Ferdinand Cesarano

That's true. But the Olympics uses "Great Britain" to refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So this is probably the case in this tournament, as well. This distinction was formerly held by China.

What drives opposition is not so much an entrenched feeling about the commissioner as it is the principle. The shift ban is wrong for the same reason that the rule about a pitcher having to face three hitters is wrong: namely, that a manager has to have the freedom to deploy his players in any way he sees fit. The important point here is that no move by a manager confers an uncounterable advantage; every move brings with it a risk, a weakness that it's up to the opposition to exploit. Employing the shift leaves huge undefended gaps in the infield; and swapping out pitchers after a hitter a piece leaves a team vulnerable to bad matchups after the opposition pinch-hits, and possibly to running out of pitchers in a long game. The justification for the pitch clock has a better foundation; unlike the shift ban, that rule doesn't inherently violate any principle. But for the pitch clock to be so rigid as a play clock in football or a shot clock in basketball tends to undermines the competition. No one is out there intentionally wasting time; both the pitcher and the hitter need time to think as the prevailing conditions change with each pitch. Because this rule doesn't allow for any discretion (such as when a pitcher is intentionally gaming the rule), opposing this rule is reasonable. Please allow me to address something that was not mentioned in this post: the continuation of the most objectionable of all the new rules, the phantom runner. This rule offends because it puts on base a runner who cannot be accounted for in the scoring of a game. The result is the absurdity that a pitcher could throw a perfect game and lose, as the phantom runner could score on two sacrifice flies (or, if he is like Willie Wilson, on one sacrifice fly). It's true that nowadays complete games are rare, and rarer still would be a starting pitcher pitching into extra innings. But this type of loss will happen eventually, and the mere possibility tells us that the phantom runner is fundamentally contrary to the nature of the sport. The supposed rationale for the phantom runner is to avoid extremely long games. A better means to accomplish this end can be borrowed from Japan: just have draws. In Japan a game goes down as a draw if it is tied after 12 innings; I'd even accept having no extra innings at all in the regular season, and recording a tie game as a draw after nine innings. Save the extra innings for the postseason, where every game must have a winner. From watching English football I have learnt that a draw is a perfectly legitimate result for a regular-season game. I would agree with the philosophical underpinning of this post, which is that a blanket refusal to accept rule changes is an indefensible position to take. We should always be open to modifications of the rules, if those modifications make sense. For instance, the introduction of larger bases is a good idea, both for saftey's sake, and for the possibility that it might encourage stealing. We also should remember that the pitcher's mound was lowered in the late 1960s, and that that was a necessary move. Also, the introduction of the DH in 1973 was a positive change, despite what some goofballs will claim. (The oft-heard argument that the DH "eliminates strategy" is patently false, as the DH actually facilitates moves such as pinch-hitting for players other than the pitcher, pinch-running, and making defensive replacements. Still, I will say that I think the DH being in both leagues is unfortunate, and that the ideal scenario was having both versions of the game.) Looking to the future, an inevitable new rule that I am strongly in favour of is the automation of the calling of strikes and balls. We can wax rhapsodic about the human element in umpiring; but that is just a polite way of framing the concept of bias. I am reminded of an anecdote that Ron Luciano shared in one of his books. Luciano says that he was umpiring behind the plate one day when Rod Carew came up. After Luciano called the first pitch a ball, the catcher started complaining. Luciano says that he calmly explained to the catcher that "If Mr. Carew doesn't swing, that means that it's a ball." This is very amusing; but the excessive deference shown to veterans is not really something that we should want to see continued. We can be sure that hitters of the calibre of Carew and Gwynn and Boggs and Brett would still have dominated if they had had to deal with a strike zone that was more consistent and more fair. There are even a couple of longstanding traditional rules that I would like to see changed for the sake of consistency. One is the non-applicability of the infield fly rule if there is only a runner on first, as the rationale of preventing an infielder from getting a cheap double play on a pop-up applies there just as it does in the first-and-second / bases loaded scenario. The other is the non-awarding of an RBI on a double play, because if a ground out can result in an RBI, then a double play should be able to do so as well. Finally, it probably would have been reasonable all along for a passed ball to be considered an error on the catcher, as, like an error, a passed ball renders a run scored unearned. I suppose that the reasoning for the distinction would be that an error is a blown chance at an out, and so even if a run doesn't score on the error itself, any runner who moves up on the error will count as an unearned run if he eventually scores; whereas, a runner who moves up on a passed ball scores an earned run if he is knocked in on a hit, sacrifice, walk, or force out. Still, this should have been consistent all along. Anyway, the short version: very few people are uniformly against all rule changes.

