Ferdinand Cesarano

I agree with the general thrust of this. But I don't mind "Cavs". An abbreviation of a long nickname is fine; it's no different than "Sox" on the White Sox' uniforms. Or, come to think of it, no different than "Sonics" on the SuperSonics' uniforms. (Though "D-Backs" is really pushing it.) But things like "Buzz City" or "Rip City" make me itch. This goes not only for the newfangled examples, but also for longstanding ones: the Warriors' "The City" jersey (which spawned an unfortunate recent spinoff "The Town" jersey). And for this reason I have always strongly disliked the Twins' cap logo. We know that the original plan was to call the team the Twin Cities Twins. But, once that plan was scrapped, the TC logo should have been tossed out, as well, in favour of an M.

Hartford has been tried twice, the second time when the bums over at MSG moved my beloved New York CityHawks of the AFL (see logo in my sig) to the Civic Center in 1999. It was tough for the re-named New England Sea Wolves to attract any attention in the prolonged gloom that still affected the area only a couple of years after move of the Whalers. The Sea Wolves played two seasons in Hartford before moving to Toronto and becoming the Phantoms. But that was in the era when the AFL was in every major city; at that time Hartford stood out as especially small. In this fantasy AFL, we have plenty of cities smaller than Hartford; and the majority of the arenas in our fantasy AFL have no NHL teams. A couple of decades after the Whalers' move, perhaps an AFL team could work in the Civic Center. Still, the AHL's Hartford Wolf Pack play there to attendance that is well below the league average. So maybe Bridgeport is a marginally better choice, as that town's AHL team draws a little better, and there is no record of the AFL already having flopped there. As far as the west is concerned, Boise and Reno already have teams in the new 4-team indoor league called the America West Football Conference. The Boise-area team, the Idaho Horsemen, are currently undefeated after eight games. So let's give them the spot in the Western Division of the fantasy AFL.

I guess that's true. That's the flaw in the logo. But I still kind of dig it.

Before the addition of the white outline, the Yankees looked like they were wearing wet paper bags. The white outline and the sleeve stripes made that uniform appear much sharper. And the same goes for the Dodgers.

Excellent point about the Dodgers. The white outline on the road is essential. And I think that this means that they have to have "Dodgers" and not "Los Angeles" on the road jersey, as the lettering in the longer wordmark of the city name probably couldn't take the white outline. I also agree about the inappropriateness of two different number fonts on a team's two uniforms. Unfortunately, the New York Streets, the new team in the NAL, have this as well.

I generally prefer a letter-based logo; there are too few of them for my taste, especially outside of baseball. So I like the second logo. That said, the letters do seem to be in the wrong order. Also, the hockey stick doesn't really read as a letter; the logo gives the impression of saying "CB" I actually love the "FC"/"SC" thing, and I am very pleased to see it become more prevalent. Last year the MASL's Syracuse Silver Knights moved to Utica. (Now there's an American naming tradition that I dislike: the "adjective + noun" style: Raging Rhinos, Fighting Pike, Mighty Ducks.) This team dumped that goofy name in favour of the dignified Utica City FC; and it adopted a beautiful uniform consisting of one kit with stripes of two shades of blue, another with blue and black stripes, and a third kit in white with blue sleeves. When FC Dallas and Toronto FC adopted those names, it was a forward-minded move; when NYCFC and LAFC did it, this type of naming was perhaps still trendy; when FC Cincinnati did it, this pattern was creeping into the mainstream. But when a team in a small city in an unglamourous league does it, we may take this as evidence that this sort of naming has become completely normalised. It is now not a "European" standard, but a fully (North) American one. As far as "Sporting", I don't have any problem with that, as they are playing a sport. Indeed, that's an English word that had been borrowed by teams in other countries. But "Real" in the name of Real Salt Lake is awful, and embarassing. Unless a club has some sanction by the king of Spain, it has no business with "Real". That club's name is one of three MLS team names that I strongly dislike, the other two being New England Revolution and New York Red Bulls, which are bad for other reasons.

I recently saw a television commercial for a life insurance company called Haven Life. I loved their logo, which combined the letters H and L by means of negative space. This looks more like LH than HL — though it is hard to think of a location with either of those two sets of initials. (Lake Havasu?) So maybe the logo would be used in the Colorado Rockies' style, to show both the locality and the nickname. If a justification could be found for either set of initials, this logo would look sharp on a baseball cap. Anyway, this logo reminds us that sometimes straight lines and two colours are all you need.

Atlantic City, not Atlanta. The remarkable thing is that this is the first time that the AFL is not the consensus top level of indoor football. The IFL is currently at least as strong. (Side note: the IFL's Nebraska Danger have an announcer in Steve Stein who is one of the best I have ever heard. Find any of that team's games on YouTube to hear a master in action.)

Oops! Sorry. And a tip of the hat to @jmoe12.

That's some good 1940s radio stuff right there. I listen to a lot of Jack Benny; and many of the recordings have a local station identification after the end of the episode in which the announcer says "This is KFI Los Angeleez." A more bizarre radio quirk of the day was to pronounce "Los Angeleez" with a hard G sound! That was relatively rare; but it did sometimes occur. David Letterman used to enjoy employing this archaic pronunciation. Or San Pedro as "San Peedro". You must have dug the episode of The Office in which Dunder Mifflin was acquired by the company Sabre. Before any of the characters had heard the new parent company's name pronounced, they all assumed it was "Sa-bray". Michael even wrote a song in which he extolled the virtues of "Sa-bray". [Edited to add my regret at having missed a reference to this earlier in the thread.]

No. The ideal is multiple regional leagues with minimal travel to save on costs. You can have a large league and still save on travel costs, simply by not having games between teams in far-flung locations. The MASL does it the right way. That league has an Eastern Conference and a Western Conference, but no inter-conference play. So San Diego never visits Baltimore.

