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Cascadian Football (Final team and wrap-up)


nas1787

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So as you have likely heard, in 2014 three referenda were held in the American states of Oregon and Washington, and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Residents of these three territories overwhelmingly voted in favour of seceding from their current country in order to found the Independent Nation of Cascadia. This new country came into existence on January 1st, 2015.

One of the most controversial steps taken by Canadian and American authorities in the aftermath of this seismic change was to ban all Cascadian franchises from the major professional sports leagues, a threat that was made during the campaign period to try and dissuade the independence movement, and followed through on once the votes were tallied.

As the government of the fledgling nation was struggling with the difficult tasks of lawmaking and peacekeeping, the new department of culture and sport knew that sport could be an important catalyst for building national pride and developing a Cascadian culture. As such, the first Cascadian Classic was organized, in which the Seattle Seahawks and BC Lions franchises were brought together to play an exhibition series of Cascadian football, a new hybrid of Canadian and American football.

When this initial series proved popular, the seeds for a league were sown, an all-Cascadian league to unite the country from north to south.

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My original thought was to outline the rule differences between Cascadian, Canadian and American football. I naively thought there were only a dozen or so differences between the gridiron codes, turns out there are hundreds. But suffice to say I imagine a quick, high scoring 4 down version of football played on the larger Canadian surface, but with 10 yard end zones to maintain the highlight reel toe-dragging catches so popular in the NFL.

I’ll be presenting teams chronologically as they enter the league over the years, growing from 2 to 12 teams over the course of 10 years. Join me on my first major foray into gridiron football design.

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Cascadian Classic 2015

As the Cascadian Classic was organized very quickly, things were a bit haphazard this first year. In typical west coast fashion, the two teams signed a uniform contract with Ophelia Athletics, a local sportswear company creating bespoke, handmade, organic, vegan uniforms. While Seattle’s uniforms were designed to be very similar to what they had been wearing in the NFL, the Lions went with a bit of a throwback look, and eliminated all logos with BC or British Columbia in them (this province no longer exists in the new country).

The teams played 8 games, 4 each at CenturyLink Field and Vancouver Place (formerly BC Place). The Seahawks won 6 of the 8 games to be declared the inaugural Cascadian Classic champions.

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Cascadian Football Association - 2016 Season

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After the success of the 2015 Cascadian Classic, the Cascadian Football Association was quickly established with the goal of building a full-on league. The first step was adding two new franchises. Portland was the obvious priority, and owners in that city were able to gain rights to the Breakers name, the old USFL team that played just one year in Portland before the league folded, but was by far the most successful professional football Portland had ever seen. The second franchise added was in Tacoma, as an ownership group was identified there, and a suitable stadium was available. Also for this year, the Lions rebranded as the Vancouver Lions, with new logos but the same jerseys.

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Portland Breakers

One of the great things about this concept league is that there are three historic franchises from three historic leagues all playing together. I knew I wanted to use the Breakers. The only problem is, the Breakers name had originated in Boston before going to New Orleans and on to Portland, so it does not have much relation to the actual city. I decided to take the name in a new direction and interpret Breakers as a nod to Oregon’s mining industry, rather than breaking waves. I went with a very modern look, as I knew down the road the team would introduce a throwback uniform (stay tuned).

The colours are based on the original Breakers, but updated slightly. The uniforms feature a sparkling finish on the helmets and shiny, rather than matte, silver numbers, striping, and pants.

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I totally get the move away from the USFL identity, that's a good call. Just not sure about this specific logo. I feel like it may be too chunky, as in, it doesn't need both the pick ax and arm. Then there's a lot of inconsistency in the width of the outline. The jerseys look really good though.

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Yeah the chunkiness and different width of the stroke was a purposeful thing. I was trying to convey a kind of rockiness. I do get what you mean though, it's not necessarily a style that is going to suit everyone.

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Tacoma Roamers

For Tacoma, I came up with the name first. I just love the flow of Tacoma Roamers. So then I needed to think of how I could visually express a roamer. I thought of something like an orca, roaming the seas, but eventually settled on the explorer in the raccoon hat. Full disclosure this logo is based heavily on the Boston Brawlers logo, as I do not have much experience with face logos (they’re hard). But stay tuned as I try my hand at my very own face logo later on in this series.

The colours are brown, green, grey and white, and the uniforms feature a healthy amount of gingham patterning.

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Vancouver Lions

In 2016, the Lions dropped BC from their name and created a new logo set that featured a V-lion logo reminiscent of their BC-lion logo previously used. Also introduced were an updated paw logo and wordmark. The jerseys remained the same as in 2015, just with the new logos incorporated.

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The 4 teams competed in the inaugural Cascadian Football Association season, with teams playing each other 4 times for a 12 game season. All teams entered the post season, with the 1st seed playing 4th and 2nd playing 3rd. Seattle beat Tacoma and Vancouver beat Portland. Seattle defeated Vancouver in the championship game (not yet branded) in Seattle, claiming the first ever CFA championship.

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Cascadian Football Association - 2017 Season

In 2017, teams in Kelowna and Salem entered the league to bump the total number of franchises to 6.

Okanagan Lakers

The Lakers are an update of a concept I did on these boards about a year ago. I maintained the logos and colour scheme from that concept but took the opportunity to update the uniform set.

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