USFL (Alt History)

[heavybass]

Ahhhh this Federal team won't be leaving Washington anytime soon... and away from the Eagles they go.

[mcrosby]

On 3/4/2022 at 12:27 PM, WideRight said:

And just a word about the designs.  I often borrow heavily from a design I find online. When I do that I do all I can to reach out to the creator and get permission (like I did with Fraser Davidson on the Denver logo).  In other cases it is not possible to find the creator and if that is the case I try to cite where I saw the original.  In other cases several different logos may be blended together to create an amalgam.  In those cases I am less likely to credit the original artists, but will if I feel a major portion of their design is the base for mine.  

 

In this case, the image for the new logo comes from about 4 different designs, including elements of the original Federals IRL logo.  

You've made your own logos in the past that are fantastic. Taking from others without crediting is lazy and disrespectful. Taking from other designers with crediting is just lazy. You do good work yourself, let's see that!

 

[WideRight]

Just about to kick off the 1998 season in the Alt History of the USFL (Website here), which means that NIKE will be announcing which 3 teams will get facelifts for 1999.  The 3 1998 clubs (Washington, Baltimore and Memphis) kick off their new looks and now 3 more teams will get a facelift. 

 

I actually have 4 designs ready to reveal, some just tweaks, some whole new looks.  So, which of these 4 teams should make the cut for 1999?

 

Oakland Invaders

Birmingham Stallions

Pittsburgh Maulers

Portland Thunder

 

Only 3 will make the cut, and this could be the last year for NIKE, with bids coming in for the USFL uniform and fanwear contract starting in 2000 (and Phil Knight no longer the principle owner of a club.)

 

 

 

[Brian in Boston]

1 hour ago, WideRight said:

NIKE will be announcing which 3 teams will get facelifts for 1999.  I actually have 4 designs ready to reveal, some just tweaks, some whole new looks.  So, which of these 4 teams should make the cut for 1999?

 

Oakland Invaders

Birmingham Stallions

Pittsburgh Maulers

Portland Thunder

Of those four franchises, the Birmingham Stallions strike me as the organization that would lean into preserving its simple, classically conservative look for as long as possible.

Oakland Invaders
Pittsburgh Maulers
Portland Thunder

[raz]

I was going to disagree with @Brian in Boston, but I can't. I'll go with his 3 also. 

[Blindsay]

Does Pittsburgh HAVE to get a new look? I feel like they would be conservative, just like The Steelers Are.

[WideRight]

On 4/8/2022 at 10:55 AM, Blindsay said:

Does Pittsburgh HAVE to get a new look? I feel like they would be conservative, just like The Steelers Are.

Some teams just tweak a look they already have established, like the 9ers or Giants, others do something more dramatic, like Tampa did moving away from Bucco Bruce or New England did with Flying Elvis.  Some go modern and then may revert to a traditional look like Cleveland did, and some may just move to modern permanently like Arizona or the Seahawks. Very few teams stay truly traditional like the Bears or Packers.  Especially in a league whose initial looks came from the early 1980's.

 

I actually think this is one of the harder aspects of bringing the USFL through the 90's to today.  Most clubs would not have stuck with their 1980's looks, but we all remember those looks fondly because the league died.  Had it lived I think you would see a lot of change, so we have to fight the instinct to stay with the looks we all remember from 1983 and balance tradition with the reality that most pro sports teams from 1983 until today do not look the same. 

 

[gosioux76]

On 4/11/2022 at 4:37 PM, WideRight said:

I actually think this is one of the harder aspects of bringing the USFL through the 90's to today.  Most clubs would not have stuck with their 1980's looks, but we all remember those looks fondly because the league died.  Had it lived I think you would see a lot of change, so we have to fight the instinct to stay with the looks we all remember from 1983 and balance tradition with the reality that most pro sports teams from 1983 until today do not look the same. 

