Did your high school copy a pro or college team?

[maz]

 

High schools across America regularly recolor logos, and sometimes uniforms, of NFL and NCAA teams and use them as their own - or they just straight-up copy them. Did your school do this? If so, who'd they... borrow... Their look from?

I'll start. My high school's team: The Penn Hills Indians. Starting sometime in the 80's or 90's, they began wearing replicas of the Florida State Seminoles' helmets:

 

They did this all the way up until a few years ago, when they started wearing a red version with what I think is an original spear design:

 

 

Also, when we had an ice hockey team, they just took the Blackhawks logo and stuck it on a Flames jersey. Which is partially why I just wore a Chicago Blackhawks shirt I had to football games (where I saw Aaron Donald play before any of you did ).

(Also, for any of my fellow born-and-raised Pennsylvanians, I found this site which has a surprisingly comprehensive history of PA high school football helmets)

 

[~Bear]

So my high school, while I was there, pretty much exclusively used a rip-off of the Wisconsin Badgers "W", only slightly rotated and recolored to purple and gold.

Now, apparently they have two other logos they use, a W and an actual tiger. I haven't been able to actually find any other uses of these logos (recolored or otherwise) anywhere else, so I don't know if the school bought the rights to them, if they were exclusively designed for the school, or what. I honestly quite like the tiger head logo they use.

 

[raz]

1 hour ago, maz said:

 

 

I actually think this is the newer FSU spear, recolored. 

[colinturner95]

My alma mater, Bishop Kelly HS (Boise, ID), sometime within the last 5 years unveiled this clip art/stock masterpiece:

 

 

a quick reverse image search doesn't pull it up for a pro team or college team, but other high schools use it so it's not unique to BK. 

 

in the past, various teams at BK have used recolored versions of these: 

 

http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/ucf_variations.gif

 

nothing wild. If it were up to me, i'd have stuck with the UCF knighthead or gone with the updated Rutgers logo:

 

[mjarvie]

My sophomore year in high school (Fall of '96) my high school (Cypress Centurions) blue and orange changed to mimic the Chicago Bears. We started out with white pants, but then gradually did the monochrome look at home and blue pants on the road.

[Darth Brooks]

My high school (well, the local school) uses clip art, as in a clip art tiger straight from the disk they handed out with the first copies of Corel draw (or was it Illustrater?)

 

I would love to make a custom one tiger for them.

[Dilbert]

[TBGKon]

My school did not, but of the schools in my area, we had a few.

 

Mitchell Mustangs

 

 

Hudson Cobras

 

 

 

[MJWalker45]

Mine has, multiple times in fact. When I was in high school our football team used the SMU horse on their helmets.  Our original helmets, in 1965, were brown with the Chicago Bears logo of the time. 

 

And all of the current teams use some version of the Western Michigan Broncos logos. The mustang on the banner was also the primary logo we used  until someone decided to copy Western Michigan. 

 

 

[GriffinM6]

My high school started out using a realistic image of an Eagle head when they opened in the mid-90s. Then they moved to a direct copy of the Philadelphia Eagles logo. Then they used a modified version of the Emory Univ. (DII) Eagles logo (2009~2020), and now they use a hybrid of the Philly and Emory logos. 

[Discogod]

My High School barely had uniforms, let alone a logo (it's not really a thing over here) but my university's American Football team stole & recoloured the Carolina Hurricanes logo - it was green and black when I attended, but it's been changed to purple and black at some point in the 20 years since I left.

[leopard88]

I'm old (as in graduated from high school in 1984).

 

The Detroit Lions old helmet logo, recolored in red, was used from time to time.

[MJWalker45]

43 minutes ago, leopard88 said:

I'm old (as in graduated from high school in 1984).

 

The Detroit Lions old helmet logo, recolored in red, was used from time to time.

One of our rivals in Ohio, Minerva, did the same thing. And they've updated their logos whenever Detroit has updated theirs. They're playing the Sandy Valley Cardinals who use a knockoff version of Oregon wings for football and the Louisville Cardinals logo for other sports but have now got their own mascot logo set.

 

http://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/sportshub2-uploads-prod/files/sites/397/2017/08/03143552/1916.png

[PaleVermilion81]

[Needschat]

Linton High School - alma mater of Pat Riley - and Mont Pleasant merged in 1992 to became Schenectady High School. Linton Blue Devils and Mont Pleasant Red Raiders became the Schenectady High Patriots.  Why, when the city has a rich history of General Electrics and American Locomotive, plus being a major stop on the Erie Canal. Nope, those in charge were lazy.

 

[RyanMcD29]

My alma mater is the Blue Dragons, but we mainly used a block varsity D for all sports. The baseball team's jerseys usually mimic the Dodgers and we had a Tigers style D for much of the time I was in school. The lacrosse and soccer teams had a logo that had Drexel's dragon in a shield, but I think that was more from the supplier we got it from than it actually making it onto any other school branding.

 

Now the school I teach at is completely eccentric in copycats. We're the Tigers with colors in yellow and black and sometimes purple, and primarily there's a lot of merchandise using, of all teams, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' standalone head. Also have seen some use of various logos like Missouri, Princeton, Clemson, and LSU.

[leopard88]

15 hours ago, RyanMcD29 said:

My alma mater is the Blue Dragons, but we mainly used a block varsity D for all sports. The baseball team's jerseys usually mimic the Dodgers and we had a Tigers style D for much of the time I was in school. The lacrosse and soccer teams had a logo that had Drexel's dragon in a shield, but I think that was more from the supplier we got it from than it actually making it onto any other school branding.

 

Now the school I teach at is completely eccentric in copycats. We're the Tigers with colors in yellow and black and sometimes purple, and primarily there's a lot of merchandise using, of all teams, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' standalone head. Also have seen some use of various logos like Missouri, Princeton, Clemson, and LSU.

 

I am totally picturing this . . .

 

 

 

 

[eastfirst107]

My HS, the Blue Storm, uses the Air Force lightning bolt on football helmets.

[stumpygremlin]

On 2/9/2023 at 12:02 AM, Darth Brooks said:

My high school (well, the local school) uses clip art, as in a clip art tiger straight from the disk they handed out with the first copies of Corel draw (or was it Illustrater?)

 

I would love to make a custom one tiger for them.

According to the mothership, Tennessee State used that logo for a while

[spartacat_12]

I went to a fairly new high school, and our nickname was the Avalanche (we didn't have anything close to mountains around, but I guess they were dead set on alliteration). We used burgundy & blue as our colours, and our logo was a rip off of Colorado's.

 

Oddly enough, our hockey team didn't use the Avs jersey template. Instead they slapped this logo on the Canucks old West Coast Express jerseys.