Argh! The stupid! It burns! Meanwhile, at the site of Shibe Park there stands a historical marker explaining the reality of the matter: Anyway, one can always find people suffering from terrible ignorance. Back in 1985 some friends and I were staying at a campground in Clermont, New Jersey, which is near Wildwood. When we went to the general store on the grounds to buy some stuff, we began talking to the owner. We New Yorkers are always interested to know what the dominant teams are in disputed areas of New Jersey, the New York teams or the Philadelphia teams; so we asked the owner about that. Her response: "People here used to root for the Phillies until they moved to California." OoooK. Note that this was less than two years after the Phillies had been in the World Series, and less than five years after they had won it. Go figure. By the way, a very informative (if not terribly well-written) book on Finley's flirtations with Seattle and Louisville before he decided to move the A's from Kansas City to Oakland is The Kansas City Athletics: a Baseball History 1954-1967, by John E. Peterson. A weird uniform-related tidbit from that book is that Yankee manager Ralph Houk, managing the American League at the 1963 All-Star Game, refused to use the A's Norm Siebern in the game because he felt that the A's green and gold uniform, introduced that season, would embarrass the American League.

"It looks alright to me." - Haley Joel Osment

Ah. It should have been clear. Duh on me.

The 70s, when the A's won more World Series (three) than any other team.

Good so far. Yikes! Someone doesn't know his history.

Even as a former Yankee fan (and still a Red Sox hater), I can say that Clemens's one and only right uniform is the Red Sox uniform. This is despite his Cy Young Awards and World Series appearances with other teams.

That is a good point. So then Italy should redesign the wordmark to include a cursive capital I that looks more like an I. I think that there should be harmony between the wordmark and the cap — even though I know that that is not the case for many teams, including the Dodgers, on whom this set was originally based. Still, I think that you just cannot beat a coordinated look between the jersey's wordmark and the cap's logo, as seen in China's beautiful sets.

I am thankful that the cap I have is the previous version with the red outline (and the smaller flag). Still, that intial is brutal. The hat should use the capital letter I from the wordmark that has appeared on the jersey since this tournament began (shown here in the original 2006 version, before a nice clean look was ruined by stupid side panels).

Another upgrade is the numbers. The current number font is very nice.

Not that I'm aware of. If they did, it's because either they were drafted or re-signed. There was a full-on new draft. No roster carried over. Bob Stoops may be the only guy who returned in the same situation from 2020. I see now that Ta'amu is not in the list of players who were taken in the league draft in November; I am reading that he signed with the league in January, and was assigned to D.C. McCarron is obviously doing a great job at St. Louis (who drafted him in November). But Ta'amu seemed to be the standout player on the most popular team in 2020, so it would have been neat from the fans' perspective to keep that going. Hypothetical question: if St. Louis had been unhappy with McCarron in practices, would they have been able to get Ta'amu assigned to them? Anyway, I am glad to see that Ta'amu landed with another well-supported team, where he can continue to be the face of the league. But I still think that it's a bit surprising that the league didn't have some kind of continuity preference for returning players (however few they might be).

Every team started from scratch. Nobody went back to their teams from 2020. Plus, I think he even signed back with the league well after the draft (I could me mistaken on that). So could St. Louis have had Ta'amu if they had wanted him? And did absolutely no player return to his former team?

I should know this, but can someone fill me in on why Ta'amu did not return to St. Louis?

I'll also call it a sidegrade, but I go the other way on the reasons. I like the solidification of the stripe, as anything that resembles a gradient really irritates me. But I think the new font is worse than the old one. They've lost the harmony between the curved stripe and curve at the bottom of the L. The letterforms of the new font are quite nice aesthetically; but that font erodes the identity of this brand, as it is strongly evocative of Exxon Mobil.

Thanks for confirming this most unfortunate state of affairs.

Right now I am stuck just watching hightlights. I got rid of my cable a few months ago; I really didn't want to become one of "those people", but the cable scumbags just priced me out. The cost of the array of streaming services that I have comes nowhere near what I had been paying for cable. However, the upshot is that I cannot watch ESPN, ABC, or FX, the networks that carry the XFL. Either ESPN and FX would require another subscription, but I am not prepared to pay for any additional streaming services; and watching the local ABC station in the ABC app requires a log-in with credentials from a cable company, or from Hulu with live TV, or from YouTube TV. Whereas, I could see the USFL with my Peacock subscription. This didn't really surprise me. But what does surprise me is the apparant absence of local radio stations. I really enjoy listening to a quality radio broadcast. And in 2020 I found that I could hear the Houston Roughnecks' games on Houston's ESPN radio outlet at 97.5 KFNC, which streams online. There were probably other teams' broadcasts that I could have listened to; but during that season I also had cable, and could see the games. So the issue came up only a few times, which all happened to involve the Roughnecks. I particluarly remember listening to the Houston-Dallas game in week 4 while I was coming back home from somewhere on the train, and being impressed at the talent involved in the broadcast. During the first week of this season, I tuned into 97.5 KFNC to hear the Roughnecks' game, and instead I heard a talk show discussing the Super Bowl. Searches have turned up nothing about local radio for any team, only coverage on ESPN's Sirius XM channel (coverage which, I think, probably consists only of the audio track of the television broadcasts, but which I cannot get anyway, as I am certainly not going to subscribe to that service just for this). Tweets to the Houston station, to the league, and to the Roughnecks have generated no responses. So I hope that someone here can tell me whether I am overlooking something. Can it really be that no XFL team has a local radio deal? If so, that would be f-ing appalling.

