Gothamite

7 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Doubt it, considering this was their BP cap last season

But that's not the same design.  I don't think the city of Reno has a trademark on "the word Reno on a cap", but they might have a trademark on this specific wordmark:

3 hours ago, NicDB said:

Why not just have one that says Reno in that font?

Maybe the city has a trademark on that design. 

Even the mighty Yankees decided they’d be better off lowering capacity.  Most games feel more crowded, which to them was worth not being able to sell those extra seats for big games. 

Owners want to find ways to support other owners.  This isn’t a great surprise, even if it remains a profoundly stupid plan. 

15 hours ago, Dolphins Dynasty said:

I really like the combination of buff(?) and blue.

Me, too.  Good color combination, and historically very resonant.

whynotboth.gif

10 hours ago, GDAWG said:

Ah okay.  Still I think one person owning multiple teams is not a good idea. It never is and it's one of the reason's that the sport of Indoor Football is a mess.

You're absolutely correct.  Major League Soccer did this for a while, but only out of desperation, and as soon as the league was stable (meaning the strategy had worked), the owners sold off the extra teams to new ownership.

10 hours ago, GDAWG said:

That and the leagues tend to allow anyone in who has money without regard for background checks.  It's the total opposite of how the major professional leagues vet potential owners.  I always wonder how the owners of these indoor teams make their money.  The only indoor/arena football team owners with any credibility were Ted Leonsis and (probably) Ron Jaworski.  We know how both made their money and where it came from.  For many of these owners, an indoor football team is the only team they own so they lack the experience to own a sports team.  Now I know that the NFL experiment with the AFL failed, but at the least some of these owners could own minor league teams in other sports but they don't. 

This is the real problem.  Many minor leagues don't properly vet new owners, largely because they themselves can't afford to.  If they kept out the hustlers and con men, they wouldn't have enough owners at all.  Keeping with our soccer theme, we saw this with the second incarnation of the NASL.  They took in people who just didn't have the money to run a team, and then expressed shock and surprise when they failed to keep up.

You want to talk competitive integrity?  It starts with the league making sure that the owners can afford to pay the bills and then ensuring that they do.

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MLS has investors, not owners and I think that the Indoor leagues should go this route at least. Single entity is a conflict of interest in a lot of ways.  If one ones multiple teams in the same league and that owner has a lot of power in that league (as Rob Stone does in the NAL) it would be considered as favoritism, giving those teams an unfair advantage over everyone else. 

Single-entity is not at all the same thing as one person owning more than one team.

Single-entity is a creative corporate structure that in practice is virtually identical to franchise structures like MLB, the NFL, or NBA.  There’s a greater difference between condo and co-op apartments than there is between single-entity and the franchise model.  Yet nobody doubts that co-op “shareholders” actually own their apartments in all but the most technical sense.

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

It is saddening to see people get so consumed by a weird hatred of small leagues

Oh, yeah.  Insults will totally camouflage the fact that you’re losing the argument on its merits.

Tell you what, you don’t psychoanalyze your fellow posters, and we’ll agree not to notice that your lauded socialist concern for working people gets tossed aside when you happen to like their corporate master.  Deal?

This is an issue of workplace safety, first and foremost.  It’s sad that the Streets didn’t take their responsibility seriously, and it’s beyond pathetic that the league didn’t force them to.  The only ones blameless in this situation are the workers who decided they didn’t actually have to put up with an unsafe environment and used the little power they have to do something about it.

But if you want to ignore the workplace safety and focus on the integrity of competition, here’s a competitive hypothetical for you - given the precedent that the NAL has now set, what’s to prevent another team from going down 46-0 in the first half of a game, and deliberately creating unsafe conditions to rattle the other team or push them not to finish it?  After all, the Streets got a slap on the wrist while Carolina got a win taken away from them.  That’s a trade that a desperate team might willingly make.  What does that established precedent do for the competitive integrity of the league?

18 minutes ago, Brian in Boston said:

Point 1: The league's decision to continue said game is just the latest example of behavior that speaks to the lack of integrity displayed by NAL leadership. 

Point 2: There was the possibility that a person could have entered said unguarded locker room after the thief began to burgle the lockers of Carolina Cobras personnel. There was the possibility that said thief, startled while caught in the act of burgling the property of Carolina Cobras personnel could have reacted violently. While it is fortunate that such an occurrence did not take place, I can certainly understand why Carolina Cobras personnel - alerted to the fact that their locker room had not been secured properly by the host New York Streets organization, resulting in their property being stolen - would be disturbed enough to not wish to continue with the game.