While the Washington Federals were one of the USFL's worst-run teams, their logo and their green-and-black colour scheme were amongst the very best in a league of many excellent logos. A return of this dignified identity would be great. But it's hard to imagine McMahon or anyone connected to the WWE embracing a dignified aesthetic.

That script is beautiful. The logo is well done, even if it is a bit too cute for a hockey sweater.

My contact in the team's offices tells me to tell you to send an email to Brandon.Glogau@nystreetsfootball.com. That's good for a t-shirt. But I am going to buy a hat that has just the manhole cover logo that you see above, with no additional text. I am also hoping to buy a polo shirt. That probably has the circular logo with the team name below it; though, to be honest, I would actually prefer if it just had the circular NY logo.

Eh, I don't dig that one. It may be an early prototype, because the team doesn't seem to make use of it. The wordmark logo that they use looks like this: This looks a lot better to me. Any type of arching clashes with an aesthetic that is meant to evoke metal.

Ah, yes! Thank you for cluing me in.

For the second time on this page I have to ask a question whose answer I should know. How do you change your sig? It's been so long since I changed mine that I have forgotten. When I go to edit my profile, I don't see a place for the sig.

Indeed it is. I am still trying to work out how to fit the Streets' logo into my sig. It is a nice logo that is meant to resemble a manhole cover. And, because the team's online store is inoperatve, I have been in touch with someone at their offices in an effort to buy a cap and a polo shirt.

I will repeat a comment that I have made before on this topic. While I like arena football (you'll notice the logos of two AFL teams in my sig), I also see the flaws in the game. I have come to realise that it is possible to have too much scoring. When a touchdown becomes the expected result of every possession, and when you talk of "defensive stops" as you would do in basketball, then you know that something is seriously off-kilter. Even though every game of arena football will feature examples of tremendous skill, the games can get fatiguing. Arena football was most interesting when it was iron man football; seeing the wide receiver who just beat the defensive back have to turn around and guard him, seeing the linebacker who just tackled the running back now have to carry the ball and be tackled by that same player, this was fun. Without those built-in storylines, the game can become boring, even if it is a 56-49 game. I'll take a 14-10 game in which red zone plays have some tension to them and scoring is not a foregone conclusion, a game that can feature goal-line stands. New York has a new arena football team: the New York Streets of the NAL. They play at the Westchester County Center, where the Liberty play; and their games are televised on the MSG Network, with the games called by former Dragons announcer Peter Schwartz. I am pleased to say that the Streets have started their existence with wins in their first two games, including one against a well-stocked Jacksonville Sharks team that joined the NAL from the AFL a couple of years ago. This coming weekend they will face the defending NAL champion Carolina Cobras. The NAL has two nice rules: it uses the CFL rouge/single for a kick returned who cannot get out of the end zone; and it awards a two-point "deuce" to the kicking team if a kickoff goes through the uprights. These are good ideas. But I propose a radical reform to make arena football even more interesting: the elimination of first downs. Just have a single reset line at midfield; a team has four downs to get to that line, and then four more downs to get to the endzone. This way there would be a serious doubt about whether a team could score on any given possession. And of course bring back iron man play — though I could understand not having it for linemen, for the sake of sparing their heads too many hits. (When the Arena League had linemen playing both ways, it spawned an amusing little aphorism: How do you tell an offensive lineman from a defensive lineman? Line them up and slap each one on his helmet; the ones who don't flinch are offensive linemen.)

Here we imagine a scenario in which the three biggest leagues of arena/indoor football, the AFL, the IFL, and the NAL, merge into one grand reconstituted Arena Football League. ATLANTIC CONFERENCE CONTINENTAL CONFERENCE NORTHEAST MID-ATLANTIC SOUTHEAST NORTH CENTRAL WEST Albany Empire AC Blackjacks Carolina Cobras Bismarck Bucks Columbus Destroyers Arizona Rattlers Massachusetts Pirates Baltimore Brigade Columbus Lions Green Bay Blizzard CR River Kings SD Strike Force New York Streets Philadelphia Soul Jacksonville Sharks QC Steamwheelers Iowa Barnstormers Tucson Sugar Skulls Washington Valor Orlando Predators Sioux Falls Storm Nebraska Danger Schedule: no inter-conference play three-team divisions: 3 games vs. each divisional rival; 1 game vs. 6 non-divisional teams = 12 four-team divisions: 2 games vs. each divisional rival; 1 game vs. 6 non-divisional teams = 12 playoffs: divisional champs plus one wildcard from each conference

Right. That is a better match.

It looks like a font called Jersey M54 in all respects except the middle of the M. Maybe the M was modified later, and the pointy bottom of its middle section was flattened out.

Swap Cincinnati and Montreal.

The Nebraska Danger of the IFL have a great announcer! While I was waiting for the debut of the New York Streets of the NAL on YouTube, I happened across the IFL game between the Nebraska Danger and the Green Bay Blizzard. The game used Green Bay's television feed with the sound from Nebraska's radio call. And I discovered that the announcer on this radio call, Steve Stein of KRGI, is absolutely wonderful! He employs cadences and varying pitches in his voice so beautifully. Listening to him is a great pleasure, like hearing a virtuoso musician. I cannot say enough about his guy, who is clearly a phenomenal pro. Whatever KGRI is paying Stein, it is not enough. The job he does on this game is top-notch, worthy of the major leagues in any sport. (I will assume that he can call the other sports. With the command of his voice that he possesses, he surely could call baseball.) I will definitely make an effort to catch more of Steve Stein's calls in the future.

Wow, notwithstanding my stated preference for using the parent club's nickname, I really like this idea. I especially like the idea of using collared jerseys and pillbox caps.