 

 

This is what makes this project of yours so interesting. To make it historically accurate, you also have to take into account the various degrees of scale for design changes from that era.  The Vikings are another example. They kept the basic structure of the '70s era look into the '80s, the only substantive changes being to the facemasks, which went from gray to white for one year, and then to purple. And when they did make jersey changes in the mid-90s, it wasn't wholesale -- they added the logo to the sleeves and adjusted the home sleeves from full stripes to a sleeve trim.

 

Your project is going to get really interesting in the early 2000s, when I presume the era of extraneous piping and side panels will be introduced. 

[Karnage84]

On 4/7/2022 at 3:01 PM, WideRight said:

Just about to kick off the 1998 season in the Alt History of the USFL (Website here), which means that NIKE will be announcing which 3 teams will get facelifts for 1999.  The 3 1998 clubs (Washington, Baltimore and Memphis) kick off their new looks and now 3 more teams will get a facelift. 

 

I actually have 4 designs ready to reveal, some just tweaks, some whole new looks.  So, which of these 4 teams should make the cut for 1999?

 

Oakland Invaders

Birmingham Stallions

Pittsburgh Maulers

Portland Thunder

 

Only 3 will make the cut, and this could be the last year for NIKE, with bids coming in for the USFL uniform and fanwear contract starting in 2000 (and Phil Knight no longer the principle owner of a club.)

 

 

 

I thoroughly enjoy what you've been doing here and will disregard the new USFL for the abominations they've rolled out for this year. 

 

Keep up the great work. 

[WideRight]

Slight change of plans, we will have 3 clubs with new identities & uniforms in 1999, but Birmingham will not be one of them.  As I work on B'Ham for 2000, the St. Louis Knights (who started the year 6-0) are getting a new look for 1999.  So it will be Pittsburgh, Portland, and St. Louis getting new Nike designs.  

 

I am going to start with the least dramatic shift, at least in logos.  Pittsburgh will have a very different uniform, but their logo is more of a modernization than an overhaul.  Less cartoony, more X-treme (it is the late 1990's after all).  

 

ORIGINAL 1984 LOGO (my version)

 

NEW 1999 LOGO

 

New Pittsburgh Uniform up next, then St. Louis and an original logo. 

[WideRight]

And here are the 1999 Pittsburgh Maulers uniforms.  Shoulder yokes are becoming a real trend in the league (Jax, Chicago, Orlando, etc.).   Will that trend continue or will side panels make an unwanted appearance?

 

In addition to the shoulder yoke, the other major additions are the use of a purple pant set and  a secondary motif of hexagonal "bolts" on the helmet and pant stripes.  

 

 

 

[BengalErnst]

I’m pretty iffy on the new logo. Huge upgrade over the original one but something seems off to me about it.

 

The bolts on the pants are a nice little touch that I appreciate. I would’ve probably over done it and put more of them on.

[WideRight]

Pausing with my STL design as I am opting to go in a very different direction with my logo concept.  So, in the meantime, here are the reworked Portland Thunder.

 

If you recall, the original Thunder were basically a relocated Orlando Thunder (WLAF) club, same logos, uniforms, everything.   With this second generation look we make some changes. 

 

1. The electric lime had to stay, so the colors are not different at all.

2. The new Thunder logo pays homage to a different WLAF/NFL Europe Thunder squad, as I am sure you all noticed.

3. Found a way to add the electric green to the helmet logo.

4. Decided that if anyone was going to go with a sublimated color shift in their jerseys, it would a be a club not afraid to pull out electric lime green jerseys, so that is what you get, color shifts from lime to yellow on the jerseys and in the pant stripe. 

5. Decided the Thunder needed more than just the white pants, and lime green pants just did not work for me.  So we get some navy/dark royal in the look. 

 

 

 

I feel like 1999 may be a bit early for this look, but not by too much.  Working from the premise that the USFL's presence simply led to greater innovation from the sports branding and uniform companies, since they were competing to get both USFL and NFL money.    I guess that is my half-hearted attempt to say I am going to play a bit fast and loose with the style elements of the late 90's (NFLE, Arena) and the early 2000's (XFL 1.0).  

