Spring Football Concept: AAFL Project

[Shonn71]

I vote for Juice.    I love the Snowbird helmets, but I think too many opposing players will be mocking the Snowbird players by gently flapping their arms and saying "spread your tiny wings and fly away, losers"

[Dozap17]

My vote's for Orlando Snowbirds

[Kooky01]

Going with Snowbirds.

[NativeSonX]

Might as well merge the CFL project to this one since Portland and Orlando franchises seem to be migrating to the AAFL.  We can prevent this by saying NO to Snowbirds.  We already have Chinooks, Crawdads, Wolves, Rampage (Rhinos) and now you want some fair-weather birds?  What are we running here a petting or a football league?  You need a little fruity lubrication to go with all this protein.  A moratorium to a fowl choice, and affirm a tangy beverage to start your Football Morning! Juice, Juice, JUICE!!!

 

Brought to you by the FCC (Florida Citrus Council).

 

And what's more loveable than a human in over-sized orange?

[CLEFAN94]

Juice!!!!

[WideRight]

This one is heating up, but I think it is now purely a 2 horse race.  So, if you voted in the past for either Tropics or Lightning, you can recast your vote. 

 

Will it be the Creamsicle Dream?  The Vitamin C Victory Dance?  The pulpy pugilists?

Or will it be the migrating marauders?  The blue-haired blitz?  An early bird special with a side of cialis?

 

Voting remains open as neither club has been able to make a case.

 

And yes, @NativeSonX, I have and will continue to reuse some ideas from past threads, because, in all honestly, coming up with 4 new ideas for each potential city is more time than this guy can manage in a 2-day voting window.   They won't all be former CFL, but there will be some, along with some from my 1980's AAFL, my AAF project, my WFL project, or any other number of past series.  Just a fact. 

[raz]

Juice. 

[RM14]

Snowbirds 

[DCarp1231]

What happens in the even of a tie?

[GreenCat]

Gimme the Juice

[kb105]

Got to go with the Juice

[WideRight]

As I wake up this morning, the overnight results make it...

 

Juice 15    Snowbirds 13

 

Still too close to call,  What is it about Florida and voting?  Maybe they should be the Orlando Hanging Chads (a 2000 reference for those of you old enough to remember when elections were comical not "if the other guys wins its the end of our nation" BS.)

 

But, no politics here.  Just a shot for the next 10 hours for one or the other to make a move.  If no one pulls out a 4-vote lead, then we go until 5pm and the winner is the one with the highest count.  If it is a tie, to answer the question, I will just pick the one I like best and go with it.   Call it League Commissioner's  (or "guy who is doing all the work on this project") prerogative. 

[NativeSonX]

Here's a real life "snowbird" aka the Dark-Eyed Junco.  Biologist Carl Linnaeus (father of modern taxonomy) had classified this little guy as Fringilla hyemalis, or "winter finch" from a description taken by British naturalist Mark Catesby who first labeled this species as the snow-bird in his treatise,   The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731)  In reality the wingspan of the Dark-Eyed Junco is a mere 23cm, so not quite as big as the bird portrayed here, who by any account looks like some large bird of prey:

The reality is these small birds really don't have the requisite white wings to cover a helmet.  Of the six or seven sub-species, none have a completely white wing:

I'm no birder but, that dog won't hunt. We might be better off with the Snowy Egret, who is at home in Florida year-round and has large wingspan of 104cm making it the predatory big bird needed for @WideRight concept.  Those wings are definitely white. 

 

I truly appreciate all his efforts in giving us viable options to vote and debate about, but if there was a tie, I figure we can compromise and have snowbird served in orange sauce aka a blending of both choices?  It must be akin to having orange chicken or chicken with orange peel?  I heard they maybe even tastier over a steaming bed of white rice, however we might need a dozen real-life snowbirds to make a single serving...  that's a lot of tiny wings!

[BengalErnst]

I originally voted for Juice and may want to change my vote now due to this dude being very odd about his hatred of the snowbirds name 

[heavybass]

Yeah he's got an unusual hate boner for Snowbirds... and it's a bit unsettling.

[WideRight]

It could be a fear boner.  Ka-Kaw???

