Wildcomet

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback @chestnutz! I'm glad you've liked the series overall so far, and you had some really good points that I will keep in mind moving forward, and I may go back to some of the ones I've already done in time (your feedback was the first I'd gotten for Chicago, so I'll give that another look at some point). I did update my league logo based on the feedback. In my head I was thinking the laces would be focal point and not look curved, but I tried curving them and like it. The laces are also thicker now. The updated league logo will be on the team graphics moving forward.

You had some excellent points about the Texans logos. I was really inspired by how geometric the original's H was, which is why I went with the angles on my update. They aren't all gone, but I did tone them down and reduce the number of angles quite a bit. The H lost the part that followed the edge of the state to the left; part of me still finds it more interesting with it on there but I see the merit in going without. I also redid the secondary logo to use the eastern border for the T shape rather than the western border (that cultural aspect was a very helpful note to give) and smooth the top out. Aside from updating the logos used, the helmet and uniform are same as before.

Hope everyone likes Texans version 2.0! Next up is the Memphis Southmen.

Thanks again for all the comments on the Wheels concept, I think it's ended up at a much better place than it started out at and all the help is the reason why. Feel free to continue to share thoughts on it, but for now I am going to share my next team, the Houston Texans- Yes, there was a Houston Texans in the 1970s, so here's my take on them.

I redid the concept around the main logo a bit; mainly by making it 2D, putting the H over the Western part of the state, then adding a lone star over where Houston would be on the map. I think the Western borders made for an interesting H shape that honors the geometric design of the original, and the 3D drop shadow elements felt dated today. I also decided to put more emphasis on green to help them stand out from other teams with yellow and/or white in their logos, uniforms, etc. The secondary is taking the Western part of the Texas border as inspiration for the top of the T shape, and then the center is inspired by the Texas flag.

The stripe pattern from the secondary is the basis for the stripes on the pants and helmet. The helmet otherwise keeps the colors and layout of the original bar the updated logo. The numbers and wordmarks use a geometric font inspired by the logo. The home uniforms keep the color pattern of the originals, with the only major changes being the pants stripes and sleeves now sporting the primary logo. The away uniforms changed the pants color to green (again to help them stand out among others in the league), and reversed the colors of the numbers and outline to help keep a balance of green and yellow in the uniform. Here's the Gridiron Uniform Database entry for the Texans for reference.

15 hours ago, BengalErnst said:

I’m just not feeling the smoke trail. Without being told I wouldn’t have had the slightest inclination of what that was exactly 

I decided to try this out to see if it helps; I added some red to give it a bit more of a fire like appearance. I think it also helps balance the primary logo a bit, and with the larger emphasis on red in the uniform getting more red in the logo feels fitting. Does this help?

Thanks for the insightful comments @Karnage84!

I didn't implement all of the suggestions, mainly because I'm not sure that picture is an accurate depiction of their original uniform. While I agree the Navy may look better, and did try it to see, all of the in-game images or pics of actual jerseys I can find along with the Gridiron Uniform Database seem to show them in black. I also have not seen that number style on any other images. 

  and 

That all said, I did take to heart much of your other ideas for this latest iteration. I altered my sleeve striping to better match both the originals and my new helmet and pants' stripe pattern. I also widened the pants stripes more like the originals, and recolored the away numbers to red and outlined the numbers. All told I think this is now both closer to the originals and more cohesive with a single striping pattern, which is very similar to the originals with the tire tread taking the place of the middle stripes. Thanks again and I hope you and others like this update!

11 hours ago, VampyrRabbit said:

Sorry, I mean't horizontally not vertically in my original post, which I edited and also added rotating it 180 degrees. Dumb mistake on my part, my bad.

All good, I'll admit I was not sold on the vertical flip but posted it to see what others would think. I tried the horizontal flip this time and I think this might be a winner. It feels more connected as a single graphic now I think, and I hope its new orientation will help with it seeing as a smoke trail from the tire. I also tweaked the logo on the helmet to reflect the change.