 

And here is the look on our two players.  

 

[raz]

The Thunder unis are SO good

 

And is that U a new feature? 

[heavybass]

I did notice the Berlin Thunder logo.

[WideRight]

And now the biggest redesign of the 1999 USFL season, the St. Louis Knights.

 

So, with this whole USFL Alt History I have tried as much as possible to not go hog wild on original logos, opting instead to modify or repurpose actual logos from the WLAF, XFL, Arena, etc. as real designs that were appropriate to the period more or less, basically on the theory that these designs were really used and that perhaps had the USFL survived they would have been used for that league instead of the league they ended up in.   With St. Louis, for example, the original logo was the NY Knights of the WLAF.   When I decided to go a new direction, I tried looking at other real world options like the Scottish Claymores, NY Knights Arena League team, even looked at the early 2000's designs of Rutgers and UCF, but really did not like any of them.  So, in what I expect to be a rare departure, I decided to mostly go with a new logo.  Here it is.

 

 

While not 100% original, as it does take a small amount of inspiration from the Tennessee Titans' secondary sword logo, this is a predominantly original logo for the Knights.  I wanted to somehow get the Gateway Arch into the logo because the Knights are struggling to fend off the Rams as St. Louis's top football club, so they would want to heighten the connection between the club and the city.  I decided that using the arch as a form of shield to go behind the sword made sense, though I also think it tends to look more like a Gothic arch or cathedral window than a shield.   The new Knights look will give more emphasis to the purple and gold, and downplay the silver a bit more than the NY Knights' inspired look did.   And I can already promise you that this is not the look they will keep until 2022 or beyond.  I have ideas for the 2000's as well.  But, the horse is gone for now and the sword becomes the dominant image for the club. 

 

So let's take a look at the new St. Louis Knights Uniform. 

 

 

This should take football fans, especially XFL fans very little time to pinpoint.  The bib jersey allows the St. Louis Arch to again make a "somewhat subtle" appearance once again. The design is straight out of the LA Xtreme, but rendered in Knights colors.   I opted to go for a purple helmet, several shades darker than that of the Pittsburgh Maulers, because the USFL has a ton of metallic silver/gold helmets (Express, Bulls, Bandits, Showboats, Blitz, Stars, Stallions, etc.) and only the 1 purple helmet.  I went with metallic silver primarily in the pants and the dark jersey's numbers, while gold becomes the primary accent color.  Still not 100% sold on the 3 letter monogram as the chest wordmark, but wanted something a bit different.    Here is what it looks like on the player models. 

 

 

Thoughts?  Feedback?  

 

Working on 2000, and a big part of the story is that the USFL will opt for a new leaguewide uniform, sideline and fan apparel company, so new looks for some clubs as the new company comes on board. 

[heavybass]

VERY Like the big change to St Louis.

[BengalErnst]

That new logo for the Knights is pretty sweet and that’s coming from a person who is a huge fan of you repurposing the logos from history as that’s pretty rare around here

[Brian in Boston]

Random thoughts on this latest batch of USFL alt history uniform updates...

Pittsburgh - The steelworker in the Maulers' logo is going to have OSHA taking a long look at steroid use amongst industrial workers. Seriously, that guy needs to alternate some legwork with the arm and shoulder exercises in his fitness regimen. 

Portland - The devil is always in the details when it comes to design techniques like the incorporation of color shifts in a uniform.  To my mind, you've nailed the execution of said technique in the Thunder unis.

St. Louis - When I look at the Knights' new logo, the sword and St. Louis Arch elements combine to form a stylized Norman helmet.   

Terrific work!    

 

 

[JerseyJimmy]

as a proud LA Xtreme Jersey Owner I am very pleased, and I'm glad I wasn't the only one who caught the new logo's resemblance to a Norman helmet (which, huh, that's what that's called!). great stuff from perhaps my favorite era of graphic and jersey design.