 

No, seriously, it is fun to see debate, but we will have a winner by the end of the day, and with all the regulars having voted already, the Juice do seem to have the advantage.  

 

(I must admit, even as a Bills fan, having a helmet for the Juice with #32 on it does make me a bit uneasy.  Not to mention OJ being the team monogram.)

 

One more quick note.  Despite all the grousing earlier, with either Snowbirds or Juice chosen for Orlando, we are guaranteed that there will be no team in the inaugural 8 that have a navy jersey.  Three teams with navy in their designs (all in the West) but no navy jerseys, though we do have 2 orange ones and two maroon ones, all 4 in the East, so I will need to think about that as the AAFL grows to 10, 12, and 16 teams. 

[Bomba Tomba]

Snowbirds!

 

Also I really do hope that we get a purple team at some point, after several failed attempts

[Silver_Star]

On 2/1/2024 at 7:27 PM, WideRight said:

OK, I am going to treat @DCarp1231 's post as a vote switch from Atlanta to Orlando kind of like the Iowa Caucus when your guy is ousted so you have to revote for one of the remaining contenders. 

 

With that vote, we have a winner!

 

Welcome Orlando, FL to the AAFL!!   This gives us our 8 founding franchises and means that we hit what I consider the 3 biggies for any startup league, Florida, Texas, and California.  So now we start the voting process on Orlando's identity, and this one pushed me in some weird directions.  I wanted to avoid any space references because Houston went that direction, and since Orlando is not on the ocean or the gulf, I did not feel I could repurpose the San Diego Surf or the Sharks idea.  So, what is left?    Let's see.

 

ORLANDO TROPICS

With a gator as the main component of the logo, you knew this former New Orleans design had to be an option for a Florida team, and so it is.  With the potential for the league's first white helmet, and combining UF orange with green from "The U", this is a very "Florida man" look.  I opted to change the name from "Gators" to "Tropics" largely because UF would certainly sue if another team in the state tried to use the Gator name. 

ORLANDO JUICE

It's a team the Florida Citrus Growers will love!  Not only does it focus on the citrus industry, but we went one layer deeper into creamsicle country with the first team in sports history to propose a dual-orange color scheme.  We hae seen double blue (Argonauts), double green (Bucks), even double red (AAF Commanders), so now we have double orange.  It certainly screams Florida, but is it too much "juice" for the fans to accept?

 

ORLANDO SNOWBIRDS

Another huge element of Florida's unique population is the vast number of northerners who escape the winter to spend the colder months in the Florida sun.  Whether just temporary "time share" residents or permanent retirees in "death's waiting room", the Snowbird should be the state bird.  In a sun-soaked gold and blue sky combo, the Snowbirds spread their wings in sunny Orlando. 

ORLANDO LIGHTNING

A second repurposed logo as the former DC Power now emerge as the Orlando Lightning.  This design recognizes the frequency and severity of lightning strikes in Central Florida, while also providing the team with a color scheme that aligns with its other major outdoor team, the MLS Orlando City club, with their recognizable purple kits.  The Lightning will sport purple, metallic gold, and black as their colors, with twin lightning bolts emerging from the facemask on the helmets. 

 

There we have them, four choices up for a vote.  Only 1 can be the identity of the league's final inaugural team.  Will it be a tongue in cheek reference to the state's big crop?  a nod to the prehistoric lizard so often found on golf courses and in swimming pools?  A tribute to the state's transient sunseekers? or will the team adopt purple once again?  

 

As we have established, the vote has a 2-day maximum, but once we reach 15 total votes, then any team with a 4-vote lead takes the W.  

 

Following this vote, i will lay out the premise of a first season, and discussion of expansion to 10 clubs in year two.   More votes to come, to be sure.  But, for now, let's get to picking the identity of Florida's team.  

 

The Orlando Juice moniker makes me laugh all the time and blush too. That is funny as hell.

[NativeSonX]

3 hours ago, BengalErnst said:

I originally voted for Juice and may want to change my vote now due to this dude being very odd about his hatred of the snowbirds name 

Most won't read this, but that's ok.  I needed to say my peace as why it's important to have an opinion and defend your choice.

 

Hate is strong word and your perception of my motivations to shed light on inconsistencies for this snowbird design choice isn't rooted in reality.  I merely illustrated the actual species that have historically been associated with the name "snowbird" and even suggested an alternative waterfowl that may be more appropriate for the design.  Ornithology isn't my jam, but in the pursuit of formulating ideas where the author appropriate aviary tropes, they still has some tacit obligation do their due diligence to accurately depict their subject matter.  You can't call something white for sake of artistic license, if everybody sees it as black, as you can't convince us the scientific data is wrong that a small bird should depicted with much larger wingspan? 

 

In the world of board games (which I have much more familiarity), if subject matter delves into unfamiliar culture and history, designers employ cultural consultants to get the facts right, because no one wants to play something that promotes gross historical inaccuracies and is deemed offensive to people they are  commemorating. Your project suffers if you don't consider all the viewpoints of the history you are simulating.  Proper cultural consultation allows the game designers, illustrators, graphic designers the boundaries to where their visual language can go and provides iconography and imagery that reflects a sufficient level of historical accuracy.  Yes sports logo and uniform design won't be mistaken as high art, in fact it might be considered déclassé or tacky, but even tacky offers a window to who we are and what we value.  Maybe it isn't worthy of elevated intellectual discourse but it does require us to make informed choices.

 

Maybe I'm not your typical beer and pretzels sports addict, and would rather play the influence game.  That being presenting viewpoints to articulate why the choice I am advocating has merit and should be considered by others.  However, some of you would rather play it safe and don't have any real conviction on devising a way for influencing the direction of this project, as the heart wants what it wants.  I guess for many, the investment in advocating your choice is not a valued,  rooted to a male-centric core audience that is satisfied just seeing their votes counted, not needing explain why that choice is sound and should be considered by others.  Hence there is a gravity towards certain choices that feel too familiar and too over-done, most likely rooted in the notions of projecting traditional tropes of masculinity, which results in alienating other creative aspects of alternate design choices.  There is a drive to go with expediency to get to the next reveal instead of thoughtful discourse that allows for this deliberative body to find full consensus.  I appreciate that some would engage in actual banter, and open your minds to different angles on how to make these thoughtful decisions.  However, I  mostly see no sentence or one sentence efforts that show how shallow a perspective respondents base there decisions. 

 

By any means I not a politician, but I know how words matter and make a difference.  I do my due diligence beyond what most are capable or willing to do, because this experiment of design democracy is important, not because I have some unhealthy desire to destroy one choice, but because the project originator tasks us to make informed decisions to help him create a fully collaborative project.  I did research what comes up for snowbird and the reality didn't match  what we may be thinking it means (outside of the double entendre for retirees). Do I love the love the choice of the Juice?  Not really, I even suggested playful alternatives (Sunrise, Mimosas) because even Juice is too safe on its own.  Do I hate the moniker Snowbirds? No, but we have already seen where this design has went in @WideRight CFL project, so I would rather not rehash something that has already had its sunshine on these boards.  I even wasn't originally wasn't onboard of choosing Orlando over Miami or NY/NJ (which I had previously lobbied for), and gave my reasons why.  People are so happy just to vote and not even give their actual two cents to why its a good choice, that's their prerogative, but racing to see the next reveal, leaves us missing out on what can possibly emerge when everyone has their choice recorded and the final votes are cast.

 

Maybe I have failed to foster a environment to allow for a greater level of discussion, and maybe that is for the better.  But the longer we talk about our choice actually helps the designer make better choices in what he ultimately presents, because we give him the gift of time.  Surely, we would rather him make thoughtful choices based on our suggestions and present the best product possible.  This a forum to exchange ideas and provide some well-meaning constructive criticism to allow the artist the best possible runway for their ideas to take flight.  If I torpedoed the Juice's chances to be the moniker for AAFL 2.0 (or is this the 3rd iteration?) then I am at peace with the Snowbirds being the ultimate choice. At least I got to say my peace, for better or worse.

 

@WideRight Ka-Kaw?  I thought you were a USFL guy?  That is a sacrilege on the highest order.  The blue egg on the back of the Breakers on-hiatus helmet is breaking in disappointment.  The shores of Lake Pontchartrain will remain in quiet protest, until this injustice finds full remediation. 

[wentvoltage123]

Juice