11 hours ago, VampyrRabbit said:

Also, the original logo for the Wheels looks pretty modern, would never have guessed it was a 1970s design.

Yeah it was a bit ahead of its time, I'd agree.  It's a little busy, and the wheel having the drop-shadow while the surrounding D looks flat kind of bugs me a bit and drove most of my changes, but it is not particularly dated like some of the others from this league are (understandably so, being 50 yrs old and all). The wheel itself looks pretty solid so I tried not to change too much there.

3 hours ago, VampyrRabbit said:

I find the d hard to read as a wheel and smoke, the wheel is clear enough, but the smoke trail doesn't read as one to me. Perhaps flipping the trail vertically could help with that. I also think the pavement texture is a bit much and takes away the spotlight from the tire tracks, which look really good and would probably be enough on their own.

Thanks for the thoughtful suggestions @VampyrRabbit!

I decided to implement them quick while it was fresh on my mind. I took the texture off the collars and numbers (for now I left the helmet alone, but change that also), and flipped & rotated the smoke trail on the primary logo. I also went ahead and officially made the additional secondary logo inspired by the W from the original. Having the versions to directly compare I do think removing the texture from the jerseys is the right call; it looks much cleaner now and is less distracting.

Philly is looking awesome! The primary uniforms do well to honor the past while living in the present, and the bottom left alternate does well with pulling the multiple shades of green together. I love the white helmet and the wings on the helmet for that one!

Any C&C for Chicago will still be welcome, but I'm going to move forward and post my next one- the Detroit Wheels.

Here's a link to see the original uniforms from Gridiron Uniform Database. My two main updates to the primary logo were removing the W (I wanted to keep it but it just felt too busy, so I imagine it as an alternate secondary logo), and changing the design from a wheel inside a lowercase D to a wheel with a smoke trail forming the shape of a lowercase D. I think this lets the wheel take on more prominence. The new secondary is a capital D with a tire tread pattern inside of it. 

My helmet is pretty close to the original in basic concept (logo on the side, black-red-black center stripes on a yellow shell with yellow facemask), but executed in a way that emphasizes the team's identity. Letter logos are often problematic on helmets, so I rotated the primary so that the smoke is more under/behind the wheel on the helmet. This way it works equally well on both sides. The red center stripe is admittedly hard to see here, but it uses the same tire tread pattern seen elsewhere on the uniform and secondary logo. The helmet is taking a cue from the DC Defenders, and has a yellow "painted pavement" texture pattern on the shell.

The uniform also largely follows the originals in base colors and striping patterns, but the sleeve stripes were changed to tire treads on either side of a double-yellow center line as seen on many streets. The pant stripe mirrors the helmet center stripe design. "Wheels" and "Detroit" wordmarks adorn the chests above the numbers. The numbers and collars use the same pavement texture as the helmet shell.

Please let me know what you think; should the W come back as an official secondary logo, go back into the primary or just stay away? Did I overdo it with the pavement texture use and/or tire tread patterns? I was aiming for modern and unique to the brand, but not obnoxious. I'll be back in a couple of days likely with the original Houston Texans on deck. Thanks for looking!

Thanks to everyone who liked and commented thus far, if anyone else has comments feel free to continue to share them, but I am going to go ahead and share team #2 of 8, the Chicago Fire!

On updating the logo, I mainly focused on modernizing the design of the helmet itself, but I also added a 2nd darker shade of red to the flames, and small flames coming out the ear holes. The new secondary uses the same flame graphic, but replaces the the helmet with a black version of the star from Chicago's flag. The flames take the place of the top point of the star.

The helmet is a big departure from the original design, but considering the logo is a black helmet with flames, to not have the helmet also be black with flames just seems like a missed branding opportunity that I have the chance to correct. Flames are on the front, and coming out the major vents in the helmet. Since I changed the helmet quite a bit, I stayed fairly true to the original uniforms. I kept the overall color schemes for home and away, and a the 3-strip pattern on the sleeves and pants (though executed a bit different). My additions are small patches of the primary logo on the chest, adding the secondary logo to the stripes on the sleeves and pants, and side panels under the jersey arms with the dark red shade I introduced. Those interested can view my source for the originals here.