I actually prefer the new logo, the old one was a little busy for me. Love the S the new one forms. I don't mind the diminished detail on the new logo; the less busy face might indeed be better for most applications. But I really dislike the S shape.. The original logo was clearly just part of the animal from the neck up; the new logo seems to depict the whole animal, giving it the look of a shrimp rather than a (sea) dragon. And this brings me to the worst aspect of the new identity: the name. There's no good reason for "Sea Dragons" as a nickname instead of "Dragons". The addition of the unnecessary word "Sea" completly robs the name of its power and grandeur. Not since the Arena Football League's Portland Forest Dragons has there been such a silly moniker.

What I remember most is that the Knights had an outstanding colour combination and uniform design. The Knights were also the first team to use the unwieldy "New York / New Jersey" location name, several years before the founding of MLS and the MetroStars. This was on account of a rule by the public authority that ran the Meadowlands stating that any team that played there (apart from the Giants and the Jets) had to have "New Jersey" in its name. The league had intended to call the team the "New York Knights" (and head coach Mouse Davis wore a sweater with that name knitted on it; sorry I cannot find any pictures), but adapted it to "New York / New Jersey Knights"; likewise, the USFL intended to call the Generals the "New York Generals", before changing the name to "New Jersey Generals". The first team to challenge this rule was the MetroStars, when they changed their name to the New York Red Bulls. Their own stadium was under construction at the time, so they did not care if the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority kicked them out of the Meadowlands. This evidently gutted the NJSEA's naming rule, as we can see from the XFL's New York Guardians having been able to secure a lease to play at the Meadowlands. The other significant thing was that the Knights were coached by the aforementioned Mouse Davis, the creator of the run-and-shoot offence. The team had an iconic coach and an overall winning record; nevertheless, crowds for the Knights were sparse, as they were for the other WLAF teams based in North America (though I did one of my rare acts of attending a game at a Knights game in the first season).

That's the Greyhound logo.

Of my approximately 170 hats, the most obscure sports-related one is a bucket hat from the New York Streets. "What are the New York Streets?", you might ask. An excellent question. It was a team that played one season in the National Arena League in 2019. The team had a bizarre season. The Streets won their first two games. However, the second game, their first at home, was played on a field on which the "yards" were only about 31 inches long, making the field 38 yards instead of 50 yards. Also, their home was not what was promised to fans. The team announced that it had reached a deal to play some of its home games at Madison Square Garden. That was somewhere short of true, as all the home games were played at the 5000-seat Westchester County Center, which, as the name indicates, is not located within the City. Finally, the last home game of the season (and in team history) ended in fiasco. The Streets were losing 46-0 at the half, when the Carolina Cobras refused the play the second half because their locker room had been burglarised — by, it later turned out, a Streets employee! Still, a team does not have the right to unilaterally walk out, and so the NAL correctly awarded the Streets a forfeit victory. And then the NAL correctly kicked the Streets out of the league after the season. I have two Streets hats: a cap, and this bucket hat. Staying with the sport of arena football, here is a hat of a team that some people will remember (I hope). The New York CityHawks were members of the Arena Football League in 1997 and 1998. Unlike the Streets, the CityHawks actually played in the Garden. This is because they were owned by MSG. But MSG did virtually nothing to promote the team. I can remember going to a gift shop in the Garden one day in 1997 looking for CityHawks items. Not only did the store not have any such merchandise available, but the person staffing the store had never heard of the team (even though there was a larger-than-life-size photograph of CityHawks quarterback Mike Perez on the wall right outside the store). The team that was owned by MSG. So MSG not only failed to promote the CityHawks to the public, they didn't even bother to let their own employees in on the secret. Both the CityHawks and the Liberty debuted that year. To say that MSG split its promotional efforts regarding its two new teams at 99% for the Liberty and 1% for the CityHawks would be to vastly overstate the amount of attention given to the CityHawks. Finally, I have a cap of the MLL's Long Island Lizards, the original name of the team whose name was eventually changed to New York Lizards by owner Jim Brown. While I also have a New York Lizards cap that is aesthetically far superior, the Long Island Lizards cap is more obscure (even though the team won two of its three MLL championships with the Long Island name).

"peculiarities" As though it's just some minor detail. Astonishing.

Wait, you actually think that that is correct? Wow.

Should OF? Could OF?! Come on!

that actually is how the law works, which is why bigger colleges and NFL teams make a lot of these schools sign licensing deals, even if it's only for $1. Thanks for the further detail. What I was alluding to was the necessity of obtaining a licencing deal (even for a token amount), a step which I will assume that most schools have not taken.