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What do you do as a fan when you strongly dislike your team's branding?


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This is actually a really topical theme for me at the moment because i'm currently involved in a movement to bring back a historical uniform for a major professional sports team.

 

I support the Port Adelaide Football Club in the Australian Football League, which for those who are not aware is the biggest sports league in Australia, playing Australian rules football.

 

Port Adelaide is a very old club, having been formed in 1870 and playing in the South Australian league, where they were wildly successful, winning 34 premierships between 1870 and 1996.

 

In 1902, they adopted their famous "prison bar" playing strip, which despite becoming known as the Prison Bars, was based on the wharf and pylons of the Port area, and were known as the Magpies.

 

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In the 1980s, the large Victorian Football League began forming teams interstate, and became the national competition. Port Adelaide, as the biggest club outside of the AFL, successfully applied to join the league in 1996. From a branding perspective, Port Adelaide were asked to change their guernsey and nickname because it clashed with an existing large AFL club, Collingwood, who wear black and white vertical stripes.

 

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Port Adelaide were in no position to argue, as being elevated to the national competition was too important, and changed their branding. They retained black and white, but added the 90s special in teal. The guernseys they adopted were a product of their time, as you can see below, with the centre guernsey here being adopted as the home guernsey.

 

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That uniform was wildly unpopular, but persisted until 2010, when Port adopted it's current design, a much more traditional football design.

 

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While this design is really nice, there is no real attachment to the design from supporters apart from aesthetics. Port have been allowed to wear the prison bar design as a throwback on 4 occasions since joining the AFL, most recently in 2014.

 

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In the last few weeks, a fan campaign has begun for Port Adelaide to go back to wearing the Prison Bar design full time. It has so much history with the football club and it means so much to supporters. The petition currently has about 5500 signatures after a couple of weeks, but there is a lot of work to be done to overcome the obstacles that need to be overcome.

 

You can find the peitition at www.bringbackthebars.com

 

The wonderful people in charge of this petition have managed to get interviews on local radio and have had retweets by big names in the football community supporting the cause, but it's still very early days. If you support teams being able to choose to wear their most famous and loved uniforms, a signature would be much appreciated!

 

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The Phillies current, could use a new number font. The ends of some numbers are too long, and since its at thick font.

ryan_howard_philadelphia_phillies_youth_

The 6 is almost looking like an 8 if viewed from a distance.

Though I love the cream jersey and think that should be their home jersey.

 

The Flyers I don't care for their home, too much white only a little black at the end of the sleeve.

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I know it based off their original jersey's but there is a reason they updated them in the 80s.

 

The sixers change every 5 years, sometimes more or less, right now they are pretty solid looking.

 

The Eagles, honestly with Nike's branding, cam just stay put. I do wish they would go back to a full bodied eagle as their logo.

 

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I've really only encountered this once, when the Angels wore the pinstriped monstrosities. I went out of my way to find the navy solid road cap, which I still think is a decent enough looking cap. It took months for me to find one at the mall (internet shopping wasn't exactly easy for a 12-year-old).

 

If I bought NBA gear, I'd be running into this issue a lot over the past decade, as the Suns have generally looked terrible. However, my allegiance to the Suns is because of the early 90s, so any Suns stuff I buy is Thunder Dan-related.

 

So, I guess an answer to this thread is to buy retro gear. A sweet throwback's never a bad idea (not even the Steve Jeltz Phillies jersey I want)

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New Orleans Saints- - The black pants and the mismatched golds really irk me, but I just bitch about them. I still support the team and buy and wear merch like t-shirts, caps and polo shirts. I remain an enthusiastic fan and attend 2-3 games a year and otherwise watch all games on TV.

 

New Orleans Pelicans- While I wasn't a big fan of the new name (it has a great history as, and works better as, a local BASEBALL team name), it grew on me, as I DID like the branding.  I have a sweater, sweatshirt, couple of T-shirts and even socks, and go to quite a few games.

 

New Orleans Zephyrs/Baby Cakes - When the AAA franchise relocated here, I became a big fan;  attended the 1st ever game at UNO and the 1st ever game at the new stadium in Metairie, and purchased/wore all kind of merch and always went to games.  But when the new owners changed the name to the Baby Cakes, I took it personally.  I consider it an affront to the residents of the area, and I, for one, will not be played for a fool. The team became dead to me, and I quit supporting them. They have not received (and will not ever receive) a dime of my money, not from merch, not from a game ticket, not from a bag of popcorn.

 

BONUS-- Old Arena football league New Orleans Night-- When New Orleans' 1st AFL team  entered the league in the early 90s, they wore these hideous Zubaz unis and I swore I wouldn't go to a game until they ditched that garbage. They did the following year, so my buddies and I DID go to one game just for grins and giggles, as Arena Football was and is a JOKE.

It is what it is.

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jrue-holiday-ryan-anderson-jason-smith-a

navy and gold is a very nice combo and adding a bit of red is adds a nice pop too. 