I hope everyone enjoys, but C&C is always appreciated. Thanks for looking!

5 hours ago, BengalErnst said:

I’m pretty unfamiliar with the WFL as it was way before my time so I’m excited for this project on these boards. I would like to see you get a better template for the uniforms however as your logo and helmet are so clean relatively 

That's fair. I'd love a good realistic one like I have for the helmet, but I just haven't had much luck with finding or making one yet.  If that changes coming back and redoing uniforms would definitely be on the table, but for now I'm working with what I got. I can try modify this template to tone down those seams more though; I was debating how much of them to leave in vs take out from what I started with. Thanks for the feedback!

EDIT: So naturally, shortly after I publicly say I'm not sure how to improve my uniform template a new idea on how to do that popped into my head (basically a targeted combination of layered semi-transparent lines and gradients). After a little while of tinkering, I got it looking much better I think. Here's a retouched version of Birmingham with the changes to my uniform template. 

I decided not to wait too long to share the first one, since it basically is ready to go. Here is my take on the Birmingham Vulcans. The primary was changed to make the flames a little more dynamic and have them go into the negative space of the V to add some shading to the football shape made in that space, and making the V a bit bigger gave it a bit of an Avengers logo vibe that I liked.  The secondary logo is inspired by the statue in Birmingham that the team is named after, as it include a spear about to be thrown.

The flames coming off the spear head are meant to form a sort of B shape. I changed up the colors on the uniforms some; the originals had white pants which is shared by a couple other teams on my list so the change helps them stand out. Since those are now blue, I made the home jersey red, as I didn't like the idea of an all-blue look them. The helmet stays mostly true to the original, just with the updated primary. The pants incorporate white striping with the secondary logo to convey the idea of it flying through the air.

EDIT: Adding a link to my source for the original helmet and uniforms, and elaborated on uniform changes a bit more.

Hope everyone likes this first one, the next will likely be coming from Chicago (my aim is for alphabetical order with this series). Thanks for looking, C & C is always appreciated!

As stated above, here is the map of where my first 8 teams will be located, as well as the color schemes I plan to use for them (they are all in various stages of completion as I write this). Some of these cities hosted multiple teams between 1974 and 1975, or the same team with a new name, so some may be guessed pretty easily by those familiar with the league, but others probably not as much.

Here's the teams I have done so far:

Birmingham Vulcans

Chicago Fire

Detroit Wheels

Houston Texans

Memphis Southmen

New York Stars

Philadelphia Bell

San Antonio Wings

Southern California Sun

Coming Soon:

Whole League Graphics

There's been several great threads recently by various forum members sharing concepts for the NFL, XFL and USFL and seeing them helped give me the urge to do a project like that again (I have in the past tried my hand at the USFL, Arena Football League and Pre-Superbowl era NFL), but rather than retread old ground or compete with some of the excellent work of others on this forum I decided to try tackling an older league that I haven't seen much done for: The World Football League (WFL). For those needing a primer, this league existed 1974-1975. Despite its name, nearly all of the teams were in the US.  I decided to pick 8 of the teams to at least start with and try my hand at imagining what their logos, helmets and uniforms could look like today. In past sets I only did logos/helmets, so uniforms are a change of pace for me.

I referenced this site and general web searches for the logos, and a mix of web searches and the Gridiron Uniform Database to get a handle on how the original teams looked. I'm generally trying to keep a connection between how teams looked then and how I imagine them here, but am allowing myself to make some changes in a couple cases, whether it's to differentiate teams from each other or make the team's brand stand out more (one team that I will post sooner than later will be very noticeably changed but for what I think is a valid reason). One thing I noticed was that the IRL uniform designs all had similar elements to them (triple stripe helmets, sleeves and pants for example), so I have a goal to let each team show some more personality and identity in their designs.

