Sykotyk
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Posts posted by Sykotyk
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1 hour ago, BrySmalls said:
The whole 2026 logo identity/package is a slap in the face for the most prestigious event in the sport.
The design is even worse than the 2012 Summer Olympics logos, which were a laughingstock!At least that had the redeeming quality of looking like Lisa Simpson playing her saxophone.
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7 hours ago, ujju2 said:
Um... Why is Toronto anything other than red and white? They come up with a
logo and can't even do the city-specific colour correctly.
Since when did the Sounders move to Toronto?
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9 hours ago, raysox said:
After sitting on it for a night and seeing more designs come out around the brand, I see what they were going for. I don't agree with a logo PNG front and center, but like, they went for a country neutral route for the biggest world cup yet. But there's a lot of interesting elements in the entire brand. It's a flexible logo for a world cup that spans 3 countries.
But then again, i've matured enough to see what the NFL is doing with the super bowl. That's what this is.I' m not going to let you polish this turd. This is bad and there's nothing redeeming about it. This not a logo. This is clipart disguised as a logo.
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2 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:
It think what you could see as well is the East-Central-West pairings for setting up schedules, but a single table where the top 16 to 20 teams make the playoffs and getting seeded out based on the current playoff setup. I believe the four time zones thing was a US Soccer issue, not FIFA, so they would just get that overturned pretty quickly. It's part of what helped kill off the NASL.
This would be good for an All Star setup, but I think fans in the East would want the LA teams to make the trip out, and fans in the West would want to see the best Eastern teams play in their stadiums as well.
I think we may see a two-stage approach to the season as well.
Take the 40 teams. Split them into 10 team conferences, everyone plays everyone else twice (18 games), play everyone in another conference once (10 games). That gives you 28 games in the first stage.
Take the Top 8 from each conference (32 teams), and put them into groups of 4 (random draw, by placement, whatever, just 8 groups of 4). 4 teams from each of the 4 conferences, one each. Have home and away (6 games).
Take the winner and runner-up of each group (16 teams), and hold first round, quarterfinal, semifinal, and the MLS Cup Final.
That's 28 games for 8 teams, 34 games for 16 teams, and only 16 teams will play more. Whether it's single elimination (preferable) or two-leg (acceptable), that's between 38 and 41 games for the finalists depending on tournament format (single or two-leg)
One thing for the first stage is, after 3 years you'd play everyone in the league at least once, after 6 years you'd play everyone both home and away. Plus, the second stage would be played against two teams that are entirely new that year.
The playoff tournament could be seeded one of two ways:
Group A #1 hosts Group B #2, Group B #1 hosts Group C #2, etc.
OR
Take the 16 qualifiers and seed them #1 through #16 based on total points for all Stage 1 and Stage 2 games. #1 v. #16, #2 v. #15, etc. This still gives impetus to do well in Stage 1 once you're assured of a position in Stage 2. And keeps teams wanting to win even if they know they're #2 in a Stage 2 group, a win might help them in seeding the elimination tournament.
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1 hour ago, WestCoastBias said:
I think a 20 team eastern and western conference is the most likely, with the two conferences only meeting each other in the MLS Cup final or US Open Cup and other tournaments.
Years ago FIFA had rules about top flight leagues in countries. Not sure if it still exists, but I don't think a top flight league can only cover parts of a country. Unless things have changed.
I think in an east/west scenario, you'd still have to play cross-conference games. I don't think too solid lined leagues would work. Especially since the middle of the country would lose out on some chief rivalries just due to being near the imaginary border.
If you took the 30 right now, and split east west, this would be the leagues:
WEST
Vancouver
Seattle
Portland
San Jose
LA Galaxy
LAFC
San Diego
Real Salt Lake
Colorado
Austin
FC Dallas
Houston
Sporting KC
Minnesota
St. Louis
EAST
Chicago
Nashville
Atlanta
Cincinnati
Columbus
Orlando
Charlotte
Miami
Toronto
DC
Philadelphia
Red Bulls
NYCFC
Montreal
New England
No STL-CHI? No MIN-CHI? No STL-NASH?