 

But kt just doesnt fir New Orleans. Like black and gold is iconic for the saints, I can’t see navy and gold and red being iconic for the pelicans branding. Ever since the rebrand I always wanted the pelicans to be all Mardi Gras colors. I mean there’s so opportunities with those colors. Purple, green, yellow

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The answer to your question? Fantasize about fixing it! Or looking fondly on past looks that were better.

 

Browns- It's more of not wanting to support the ownership that I don't buy gear, but if I were to get a jersey I'd just go throwback.

Cavs- The 03-10 jerseys were the best but I do love the classic wine and gold color scheme (not so much the overused navy/black), so I just try to find gear thats suits my tastes. For instance, I wear a hat similar to this

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Not really representative of the current identity, but clearly a Cavs hat that shows the direction I wish they'd go with their look.

Indians- Hard to say now. I wear the navy Block C hat, but for personal opinion reasons I avoid getting any new gear with Indians or certainly Wahoo on it.

Ohio State- Overall I like our identity but would make some tweaks to make it perfect. I usually prefer things that put more of an emphasis on gray rather than treating black as our secondary color. In fact, I wish we'd stop using the red/white/black Block O and involve gray in the identity before black in every single instance. However, I do wear an old school Woody hat and love it .

ohio-state-buckeyes-nike-ncaa-vault_1_eb

 

If I rooted for a team which had no redeemable branding qualities? I guess I'd... just wear my shirt that says "SPORTS" on it.

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My frustrations with the Anaheim Ducks branding are well-documented on these boards, and in retrospect my temper has got the better of me on occasion.

 

Since they started selling Mighty Ducks logo gear, much of it being stuff like hats and t-shirts that were impossible for a foreign fan like me to get back in the day - I've mainly been buying that. A throwback or even a new sweater featuring the classic logo is an instant buy for me, but it helps that those uniforms have actually been good.

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PotD: 24/08/2017

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I'm still surprised the Detroit Tigers changed their home jersey. In theory the consistency should be something that works, but it just doesn't. In fact it's made me start to resent the hat D, a logo I've always actually liked until they slapped it on the chest. Hat D belongs on the hat, jersey D belongs on the jersey.

 

I have found myself wearing the vintage roundel logo more and more instead of anything with an Olde English D on it:

 

Detroit-Tigers-47-Brand-Vintage-Classic-

 

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As a Jets fan, I just moan about how the Namath unis really aren't all that great and that they should look to the '80s for inspiration, but... they're actually rebranding, so my wish might come true. Also, as strange as it sounds, I actually liked the BFBS Mets; my mental image of Mike Piazza is wearing the black alternate jersey.

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Luckily the Eagles and Phillies have great throwbacks and are popular with the fanbases. Buying midnight green merch is always a crapshoot because it ends up looking anything from straight teal to a forest green. But with kelly green, you always know what you're going to get. Don't even get me started on the bfbs uniforms though...

 

The Flyers are fine and the Sixers are the best they've ever looked imo

 

I agree with everyone's sentiment about not buying it. The teams definitely look at the numbers and take them into account.

 

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I waited until I could get this bad boy on sale for $30 and have it proudly in my closet and never on my body:

Buffalo%20Sabres%20jersey.jpg

 

Remember when we lived in a world where that existed??

1 hour ago, ShutUpLutz! said:

and the drunken doodoobags jumping off the tops of SUV's/vans/RV's onto tables because, oh yeah, they are drunken drug abusing doodoobags

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11 hours ago, pelicanfan said:

jrue-holiday-ryan-anderson-jason-smith-a

navy and gold is a very nice combo and adding a bit of red is adds a nice pop too. 

 

But kt just doesnt fir New Orleans. Like black and gold is iconic for the saints, I can’t see navy and gold and red being iconic for the pelicans branding. Ever since the rebrand I always wanted the pelicans to be all Mardi Gras colors. I mean there’s so opportunities with those colors. Purple, green, yellow

 

I agree with you. I get the current color scheme, but it's pretty drab IMO. I think I remember hearing that when Benson was rebranding he wanted to use black and gold (I'd have to find a source to confirm it) but the NBA nixed it for some reason? I would prefer that color scheme over Mardi Gras colors for a full-time look. That color scheme works well as a City Edition IMO.

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"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific." Lily Tomlin

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I really don't like the uniforms for either of my two favorite teams, the Orioles and VCU Rams.

 

For the Orioles, I don't really like the cartoon bird.  I can live with it, but I absolutely hate the white-paneled home cap.  The road look is much more tolerable and I wouldn't mind if they went all black for the road and moved the road to the home.  Just get rid of the white panel.  The "O's" hat is another thing that I can't stand.  Lastly, the orange jersey has flaws and inconsistencies that bug me.

 

For VCU, I really dislike their entire rebranding from a few years ago.  The "horned" V wordmark, the shield logo, the font, changing the color of the ram, treating the wordmark as a logo, the white letters on all uniforms...all of it.

 

To answer the OP's question, I either don't buy any of it, or as little as I can with the logos I don't like.  Or like Akronite said, fantasize about fixing it. 

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