To introduce this concept series I have an updated league logo below and will be immediately posting a map showing the cities and planned color schemes for the teams I chose to work on in the next post (separating them for easier viewing). I wanted to give this logo a greater sense of depth and lighting, but still be recognizable to anyone familiar with the original league logo.  Different file sources had different shades of colors, so I went with what appealed most to me. An image of the original is posted next to it for comparison (Source: sportslogos.net)

EDIT: I made a couple changes to my updated league logo and have updated the post to show the newest version; anyone looking to see the original updated version can see it in posts for the first three teams (Birmingham, Chicago and Detroit).

On 5/5/2023 at 10:20 AM, WideRight said:

Just a quick question to see what folks think.  Not promising anything will happen, but it just could.

 

Which current team in the Alt History of the USFL do you think is a prime relocation candidate between 2008-2018?

 

For those who don't follow the league on my Alt History site, here are the current 26 teams, with Portland and 1 other coming in for 2008:

 

NE: Baltimore Blitz, Boston Cannons, New Jersey Generals, Philadelphia Stars, Washington Federals. 

 

SE: Atlanta Fire, Jacksonville Bulls, Orlando Renegades, Tampa Bay Bandits (and a new team in either NC or VA)

 

SOU:  Birmingham Stallions, Memphis Showboats, Nashville Knights, New Orleans Breakers

 

CEN: Chicago Machine, Michigan Panthers, Ohio Glory, Pittsburgh Maulers, St. Louis Skyhawks

 

SW:  Arizona Wranglers, Denver Gold, Houston Gamblers, Texas Outlaws

 

PAC:  Las Vegas Thunder, LA Express, Oakland Invaders, Portland Stags, Seattle Dragons

 

 

My guesses like some others would either be New Orleans (post-Katrina uncertainty), Las Vegas (until recently was not a great sports market, so I could see it up to like 2015), or Oakland (to San Jose, or maybe to Santa Clara but not changing the city name?). 

A dark horse candidate could be Michigan; the 2008 recession hit Detroit hard so maybe they move to Grand Rapids, a smaller but growing market, to get some distance from the Lions all of Detroit's other pro teams and have the city to themselves for pro football (aside from maybe the Rampage if the Arena Football League is in this timeline). No name change required if they went to Grand Rapids.

2 hours ago, WideRight said:

 

 

I think I like Version 1 best as a main primary logo, it's colors and shape are well balanced and would look great on a lot of mediums, and conveys the idea behind the team effectively. Version 2 though could look great as the main design for the helmet. The banners wrapping around and connecting at the back of the helmet would look really sharp. I think.

Not much I can say here that others haven't said already, but this deserves another "well done"! It's a great cohesive concept that fits the community amazingly well.

The next game of the week feature match up pits land vs sea from across the Atlantic, as this league's revived Hartford Whalers go up against Zurich Alpine HC. One of the things that gave me an interest in this concept was the ability to put cities together in a league that typically would never be together. 

Hey all, as eegl75 has mentioned I have been helping out with some logos designs for this project, and am going to add a 'Game of the Week' graphic to my contribution. This way we can feature a couple teams matching up against each other and occasionally preview a coming full team unveiling. This will happen about once per week. This matchup pits a recently unveiled team, Toronto, against one of the earlier teams to debut, Juneau. Enjoy!

I like the subtle use of the stars in the Rockets uniform and helmet. It's a good strong look, and I honestly didn't even know about the Rockets' existence before seeing this so I learned something today as well.

1 hour ago, gosioux76 said:

I think the bigger issue is the gradient. Going from white to blue on a blue jersey makes the red outlines necessary in order to see the blue-on-blue bottom half of the numbers. Perhaps the better solution, if you're going to use a gradient, is to make it a white-to-red transition on the numbers.

 I had a similar thought. A white-to-red transition with the red outline would be easier to see, and be consistent with the away jersey in the sense that the outline is the same color as the bottom of the digits.