That'd be a tough plan to sell to the teams in The Middle™
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1 hour ago, gosioux76 said:
I don't know how anybody looks at that logo and doesn't see the clear intent to combine both a D and R. Knowing the XFL 2020 team was called the Dallas Renegades makes it even easier to draw a conclusion about the sequence of events here.
But regardless of how it happened, the fact that the debate between whether it's just and R or a D/R exists is evidence enough that this is muddled branding.
I'll agree with @Ferdinand Cesarano on one point: It is a very nice logo — but for a team named Dallas Renegades. It's otherwise not a strong enough "R" on its own.
I think the weakness of the logo is that the 'stalk' of the R is shorter than the leg sticking down to the right.
It almost feels like it's missing this:
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That sounds like it's just in the offseason so they don't need to cut a player from their roster to bring on a rookie from this draft. But, I'm guessing sometime around training camp they'll trim the rosters back down to the usual number. I didn't see that written out anywhere or missed it.
Either way, this is a good thing for UDFA that still don't get picked up by an NFL team for the fall season.
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2 hours ago, GriffinM6 said:
At this point, we might as well bump the league up to 40 teams and have pro-rel between the top 2 tiers. A single top-flight league with this many teams at this rate just doesn't make sense in the long run.
No one is spending $500 million to get a spot in the league and then demoted to the second tier.
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14 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:
I wonder if that's them playing at MetLife instead of Citi or Yankee Stadium? I could see that being in play during the European tour season in July. But playing at Yankee stadium because it has more seats, but absolute crap atmosphere in comparison, makes little sense.
Could definitely see them increasing demand so that a game at MetLife could work when they're playing Red Bulls, or if Messi is at Inter Miami and they're @ NYCFC, or LAFC comes to town, etc and they know they can expect much more than their small stadium can hold. The overflow demand from week to week might fill 80k once or twice a year. Get the league to plan the schedule right they might even bring in grass at MetLife for two games a few weeks apart in June.
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9 minutes ago, aawagner011 said:
After the initial shock has worn off, another takeaway of mine is that there is a reason using actual images does not make for successful logos.
Also, it sounds like this will be the norm going forward. If I reading the press release correctly, it sounds like future World Cups will follow a similar brand language like the Super Bowl started using a round 2010 or so.
I absolutely despise this idea that people can't figure out it's a World Cup without a World Cup Trophy in the logo the same as the NFL did to the Super Bowl.
Each one is unique and memorable in its own right. By trying to meld them altogether into one you begin to forget them individually and nothing becomes remarkable. NBA/NHL/MLB has this problem with older tournaments. Who won the NBA Finals 3 years ago?
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7 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:
Last October was when it was released, and the change to Arlington was made.
That article is from October. This article is from July where the league announced their deal with Arlington to be the 'hub' and also what cities would host teams..
Either they had been working on the identities before July (extremely likely) OR they created the D/R logo AFTER agreeing to change to Arlington and call the team Arlington.
If it's before, then they simply liked the logo too much after the wheels were greased by Arlington and Arlington became the name.
OR
The logo was created AFTER this announcement and the subsequent city name was chosen, as an easter egg for Dallas, the chief city in the area most people know. Similar to a TC logo for the Twins. Not officially anything related to the team.
Either way, I just don't like it as a logo. Partly because too many clamoring for the old single letter logos of the past (Bears C, etc). Are that they were a monumental change from the older looks where teams didn't wear any sort of logos. It was colors/striping, etc that signified the teams. Logos were simple and hand painted onto the leather helmets or baked into the plastic shells. They had to be simple.
They're not great because they were simple. They're simple because the teams generally were already well established before logos became a thing on the uniforms.
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2 hours ago, VampyrRabbit said:
And hopefully they will come up with a much more inspiring name than FC San Diego.
Charger FC
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On 5/12/2023 at 8:08 AM, Digby said:
Architect-speak might be worse than Nike-speak. I guess it reflects New York's honestly sanitizing any character it's ever had for generic silver boxy thing that could exist anywhere, but everything costs twice as much because New York.
Also this: 'According to the term sheet, the team may play up to three home matches a year outside of the new stadium even after the stadium is fully operational. The reason? NYCFC’s ability to leverage a “significantly larger seating capacity”.' Why would you even say that??? Who's looking at these Citi Field games and saying, yeah, we're sure gonna miss this someday?
