Sodboy13 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 1 hour ago, ltjets21 said: Arena Football is the only minor football league that ever grasped my attention. The high scoring aspect is entertaining and it feels like a different product than the NFL, unlike the NFL wannabe UFL, AAF, and XFL . In the late 2000s there was also a very strong brand. Saturday games were broadcast on ESPN. Not sure what really was responsible for their downfall. LEAGUE: "We are an extremely valuable and desirable pro sports entity." PLAYERS: "Okay, then you can give us pay and benefits proportional to your declared value." LEAGUE: "No, sorry, we were lying. League's closed now, bye." 3 Quote On 1/25/2013 at 1:53 PM, 'Atom said: For all the bird de lis haters I think the bird de lis isnt supposed to be a pelican and a fleur de lis I think its just a fleur de lis with a pelicans head. Thats what it looks like to me. Also the flair around the tip of the beak is just flair that fleur de lis have sometimes source I am from NOLA. PotD: 10/19/07, 08/25/08, 07/22/10, 08/13/10, 04/15/11, 05/19/11, 01/02/12, and 01/05/12. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sykotyk Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 9 hours ago, ltjets21 said: Arena Football is the only minor football league that ever grasped my attention. The high scoring aspect is entertaining and it feels like a different product than the NFL, unlike the NFL wannabe UFL, AAF, and XFL . In the late 2000s there was also a very strong brand. Saturday games were broadcast on ESPN. Not sure what really was responsible for their downfall. The league had a deal with the NFL where NFL owners got new teams at a very discounted price and the NFL was given an option to buy 51% of the league. The NFL changed their bylaws to allow owners such as Jerry Jones to buy teams. But the NFL did not exercise their option. Those extremely discounted teams sold to NFL owners hurt the league as they were still relying heavily on expansion fees. At the start of the NBC era, the league consented to two teams being sold and relocated because they were stalwart franchises. Albany to Indianapolis and Iowa to New York (Long Island). The league positioned themselves so they'd become profitable when the NFL took over or if the NFL owned teams would be viable that would carry over into TV contracts, ticket sales, etc for other teams. Neither happened. And NBC got back into the NFL and was unhappy with the afl ratings in the spring. The growth in neutral viewership never happened. And the TV execs focused on major market teams like Colorado, Dallas, Philadelphia, Georgia, New York and Los Angeles instead of focusing on the better actual match ups each week. In addition, the AFL changed some very fundamental rules of the game that made the games unwatchable up longtime fans. 40-50 pt games were common. But with the defensive restrictions, elimination of Ironman players, increased penalty yards on flags, etc made 70+80 pts common and 99 the record by New York. Partly the Ironman AFL game was just different than outdoor football but NBC wanted to promote NFL castoffs rather than the Ironman stars of the game that neutrals wouldn't know about. QBs like Garcia, Bonner, Dolezel, and Pawlawski they thrived in the afl were often ignored in favor of guys like Damen Wheeler who was not as suited for the afl but played for LA so we featured a lot. Imagine the NFL tried implying Fields was better than Mahomes because Chicago is on TV more often than Kansas City. Now some were kinda smart. Jones brought in Dolezel and one reason Andrew Wang bought the Barnstormers to move to NY was because Garcia was what made the team good enough to be worth it over just buying an expansion team. Garcia was the highest paid player in the league and might still hold that record. $500k for 3 years. $166k a year over 20 years ago was a great gig. In the end, the AFL couldn't grow further. NFL owners realized growth had stopped before their teams became profitable so they bailed. The infamous missed season was a result of the players being lied to that the league was successful so wanted their fair share not realizing that it was bluster to try to garner new owners. In the end, the NFL owners given sweetheart deals is what doomed the league. They bought teams for a third what other owners had paid for expansion teams. That growth fund the league relied on disappeared. Old teams that had built fan bases with cheap tickets couldn't compete with the big market teams who had $300 front row seats. Even if 90% of the arena went unsold or was comped out. 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildcomet Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 10 hours ago, Frylock said: It’s the number font and treatment that are a big turn-off for me. That “bubble” effect where the outline is rounded on a “sharp” font just reminds me too much of the concepts forum, where someone is using Photoshop for the first time. While the Vikings used it on their jerseys for several years, it just looks unprofessional to me. Sorry! Thank you! I'd been trying to articulate why they feel off to me but was struggling, but you nailed it. Either round off the numbers or keep sharp corners, but the outline and the numbers should definitely match in that regard. Another poster did mention that the game jerseys (at least some) should have some changes to how the numbers look so I'm optimistic what we see on Week 1 will look better, and some of these I honestly do not mind in most other aspects of their design. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sodboy13 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 To add one specific instance to @Sykotyk's thorough runthrough of the AFL's spike and collapse: The Firebirds were actually doing well in Indiana after the move, but their owner wanted out. He found a buyer, was offered $6 million for the team, and was ready to sell at what he considered a fair price. Problem was the AFL was putting up this big flash splash and cash front, and David Baker had declared the expansion fee to get into his amazing league was $25 million. He couldn't have that undercut by franchises being sold for what they were actually worth, so the AFL forcibly folded the Firebirds rather than let the sale complete. 2 Quote On 1/25/2013 at 1:53 PM, 'Atom said: For all the bird de lis haters I think the bird de lis isnt supposed to be a pelican and a fleur de lis I think its just a fleur de lis with a pelicans head. Thats what it looks like to me. Also the flair around the tip of the beak is just flair that fleur de lis have sometimes source I am from NOLA. PotD: 10/19/07, 08/25/08, 07/22/10, 08/13/10, 04/15/11, 05/19/11, 01/02/12, and 01/05/12. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conrad. Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 10 hours ago, Frylock said: It’s the number font and treatment that are a big turn-off for me. That “bubble” effect where the outline is rounded on a “sharp” font just reminds me too much of the concepts forum, where someone is using Photoshop for the first time. While the Vikings used it on their jerseys for several years, it just looks unprofessional to me. Sorry! Yea, sadly I don't have control over that. The AFL doesn't have the budget to get actual custom uniform designs from us. They only are using our publicly-available uniform templates to customize colors and logos for their teams. If it was up to me, I would design bespoke uniforms for all the teams. Not my call tho 7 1 Quote Red Goat Creations :: Graphic Design Solutions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJWalker45 Posted April 12 Author Share Posted April 12 12 hours ago, CaliforniaGlowin said: The Desert Hawks look like they're from Buffalo. Needless red and blue at the highest level. They were previously the West Texas Warbirds and kept their colors when they rebranded. Phenom Elite would have been the better option for the league than BSN. All they had to do was not allow the insane pants designs that they gave them when they were in charge of the league. Someone said that at least one of the teams (Philadelphia) will not be wearing the clunky numbers that are shown on every single uniform. I hope that's the case for the rest of the league as well. All they had to do was keep this design. I also wonder how much more form fitting the gameday uniforms will be, because they didn't even attempt to make the jerseys form fitting when doing these shoots. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sykotyk Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 17 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said: To add one specific instance to @Sykotyk's thorough runthrough of the AFL's spike and collapse: The Firebirds were actually doing well in Indiana after the move, but their owner wanted out. He found a buyer, was offered $6 million for the team, and was ready to sell at what he considered a fair price. Problem was the AFL was putting up this big flash splash and cash front, and David Baker had declared the expansion fee to get into his amazing league was $25 million. He couldn't have that undercut by franchises being sold for what they were actually worth, so the AFL forcibly folded the Firebirds rather than let the sale complete. Yes. That became a huge issue with other teams as well. It's why they just all folded. They had already contacted Oklahoma, Milwaukee, Florida and Houston right before the NBC push to limit available teams to channel the new owners to overpriced expansion teams. Which only happened because they had given out teams to NFL owners for only $5m. Indiana did do very well and had built up a nice mutual rivalry with Chicago and Grand Rapids who saw a lot of road fan support which helped ticket sales, atmosphere, legitimacy, etc. But not enough to derail their attempts to get the major city teams on TV as often as possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDAWG Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green27 Posted April 12 Share Posted April 12 10 minutes ago, GDAWG said: Is this just black & orange or is the lighting misleading? If so, I'm surprised they would go into either black & orange or green & yellow territory given the popularity statewide of Oregon and Oregon State. The team plays in Salem, which is about an hour away from both schools and an hour away from Portland. I assume they want to draw fans from all areas of the state and this looks a little close to OSU colors. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDAWG Posted April 15 Share Posted April 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bowld Posted April 15 Share Posted April 15 Too many white and black helmets and every team having the same number font is a downer too 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDAWG Posted April 15 Share Posted April 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaliforniaGlowin Posted April 15 Share Posted April 15 29 minutes ago, GDAWG said: That's pretty much the same uniform as the desert hawks come on y'all 2 Quote Last updated 2/26 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildcomet Posted April 16 Share Posted April 16 Y'all are going to be shocked to see the helmet color chosen by the Washington Wolfpack... /s Issues pointed out about the numbers and repeated color choices aside, this is not too bad. They could have had a much more unique helmet with their color scheme which is a disappointment in my view, but I'm guessing the teams are getting some sort of discount to use more basic colors in a larger quantity or something like that. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sodboy13 Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 On 4/15/2024 at 5:43 PM, CaliforniaGlowin said: That's pretty much the same uniform as the desert hawks come on y'all Looks more like the Orlando Predators with royal blue swapped in for black. Quote On 1/25/2013 at 1:53 PM, 'Atom said: For all the bird de lis haters I think the bird de lis isnt supposed to be a pelican and a fleur de lis I think its just a fleur de lis with a pelicans head. Thats what it looks like to me. Also the flair around the tip of the beak is just flair that fleur de lis have sometimes source I am from NOLA. PotD: 10/19/07, 08/25/08, 07/22/10, 08/13/10, 04/15/11, 05/19/11, 01/02/12, and 01/05/12. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaliforniaGlowin Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 It could use more purple but I'll take it. Quote Last updated 2/26 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJWalker45 Posted April 17 Author Share Posted April 17 18 hours ago, Wildcomet said: Y'all are going to be shocked to see the helmet color chosen by the Washington Wolfpack... /s Issues pointed out about the numbers and repeated color choices aside, this is not too bad. They could have had a much more unique helmet with their color scheme which is a disappointment in my view, but I'm guessing the teams are getting some sort of discount to use more basic colors in a larger quantity or something like that. Something like the background color here would be a great option going forward. Hopefully they can move to break up the black and white helmet mafia next season. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDAWG Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TaylorMade Posted April 17 Share Posted April 17 7 hours ago, MJWalker45 said: Something like the background color here would be a great option going forward. Hopefully they can move to break up the black and white helmet mafia next season. Their practice helmets were purple https://www.instagram.com/aflwashingtonwolfpack/p/C5kZVJtLtYi/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GDAWG Posted April 18 Share Posted April 18 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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