That comment aside, I really like this. I agree the IRL uniforms are just too much with the asymmetrical 3-tone helmet, etc. Greater use of the oil slick motif gives it more cohesion and because its a common trait it feels less busy even though it's about the same number of elements that the IRL uniforms possess.

1 hour ago, WideRight said:

So I tried fixing it without fixing the color scheme and quickly realized I hated the entire thing, so I did what I think Orlando should do, revert back to the NY Guardians colors of black, silver/grey, and red.  I threw in a bit of the LA Wildcats orange just to remind folks it is Florida, and there you go.  And, since one of the most popular Orlando teams ever, the Arena league Predators, wore black and red, I think there is a connection there too. 

I definitely think this is an upgrade! Honestly I fell into the middle ground on my overall opinion of the XFL 3.0 logos/uniforms but Orlando was the one that truly bugged me, and my first reaction to the name and logo was "if you're reusing an old name and giving them a cougar logo, why not call them the Wildcats??". Saying that, I think giving them some of the LA Wildcats colors and uniform features makes a lot of sense, and I also agree that it looking a little closer to how the Predators looked at times with the red/black and the claw marks helps it feel a bit more "Orlando" to me.

All in all this is a big upgrade in my opinion, and while the name is still weird the rest of the brand works well here. If I were to suggest a possible change, it'd be to try tapering the ends of the red shoulder stripes down to a point to look like the red claw marks, and underneath each on the sides maybe add a smaller orange claw mark. The the two shoulders together give you the same 4 claw mark pattern and connect the jersey more with the pants and helmet. I get the goal to keep elements from RL that work though. Nice job!

On 2/21/2023 at 10:04 PM, eegl75 said:

NYHC:

 

this squad from the big apple were the first ever international cup winners back in 1940 and have made a good run about once every 10 years. they last won in 2000 when they were unstoppable, only losing twice in the regular season.

Looking good! The uniforms feel like a team with a history and definitely would fit in with other New York concepts I've seen. Only thing I'd maybe suggest is making the front logo just a little bit smaller so the negative space between the collar and upper logo is more similar to the spacing from the lower logo to the stripes.

This looks great! I would be a fan of seeing this change for them should they ever change. It works really well and is a striking update. Well done!

On 2/3/2023 at 10:43 AM, WideRight said:

Hey all,

 

A chance for you to influence some choices I will be making.  We are adding 3 new teams through expansion (as well as the return of the Atlanta Fire) and I would love your thoughts on what to do with these possible cities.  So, give me your thoughts, and remember, I am trying to use real world logos/identities as much as possible, but I am fine with relocating teams (NY/NJ Knights to STL or Orlando Thunder to Portland are two examples).  

So, what names/logos do you think make sense for these potential USFL cities?:

 

St. Louis 

Portland

Dallas

Miami

Charlotte or Raleigh, NC

Virginia Beach/Norfolk

Minneapolis/St. Paul

Kansas City

 

Feel free to borrow from other pro football leagues or even  other sports as sources of identity for a new USFL club. 

I'll give my two cents...

St. Louis Stampede - Based on the AAF Salt Lake Stallions logo

Portland Wolves - Based on the IFL Seattle Timberwolves logo

Dallas Desperados - Bring back the name/logo from the Arena Football League

Miami Voodoo - Based on the Arena Football New Orleans Voodoo logo. Unless the Breakers move after 2005 and the New Orleans Voodoo can come in as an expansion team, the logo is too good to not use and it would fit well in Miami if New Orleans isn't an option.

Charlotte Legends  - Based on the AAF Atlanta Legends logo - give them a backstory of Michael Jordan buying into the ownership. Done and done.

Virginia Beach Blacktips - Based on the FXFL Florida Blacktips logo

Minnesota Odinsons - Based on the EFLI Hyderabad Skykings

Kansas City Bombers - Based on the Arena Football League Kansas City Command logo.

Congrats to all the medal winners! There was a lot of great designs and I learned a lot about soccer designs and other countries doing this contest. Looking forward to a 2026 Cup. Thank you for putting this on rsaline!