Sounds like a Montreal Alouettes situation. Small stadium creates scarcity and you could then leverage that scarcity into filling the larger Olympic Stadium from time to time. But without scarcity the average game loses all emphasis to get tickets in advance and you're more affected by day of game weather, etc.
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20 minutes ago, Cujo said:
Where the heck else is he suppose to place expansion teams? Canada and the Northeast US only have so many major cities.
To add, Canada stole from the US last time a team relocated.
Stole? Where else was Atlanta going? The other prime growing cities were covered. Atlanta, Nashville, Phoenix,...
Where would they go? SLC? San Antonio? Houston? Kansas City?
Sure, Seattle was always a possibility, but the arena and getting in there were never going to happen without a lot of planning. Atlanta was a much more last minute relocation.
NHL went to Columbus instead of Cleveland or Cincy, which effectively eliminated both of those options. Indianapolis is much more basketball-centric and probably struggles to get a third team there. Baltimore is never happening. Charlotte isn't happening with Raleigh. San Jose takes the rest of the SF Bay area. San Diego is a no due to venue options. LV was a pipedream at the time, long term yes, but not at the time. Kansas City is MAYBE a market suited to host a team with the Sprint Center (now T-Mobile Center) but KC isn't exactly a market able to handle a third team when they have arguably the two most expensive leagues to support (NFL and MLB).
Memphis? Nah. They just got NBA and are lucky to support that. Milwaukee? Admirals have had a long standing tradition there, but what venue was going to take in an NHL team and make it valuable?
By the time Atlanta failed (and Arizona failing), there wasn't much of an option for new markets. Las Vegas and Seattle were definitely possibilities with a new venue. LV especially. But at the time only one market really had a strong view of getting the revenue needed to not contract them. It's why NHL is letting Arizona slum it in a 4500 seat arena. They don't have a choice. And the sweet $650 million expansion fee for Seattle was better suited for the league than letting Arizona walk.
The only markets NHL has been successful in the south are markets where other sporting options were limited. TB started when it was just the Bucs. Raleigh had college sports. San Jose was the up-and-coming southern sprawl of the bay area. Anaheim was suburban hell where fans of the Kings weren't driving that far when they had the new Ducks at home.
Really the biggest relocation/expansion team early on was the Avalanche. Who barely moved to town to an old stadium the same year the new Rockies a few years old opened Coors Field. There already was Broncos and Nuggets, but it was much more a 'hockey town' and winning the Stanley Cup their first year definitely helped solidify a fan base.
Meanwhile, Winnipeg was in prime uncontested real estate. Far enough from other markets they didn't see flack from nearby cities. Edmonton and Calgary were too far for the Canada markets to care, and Minnesota probably has very little sway nor care much if they were to lose some North Dakota support.
They went to the only major city that really wanted a team. If another Winnipeg existed today Arizona might have a new home already. But they're insistent on keeping teams in the south even though they struggle for support without winning much more than northern cities would.
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On 5/8/2023 at 7:25 PM, BBTV said:
"All games are free agents" - I wonder how that will work, considering the package was sold as AFC=CBS, NFC=FOX, select games on Thursday and SNF (NBC.) Seems to be a pretty dramatic shift to the model that would require a lot of sign off. Maybe there's some kind of draft? They'd need to do it well in advance to plan the travel for the production crews.
I like not having to think, and I like that the pregame shows tend to focus on the package they cover. Will get used to it, just like anything, but I like the stability and reliability of knowing that non-prime-time games are usually on FOX unless they're playing an AFC team in Phila, in which case CBS.
Word on the street is that the Eagles may be tapped for the Black Friday game for some reason, which could be great... or could be awful.
When it comes to the 1pm timeslot, the big driver for both Fox and CBS will be which local markets NEED the game more for viewership (both home and away team numbers).
Imagine there's a Browns @ Colts game. WJW (fox) and WOIO (CBS) are both the local stations in Cleveland that want that game. But over in Indianapolis, it's between WTTV (CBS4) and WXIN (FOX59).
