot of fans wearing at the games. I wonder what would have happened if Yomark had been able to make whatever changes he thought could get more Brooklyn/NYC fans. Would the Long Islanders have grumbled for a while, then gotten used to it? Or was this whole thing doomed from the start, regardless?

When the unified Korean team enters the Olympic opening ceremony, they'll be using the Korean Peninsula flag, as they did in 2006:

Agreed - it also makes it easier local fans who might be put off by the parent club (particularly in the case of a polarizing team like the Yankees) to buy in to their hometown team. A Tampa resident who wants a local minor league team to pull for, but isn't fond of the Yankees, might have trouble getting on board with a team that looks like this:

The Tampa Yankees are now the Tampa Tarpons: A great step toward making the Yankees farm system more interesting, identity-wise.

The Islanders' AHL affiliate in Bridgeport will not move to the renovated Nassau Coliseum as previously planned, and Nassau County has a different hockey tenant in mind (emphasis mine):

Five hats, and none of them is the hat the alligator is wearing in the primary logo.

Well-timed for the recent debate here on whether minor league clubs should be carbon copies of their parent club or have unique identities reflecting the community they play in, here's a team that has managed to incorporate both into their identity (very successfully, in my opinion): This is one of my favorite minor league rebrands in years.

http://news.sportslogos.net/2016/07/01/brooklyn-cyclones-celebrate-independence-as-coney-island-franks/

Continuing the trend of moving away from parent club-branding, the Staten Island Yankees are seeking fan suggestions for a new name.

Logos and uniforms for the Pulaski Yankees (Appalachian League), formerly the Pulaski Mariners, via Facebook: That PY logo is pretty awkward. I'd love to see an overhaul of the Yankees' lower minor league identities - there's a lot of really clumsy derivations of the parent club's identity.

Via the Tortugas' Twitter account: https://twitter.com/daytonatortugas/status/540532741016936448

Not that there's a "right" uniform for Caron Butler, but here he is (on the right) modeling a uniform he'll never actually wear on a basketball court:

The Big East's fate was sealed long before the most recent moves because of its inability and unwillingness to adjust and react strongly to the football-driven economy of college sports. Over the last ten years, they're the only Automatic Qualifier conference that didn't add new members from another Automatic Qualifier conference, and the one that's had the most defections to others. They've been operating from a position of weakness for the last ten years, owing to poor leadership that was out of touch with the reality of modern collegiate athletics. This final episode is telling: the schools that are now plotting to leave are doing so because the value of their basketball TV deal is weakening. They were oblivious to conference realignment until they started losing schools that brought value to their basketball rights, like Syracuse, Pittsburgh, and Louisville. The league's failure to take bold action with an understanding of the modern college sports landscape was driven by this basketball-centric mindset, and their response to these losses is now driving away the assets they clung so stubbornly to. I'm not so sure the Big East's fate had to do with a lack of leadership so much as it had to do with the fact that eastern college football has been on the decline since before the Big East was even formed, and served the only geographic area where college basketball was more popular than football. Aside from letting Penn State in during the 80s, I'm not sure what they could've possibly done to prevent this... and even then, Penn State would've been one of the first schools picked off by either the ACC (who probably would've went after them instead of BC in the mid-2000s) or the Big Ten in this current REEL LINE MINT shuffle. I totally agree about the role the weakness of eastern football played. It's a huge reason why there isn't room in this football-dominated world for an ACC and a Big East to both exist as major conferences. But crappy east coast football was just a catalyst; the way it has unfolded owes itself to the structure, priorities, and vision of the two conferences. The ACC, with the advantage of all of its schools being football participants and thus all being invested in the strength of ACC football, saw the writing on the wall and acted aggressively to secure itself. The Big East, which was always dominated by basketball schools, never took proactive steps to strengthen itself as a football conference. The moves they did make were reactive and defensive, and were attempts to repair holes left by defections, not steps taken to gain higher footing.

The Big East's fate was sealed long before the most recent moves because of its inability and unwillingness to adjust and react strongly to the football-driven economy of college sports. Over the last ten years, they're the only Automatic Qualifier conference that didn't add new members from another Automatic Qualifier conference, and the one that's had the most defections to others. They've been operating from a position of weakness for the last ten years, owing to poor leadership that was out of touch with the reality of modern collegiate athletics. This final episode is telling: the schools that are now plotting to leave are doing so because the value of their basketball TV deal is weakening. They were oblivious to conference realignment until they started losing schools that brought value to their basketball rights, like Syracuse, Pittsburgh, and Louisville. The league's failure to take bold action with an understanding of the modern college sports landscape was driven by this basketball-centric mindset, and their response to these losses is now driving away the assets they clung so stubbornly to.

http://espn.go.com/c...ols-sources-say Hilarious. The schools calling the shots that led to the Big East's slow, painful death are now upset with the direction of the league and looking to leave. Anyone who thinks the NHL has had the most disastrous, out-of-touch leadership in sports over the last ten years should take a look at the Big East.

Two potentially significant Islanders-to-Brooklyn items from WFAN, via NetsDaily:

Patrick Ewing, New York Met.

From the New York Times/Sports Business Journal's Chris Botta: