WideRight

That is a really nice spin on Juve. Kind of hoping they go with something like "Lou City" or "Lou Racing" just to see the look on British faces when they hear that one.

Pizzash!te FC Anyone who has ever tried St. Louis style pizza will agree that this name is entirely appropriate.

FC Sporting St. Louis City Athletic United OK, just kidding. Not that I am going to root for STL no matter what look they go with, but my hope is that they find a way to pick a unique color palette. Red + Blue is played out, and even Red-Blue-Gold is already in Chicago and SLC. Not a lot of unique color combos left to go with, but they could create a unique identity by embracing a jersey element that others don't have yet (half & half, quarters, checkers, diamond pattern, reverse sash (Right shoulder to left hip), or even an Ajax style wide center stripe, since it seems Philly has abandoned that look.

I expect that all 12 people who live east of Hood River would not find it very appropriate, but since something like 95% of all Oregonians live west of Hood River, I think it still works.

I am sure the students will come up with a hilarious, sophomoric, and likey obscene name for the battle between the ducks and beavers, if they haven't already. If not, then "The Woke Bowl" makes sense for Oregon.

Some of the team names do sound ridiculous when they try to "feminize" them. There is no need if the name is gender neutral. You don't need to be the Lady Wildcats, Lady Bulldogs, or Lady Badgers. Sometimes it makes things much worse. I believe it is Bradley that has the Braves and the Bravettes (it might be a HS in the area, I don't recall) which just feels insulting. And I really hope it was never the "Lady Crimson Tide". It does make sense if the name is gender specific like Bulls, Stallions, Minutemen, etc. I love what some schools like Hawai'i and Western Illinois do by having completely different names for male/female teams.

And the final team of the 18-franchise expanded CFL. COLUMBUS CRUSH Wanted to do something a bit more Bosack here (ie. fun, minor league, cartoony) and I found a really great Dinosaur e-sports logo by Blankid that gave me inspiration. You will see a lot of his logo in my secondary. The main focus is on the crushed earth beneath the T-rex foot demolishing the state of Ohio. The colors remind me quite a lot of the WLAF's Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks. Of course all 3 main Ohio State colors are here (Red-Silver-Black) along with a dinosaur green. The uniform uses the crushed earth theme quite a bit as well. It is red-dominant (Columbus, OH after all) but with enough green to distinguish it from anything "THE" Ohio State U. would wear. Of course another influence here is the really great Prague Golems logo made by Josef_Bretones in his Old-Continent League series. All the teams are revealed, which means this thread is winding down. I may still have a couple of updates left in me, and then I will move on to something else. At some point I have to put together the 2020 edition of the CFFL Media Guide, for America's greatest fantasy football league. We had 7 teams relocate this year, so there is a lot to highlight (most of the designs are on an older thread here.) Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, critiques, support and enthusiasm for this project.

Huge surprise!!! The CFL abandons its "close to the border" strategy for U.S. based teams and places a team in Florida. Of course, we have to remember that there is a huge population of retired Canadians living in Florida, as well as retired northerners from the U.S. as well, so perhaps a team in Florida is not really a departure from selecting teams that are in areas with a familiarity with Canada and with the CFL. ORLANDO SNOWBIRDS Yup, it's a celebration of the annual migration of northerners to the Sunshine State as Orlando's franchise pays tribute to the vacationers and retirees who come to Florida each winter to escape the cold and ice. The logo depicts the mythical Snowbird, icicles hanging from its wings, as it seeks out the bright yellow-orange sun of Florida. The secondary logo also combines the two climates with a snowflake surrounded by sunshine. With the uniforms I decided I had been getting too conservative, particularly with the helmets, lately. So, a two-toned helmet, separated by the white wings of the snowbird. The jerseys carry over this iconography by using a broad chest & sleeve stripe to divide the snowy blue from the sunshine yellow. On the pants the two colors are separated by the secondary logo. And, since it is Florida, and the team will play a lot of games in the heat of summer, the whites are all-white to maximize cooling. Only 1 team left, in the Central Divsion. Will it be Detroit? Columbus? Omaha? Duluth? Des Moines? or maybe somewhere else no one has suggested?

I am not imagining a world where a city or the CFL could afford to build new stadiums for CFL in the USA, so there has to be a stadium in place that with some adjustments could hold a CFL field. That means mostly football or soccer stadiums, which rules out cities like Milwaukee and Omaha, which only have large-ish baseball stadiums, and some smaller cities such as Duluth, which is both way smaller than even Halifax and also does not have a stadium capable of holding even 15k. So, we are looking for cities with populations of about 500k or more, and with a football stadium of at least 18,000 but less than 60,000. It makes the options list a lot smaller, doesn't it?

I expect I will be revisiting a few of the designs, and St. Louis is definitely one I could update. Thank you all for the feedback. For now, the last of the 16 planned CFL franchises, and then a medium-to-big announcement: HARTFORD OAKS Named for the famous "Charter Oak" which symbolizes Connecticut's role in the American Revolution and its founding as a state, the Hartford Oaks also recalls an earlier local team from the old Continental Football League in the 1960's. Rather than depict the oak itself, and after several failed attempts to try to figure out a way to merge an oak tree and a figure similar to Pat the Patriot, I went a different direction. Let's assume the owner of this franchise is an alum of Ohio State and opted for a very OSU looking logo. In addition to the Acorn & Leaf "O" which will adorn the helmets, there are several "O" designs, including one that tries to incorporate an "H" as well (a la Whalers). The team colors of deep oak brown and leaf green is unique in professional sports today. The uniforms also give off something of a collegiate vibe, with traditional block numbers, wide sleeve stripes and two parallel stripes on the helmet and pants, to parallel the secondary logos' split "O" motif. And now the announcement... The CFL, having received so many strong bids for U.S. Expansion, has opted to abandon its plan for a 16 team league of 4 four-team divisions, and will expand up to 18 franchises, divided into three divisions of 6 teams, each including both Canadian and U.S. franchises. The structure of the league will be as follows: EAST: Atlantic Schooners--Québec Voyageurs--Montréal Alouettes--Ottawa RedBlacks--Hartford Oaks--Expansion Team #17 CENTRAL: Toronto Argonauts--Hamilton Tiger-Cats--London Wolves--Winnipeg Blue Bombers--St. Louis Stealth--Expansion Team #18 WEST: Saskatchewan Roughriders--Calgary Stampeders--Edmonton Eskimos--BC Lions--Boise Bulls--Portland Chinook So, two more teams to come, plus some revisions as needed.

And our third U.S. team is football returning to St. Louis. ST. LOUIS STEALTH Playing in the new MLS open air stadium in St. Louis. My original idea was to create a logo for the St. Louis Lightning that would have a bolt passing from S to T to L, but as I aligned different configurations of letters this version emerged and I recognized that the shape would fit within a stealth bomber or stealth fighter design, so I shifted gears (and color schemes), taking inspiration from the UFL's Omaha Nighthawks, and created an StL stealth plane. Still debating if it needs motion lines or some other feature to highlight that this is a jet and not just random diamond patterns. As for the colors, black and two tones of grey seem the best option to convey the "stealthy" nature of the design. For the uniform I went for something which I normally reject, the unitard look. With this identity it just seemed to make sense to do an all-black look, and a mostly all-white look. Helmet and jersey striping is very thin, to add a little of the grey/black to the jerseys but not enough to take away from the overall dominance of one color. And, since the design on the plane only works left to right, I did another thing I normally dislike, but which makes sense here, the 1 logo helmet with numbers on the reverse side.

For our second US-based team we stick close to the Canadian border and introduce a city to its first major league sports team. BOISE BULLS Boise seems an ideal location for a CFL franchise. It is close to Canada, but far from other pro teams (Seattle? Denver?). They have a very good football culture thanks to the success found at Boise State, which also supplies them with a good-sized stadium. The only drawback is that Boise State has that famously (hideous) blue turf. So, if you place a team there, you better use blue as a dominant color. I was again looking at local fauna for inspiration, and the moose just seemed right, but rather than call them the Boise Moose, or the Bull Moose, I thought Bulls would work well, with most folks in the region knowing that a male moose is a bull. For the colors I went with 2 tones of Blue from Boise State's official palette, and paired it with a color from the world of the Idaho potato, Russet, a red-brown color. As you will see in the uniform, this palette of colors started looking a lot like the Buffalo Bills, so I rolled with that and went with a very Bills look for the team. Red (russet) helmets and blue jerseys. I decided to add the state of Idaho into the main logo both to increase the amount of red in the logo and to provide more local flavor. The main features of the uniform are the moose antler helmet design (too good to pass up) and the tri-color numbers. Like I said, very Buffalo Bills inspired. The secondary B-Idaho-Bull logo is on each sleeve.

Here it is folks, the first USA Expansion for the CFL since the early 1990's. PORTLAND CHINOOK Portland is an ideal CFL city. Located within the Cascade region that includes Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, Portland already has a rivalry with the city of Vancouver through MLS, so the same fanbase can go to the same stadium and watch their team take on the BC Lions in an instant rivalry. For the team, I wanted something intrinsically Northwestern. It was between the Steelheads and the Chinook, and I felt like the salmon was just a better option from a color and a name perspective. Initially I tried doing the logo with tones of green, but the look was just not right, so I ended up with three different tones of pale, almost slate blue, and then the bright contrast of the salmon pink/red. For the uniforms my inspiration was the Hasselbeck-era Seahawks uniform, one of my all-time favorites. It uses the interplay of the different blues to recreate the striping of the Chinook salmon, and just like Seattle with bright green, the salmon red is used only sparingly to create a pop of color. The pant stripes are supposed to recreate the striping on the salmon logo. With the helmet I tried all three blues, thinking the lightest one (silvery blue) would be the best, but it turned out that the medium blue gave the best look. The overall look is a lot like those early 2000's Seahawks, but without the unitard, as I would pair the white pants with the dark jersey and vice versa.

That actually was by choice. Since the Wolves will share UWO's stadium, I wanted the color scheme to be similar so that they could keep the same basic color scheme to the stadium. It is something I have thought about with a few teams (especially the expansion teams that share uniforms), though clearly I did not do this with Quebec, who would share a stadium with the U. of Laval Rouge et Or.

I almost went this direction with the Wolves, but UConn did it so well, anything I did would just be derivative. I love this helmet treatment.

And our final Canadian team... LONDON WOLVES There is no purple in the CFL, so we needed to add some, right? Welcome the London Wolves. Indigenous animal to the Great White North, plus a nice vague reference to London (UK) and a team that can really pull off purple and silver. Inspiration came from multiple wolf-head logos, as well as some of what UConn did with their husky logo. As for the uniforms, we went with a scratch pattern as the dominant theme, paired with the angular font of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Tomorrow: We introduce the first of our USA expansion teams. We will do like we did with the original 9 CFL teams and start in the Pacific Northwest, then head east for all 4 franchises.

Big Day today. We move from reimagined CFL teams to brand new teams and identities. We start with the first of 2 new Canadian expansion teams. Québec (City) Voyageurs Having used a fleur-de-lis with Montreal, I wanted to do something different with the team's identity. There is a fleur-de-lis as one of the secondary logos, but that is not a main part of the identity. Decided to go with Voyageurs because it is a historical identity closely linked with Quebec and with French Canada as a whole. For the colors I wanted a unique color scheme, and what I ended up with looks a lot like Tulane, which is fine, a nice Cajun-Arcadian French connection. My one concern with the logo package here is that the main logo is perhaps not very dynamic or "sports" focused. It kind of looks like a tourism logo rather than a sports team. Not sure how to portray Voyageurs without it looking a bit placid (open to ideas). ' As for the uniforms, I really wanted to make the most of the dark green that I really like a lot. The logo (Primary and secondary) appear, and the striping is pretty traditional. And, in case you have not noticed, I have a ton of NFL fonts I use on these, and Quebec got the Eagles. I think it works with the historical, "refined" look of the team.

Yes and no. I lived in Rock Island for 22 years, but last January moved for work, so no longer there. I just have not updated my profile.

CFL Expansion to Halifax becomes a reality. ATLANTIC SCHOONERS After years of frustration, the Atlantic Provinces finally receive their CFL franchise, as the Atlantic Schooners, playing in Halifax, Nova Scotia, become the CFL's 10th franchise. The logo of the Schooners is designed to inspire the power of the sea, the speed of sailing ships, and the heritage of the region. Included within the logo are an "A" monogram made of sails and sky, a fast-moving ship with a football in its bow, and waves of blue sea that also call back the St. Andrew's Cross of Scotland. This is not a new design for me, as I proposed this when the CFL announced a few years back that they were looking at reviving the Schooners franchise. The colors are a bit "Dolphinesque" for the North Atlantic, but it represents a unique color palette for the CFL and captures the true colors of sea, sky and schooners on a summer day. The secondary logo combines two additional nautical symbols, the ship's wheel and the mariner's compass. The uniform uses color block sleeve colors, a bold 5 stripe pattern, and angled player numbers with a drop shadow to convey speed and movement. Alternate jerseys in Navy are also expected to be revealed at a later date. Coming tomorrow, the two additional Canadian expansion teams which will allow the league to split into 3 divisions: EAST: Atlantic, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City CENTRAL: Hamilton, London, Toronto, Winnipeg WEST: BC, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatchewan

And now the last of the actual current CFL teams. MONTREAL ALOUETTES This is perhaps the redesign I am most excited about. I started off trying to make a slightly modernized version of the 1970's- 1980's Ferragamo era logo (see below), but it quickly became apparent that by curving the letters more I could approximate a fleur-de-lis, often used symbol of Québec. What I ended up with was a logo which includes the alouette bird, the fleur-de-lis, and still maintains the "M" for Montreal. It also harkens back to the older Alouettes logo and the colors & symbolism found in the Expos logo. For the secondary, I just created more of a "corporate" look by placing the symbol inside a rondel with the team info around it. Of course there would also be a french version of this, but for now we are sticking with English (my French is not what it used to be and I just did not want to risk messing it up.) So, here are the logos for the reimagined Alouettes. Commentary on uniforms to follow. As for the unis, I tried to blend the Ferragamo era (see the jersey shoulders and sleeves) with the more modern "charging bird" era, skipping the current 2 color design completely. The one significant adjustment is that I decided to go with tapering stripes on the helmet and pants rather than straight stripes. I am not a big fan of side panels on jerseys (my designs occasionally have them, but not often) so there are no white side panels separating the blue and red sections, only shoulder striping. Next up, we enter into the world of imagined CFL expansion. The first team is an obvious one, the Atlantic Schooners. They will be followed by 2 additional Canadian franchises (creating a 3 division CFL with East, Central & Western divisions) and then a 4 team USA Division. Over on the Requests board (visible only to members of the site) I have placed my 9 top candidates for USA franchises. I would love feedback on which I should choose and why.

Already through with our 3 Ontario teams. Only 1 current CFL team left after this one. OTTAWA REDBLACKS I was very tempted to use this slot to bring back the Rough Riders, just for the whole 2 teams with "the same" name laugh, and because "RedBlacks" is a bizarre and not very useful name. But, I decided that I would keep it because the Rough Riders history of logos is not a good one, while the lumberjack theme of the RedBlacks offers some good options. For the main logo I wanted to keep the lumberjack theme, but swapped out the buzzsaw for a cut tree motif, building the ax head into the iconic Ottawa "R". You may recognize the ax head as part of the U. of Northern Arizona branding. I added an extra layer to depict the sharpened edge. The secondary is the R alone, but then I thought "We need a Johnny Cannuck style lumberjack here", so I added a second additional logo, and liked it so much it made it onto the uniform. And, of course, the uniform had to have some lumberjack flannel plaid in it, right? I tried adding some to the pant stripe as well, but it started to look too kitschy, so just the sleeves. Decided to bring back the single red helmet stripe as a nod to the Riders, and I am not entirely sold on the number font, but I think the plaid turned out pretty decent.

Thanks for pointing that out. I re-uploaded the image to Imgur and I think that fixed the issue. It looks smoother to me now. Check it out on the original post.

Just finished a few more teams, but will release them 2 per day. Today we start with my favorite CFL team, the Argos. TORONTO ARGONAUTS With this one I wanted to combine an aquatic (wave) theme and a Greek Warrior theme. Toronto has had some very good logos (Ship, Warrior with shield, shield alone), so I wanted to do something different. I focused on the warrior's helmet and built a wave motif as his cloak. You will see that I did two very different attempts at this. My first attempt was a warrior with shield, and that became the essence of the secondary logo, while the helmet/wave logo became the primary. For the uniforms I called back to the look I remember from my youth (ship-logo era, pre-Flutie). This uniform emphasizes the double blue by using a simple thick double stripe motif. I tried a bunch of Greek key pattern but it always felt overdone, so we stick with the wide stripes. On the jerseys I use the cuff as one stripe and just add a thick 2nd stripe above it.

Getting close to the end of the actual 9 franchises as we enter Ontario. Hamilton Tiger-Cats This was tough for several reasons. First, the actual Ti-Cats logo is great. The roar, the pounce, it is a solid tiger logo. Second, there are so many tiger logos out there that doing something original is tough. I would not call my side-shot of a tiger head original, but the key for me was to try to come up with a design where the black would disappear on a black helmet and all you would see is the gold and white. It is not the greatest tiger-head logo ever, but I still like the way it turned out. I had downloaded about 10 different side-shots and logos and this is something of an amalgam of different styles, but I think it comes together as a coherent single vision of a teed off tiger. The paw is a variation of a tiger paw logo found at https://www.logolynx.com/. I did some minor modifications, but it is not original. For the Ti-Cats uniform, I wanted to retain a lot of elements from their classic look. Their sleeve striping is somewhat iconic, so not much here which I would call divergent from what you might expect. I did throw a bit of tiger striping around. Hopefully not too much (helmet stripe, collars, pant stripe on black pants only.)

And, because it is in the hopper, the 5th CFL team (West to East). Winnipeg Blue Bombers Here I wanted to keep some aspect of the traditional W, but add more. I found an intereresting concept with a bomber plane, and I liked what they did with the W, so I took their more subtle W but I did not want a full-on bomber plane or bomb as the logo, so I went with military insignia as the focus. This aligns with what the Jets did in the NHL and still allows the W to be a big part of the logo. On the Uniforms, I tried to capture some elements of some of the recent designs, while maintaining the traditional sleeve striping to a degree. and yes, the wordmark is an homage to Top Gun (which is not at all Canadian, but still... Danger Zone!!!!)