Tribune Media owns WJW, WTTV, and WXIN. Gray Television owns WOIO. Indy is a wash regardless which network gets it, but you gotta believe WOIO is SCREAMING at CBS to get that game on their network instead of letting Tribune get it on their stations in both markets.
The only matter CBS and Fox has is which one might draw better outside their local markets. But you gotta believe there isn't a huge difference unless it's a disparity in total number of games each has and matchup wise there's a better one out there (say 6 for one network and only 4 for the other). But they've got to keep their local affiliates happy.
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18 hours ago, Cujo said:
So you're suggesting Bettman rigged a 30 year Cup run for the US?
Who said rigged? It's just what he wanted. His southern strategy has been a thing since TB and FLA started, and the relocation of the Jets and Whalers.
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Well, this is what Bettman wanted. The only way it could've been better is if Arizona was hosting in their matchbox rink.
Sure, Seattle isn't 'southern', but they're expansion. If Dallas wins game 7... every team remaining would be south of Kentucky....
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1 hour ago, MJWalker45 said:
They did this last year and still had low numbers because fans were expected to be there for close to 8 hours depending on start times for games. And it looks like Memphis, Birmingham, and Michigan are the only teams that have actually decent numbers, though Memphis didn't have them today as the away team at their home stadium.
New Orleans v. Memphis was at Birmingham.
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2 hours ago, MJWalker45 said:
Just using that dark silver helmet and a Texas flag stripe like Maryland has used for spring practice is the better way to go than this year's helmets.
I hope they revisit the Houston (and Arlington) helmets for next season.
That flag helmet just looks bad. Like they forgot to paint one half.
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1 hour ago, GDAWG said:
I had forgotten that Maddox was in the NFL for a few years after XFL 1.0 and had been replaced by Big Ben in the middle of the 2004 season.
He only lost the starting job because of injury. Sure, Ben was drafted to be the future starter. But they didn't expect him to have to go in Week 2. And that's why their offense was so unbelievably vanilla. Hand off to Bettis again and again and again. He only averaged 21 pass attempts per game, 187 yards per game. His SB winning season in 2005, he averaged 22 pass attempts per game, 198 yards per game.
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3 hours ago, Cujo said:
With the XFL season over, giving the USFL a look today. Maybe 50 fans in the stands today, so artificial crowd noise is piped in on every play. But still not cranked up enough to drown out the drones. The constant buzzing is maddening.
The drones are really my biggest complaint about a USFL broadcast. If not for them, I actually favor their production of games over the XFL. But not with the drones buzzing around.
Also, agreed about the crowd noise. They do have the crowds miked up, so they're using that I think as their barometer to how much and when crowd noise is added. So it just makes anything inaudible as a low roar. Since I doubt they have someone manually changing things for each play.
But they messed up their scheduling. These games need to be true doubleheaders on one ticket where you'll see some carry-over from one game to the next. People aren't going to buy single game tickets for a team that doesn't actually represent their city. Yesterday should've been 2 Detroit games and today the two Birmingham games. I know maybe Mothers day they figured just shove the games out there and not worry about crowds. But, it does look bad when there's a stadium shot and it's just a few dozen people
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1 hour ago, MJWalker45 said:
That's just silly, it isn't. It was just a way to get the Arlington name onto the helmet instead of Dallas.
I agree. But then it should've been an Arlington themed logo.
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13 minutes ago, Ted Cunningham said:
Were there copyright/trademark issues with using the previous logos? Or was everything changed to "refresh" them? I honestly can't remember if that question was asked/answered.
They bought the entire league. Everything. If there were issues with rights, they'd never be able to get away with things like DC, Houston, St. Louis, etc using the same names or reusing the Guardians or Vipers logos.
It was mostly a refresh with a new 'cutting edge' look where Vince with XFL 2.0 was going more for a 'patriotic hometown feel' to the names/logos after the brash Degeneration X style of XFL 1.0.
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logo and can't even do the city-specific colour correctly.
Interesting Sports Facts and Statistics
in Sports In General
Posted
I was just thinking how the Colorado Avalanche and Florida Panthers played for the Cup Colorado's first season.
Broncos and Dolphins can't in the NFL, but for as successful as they've been making the Super Bowl never faced off in either the AFL or AFC Championship Game.