Again, I’m absolutely shocked that any of this is in dispute.  Are the rights of workers so disposable when they get in the way of our entertainment?
 

The league behaved shamefully.  They should not have forced Carolina to work in an unsafe environment.  If the league had any integrity at all, they would have postponed the game. And if a forfeit was necessary, it shouldn’t have rewarded the team who failed to create a safe working environment.
 

The situation was entirely the Streets’ fault in the first place; their failure was the original sin from which everything else sprung. Bad enough that Carolina was punished at all, and absolutely deplorable that the league decided to punish them more. 

52 minutes ago, Kevin W. said:

If my employer doesn't provide me with a safe working environment, I have the right to refuse to work.

I mean, this isn’t even a close call. 
 

The NAL showed it has no integrity when they decided that Carolina’s refusal to play under unsafe conditions was the real problem, instead of the Street’s failure to maintain a safe workplace.

No employer with any integrity forces players to work in an unsafe environment. 
 

Teams refusing to play is a problem, to be sure.  And in most cases deserves a high sanction.  But in this particular scenario, it was done in response to a previous and far more serious violation, the Street’s inability to create a secure workspace.  Everything stemmed from that prior failure, and that made Carolina’s actions entirely justifiable.
 

The NAL showed that it has a total lack of integrity when they tried to “both sides!” this embarrassment, punishing Carolina for not tolerating an unsafe workspace.

On 1/2/2020 at 4:56 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The game was properly forfeited to the Streets because Carolina walked off.  A team cannot unilaterally decide not to play.

When the environment around the game is not safe?  They sure as hell can.  And should.

On 1/2/2020 at 4:50 PM, Sodboy13 said:

That's the New York-est team there ever was.

Don’t drag us into the Westchester mess.  They were a suburban team in “urban” cosplay drag. 

1 hour ago, Digby said:

I think it’s useful to go back to why the name has changed to start with; as far as I know “California Angels” was just fine and they only changed to “Anaheim” because Disney was trying to synergize. That’s not a good enough reason!

And because Anaheim paid them to.  Don’t forget that part of it. 

What an amazingly terrible idea. 

11 hours ago, dfwabel said:

Remember, a City Manager is hired and can only recommend items.  S/he can ask for the world, but if s/he fail, they will be gone quickly. 

They don't make policy, they recommend policy.

I didn’t read that as the City Manager alone made the request, I read that as the city itself.  Which may have been the City Manager, or whomever is in charge of the negotiations.  But didn’t think at all that was just one person’s ask. 

10 hours ago, monkeypower said:

Did Anaheim pay them to change to Anaheim? I always thought it was attributed to Disney.

It was one of the things Anaheim requested as part of the stadium upgrades.  No name change, no public money. 
 

I'm sure Disney was more than willing, since for years Disney wanted to make “Anaheim” a synonym for their company the same way that “Hollywood” is for the film industry.  Their interests were served by the deal, but it was still a naming rights deal. 

The only reason they changed it in the first place was because Anaheim paid them to.  So no, I’m not interested in seeing it come back. 

No, good.

I hate naming rights deals for stadiums.  I detest them for teams. 

Good. 
 

I like it a lot, but the Georgia outline on the back is a misstep. Forces the numbers into too small a space, too low on the back. 

19 hours ago, jn8 said:

And from the head up, nothing separates the Broncos, Bears, or Texans, other than decals.

And in a league of 32 teams, there will inevitably be a certain amount of overlap. 
 

But in an 8-team league?  With centralized ownership?  There’s no excuse for that.  

1 hour ago, monkeypower said:

I don't know if I fully explained the difference because I didn't know you didn't know.

 

Independent league baseball is semi-pro baseball. It's professional baseball, just leagues not affiliated with the MLB or MiLB.

On 12/6/2019 at 5:45 PM, Brian in Boston said:

Maybe it's just me, but I find something odd - indeed, off-putting - about the Narwhal playing dress-up in sea-captain's garb while wielding a harpoon. It would be like the Milwaukee Bucks rolling out a primary mark that depicted a deer sporting a winter ear-flap cap, camouflage hunting jacket, and orange safety vest, while toting a bolt action rifle.    

I always felt that way about this Bucks alternate logo:

That is so clearly a hunter's trophy.