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Minor League Football - Discussion and Logos


Artisan219

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This looks really good again. I would add brown as an outline color and use the lighter color from the eye as an accent color inside the logo to spice it up a little. Really good design!

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

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I have a considerable amount of artwork left in this project, and I will continue to add art and revisions as I get to them. Eventually, when I have all of my teams set with logos and color palettes, I will post uniforms and maybe some merchandise concepts. But factoring in time I wish to spend on other projects and the only-occasional responses from the board the last several days, I think I'm going to change the focus of this thread for awhile.

Looking at my map of Designated Market Areas, I think a return to market research could perhaps generate some intellectual commentary as a break from the artistic input (which has been quite helpful, thank you).

While this is by and large merely a hypothetical undertaking, I am nevertheless curious as to the real-world applications of this project. My initial selection of twenty-four markets represented some of the largest untapped sports markets in the country, and every city on my map is specifically chosen to fill in gaps in the NFL, which does have a history of gambling on new markets. So this brings me to a simple question:

What would it take to actually field an NFL developmental league?

The simple answer would be yachts full of disposable income and a magic wand made from fossilized unicorn bones and imbued with the shattered dreams of orphans, but sadly I have neither of those things. Thankfully, I am not interested in the actualities so much as I am interested in figuring out all of the myriad hurdles involved in creating a league, and from there what would be the additional hurdles involved in continued league play.

The initial obstacles are inescapably interrelated: funding and NFL affiliation. A professional football league would obviously cost a fair amount of money. I read online somewhere that it costs over $3K to dress one player for the season, so just having uniforms and equipment for a full roster could easily run close to $200K. Counting player salaries, transportation costs, venue agreements, and other costs, even second-tier talent would be reasonably expensive. Granted, I use the word "expensive" in a relativistic sense, as the 2012-13 NFL salary cap is just over $120M, but in any case, individual franchise costs would be substantial, and the overall league costs would be nearly insurmountable without an official affiliate agreement with the NFL. But the NFL would only shoulder those costs if a developmental league was guaranteed to make money, while simultaneously not impacting the NFL's current markets or upsetting any NFL agreements with the NCAA programs.

So here's my input on those issues, and I invite the boards to comment other ideas.

I believe the best way for any developmental league to avoid stepping on the toes of the NFL or NCAA would be to play in the spring or summer. But even this "solution" would have its issues. The alternate schedule almost inescapably draws parallels to the ill-conceived XFL and would cause conflicts with the still-weak Arena Football League. Furthermore, both the NBA and the NHL have playoffs during the late spring and Major League Baseball is played throughout the summer. There is also the question of how many games the D-league should play. My suggestion would be 10 (each team plays the other three teams in its division twice, plus all four teams in another divisions), plus some form of playoff system. In any case, the D-league would have to be finished well in advance of the NFL exhibition season (if such a venture is still required with a D-league) so that D-league players could be moved to NFL rosters.

I believe to off-set franchise costs, a public ownership system could work. This system could be drawn from the Green Bay Packers' ownership model and tailored to allow part of each franchise to have private investors. Such an arrangement would allow local businesses the opportunity to ally themselves with teams and would also immediately add substantial resonance between each D-league franchise and its host city. Furthermore, I believe that football generates enough profit that even some charitable organizations would benefit from affiliations.

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Wow, never seen a treatise like this on the boards. One piece of input I have is that I don't think the Arena Football League would interfere too much with a potential NFL minor league because if the league was officially affiliated with the NFL, the advertising money and promotion used by the NFL could blow the AFL out of the water within a couple years of the league's inception. I think the public ownership idea is a great one. It could be a 51-49% ownership thing with the public taking one slice and the parent NFL club picking up the rest of the tab. This is a very well-thought out idea, and I have always wanted to see an NFL minor league along these lines.

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

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Well, I'd hoped to have had some more replies in the last few days, but in any case, I figured I could add a little to my treatise of NFL minor-league hurdles.

What businesses/entities would invest in an NFL minor-league, and are there any figures that would seem likely candidates for owners?

What should be the target gate attendance, and which cities lack adequate facilities? Which college facilities would work? While my DFL would not demand the athletic cathedrals of other major leagues, adequate facilities would nevertheless be a challenge for some of my selected markets. Many of these cities have college athletics, but there a fair number that lack outdoor football facilities, such as Milwaukee, whereas other cities have football facilities below acceptable standards. For example Grand Rapids' Houseman Field would require substantial rennovations. This is a major reason I thought a significant public ownership option would be advisable.

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Alright, coming back to this after a few days.

I'm going to let the next five posters pick the next five cites to get concepts. Keep in mind, I do have a few vector graphics done that I haven't posted, so it's possible to chose a finished concept :P

Just to help, I'll repost my updated map. (I made a few changes and made up a DFL logo, so I wanted some input.)

DFL_DMAs.png

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No, I already have something in mind for New Haven - Connecticut Tritons as a nod to the naval history (my brother did his submarine training in New Haven).

FDLsketch_Connecticut.jpg

I will, however, tweak this a little more before I get to vector-tracing. I like it, but I don't think it's there just yet.

Four more cities open. May I take your order.

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For Columbus, Ohio-

Nicknames related to Columbus

Columbus Explorers- Columbus being nicknamed "The Discovery City"

Columbus Capitals- Being the capital of Ohio

Catchy Nickname that have nothing to do with Columbus

Ohio Dynamo

Nicknames that have to do with Ohio

Columbus Cardinals- State bird is cardinal

Ohio Buckeyes- Buckeye state (Might not want to use that because of Ohio State)

Columbus or Ohio Whitetails- The huge population of whitetail deer in Ohio

Those are some nickname ideas for Columbus if you didn't have one already.

Anyway for cities to see the next concept (with suggested nicknames),

Columbus, Ohio

Portland, Oregon- Oregon Trailmen, Portland Roses

Omaha, Nebraska- Omaha Huskers, Omaha Storm, Omaha Twisters, Omaha Tornados

Orlando, Florida- Orlando Oranges

Albuquerque, New Mexico- Albuquerque Heat, Albuquerque Dukes, Albuquerque Flyers,

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Meh, in any case, he lived in New Haven at the time. I'm not up to speed on all his commuting while he was enlisted. I originally was going to go with New Haven Fathoms, and do a tentacle/anchor logo, but looking at that, it just seemed a little too standard (not that I'm opposed to that here and there) so I went with the trident logo. I suppose Fathoms work either way.

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No idea how I've missed this thread everyday for the last month almost.. Some great work in here..

Same here. I think because it said 'discussion' I passed it by.

Great stuff here, I really like quite a few of your logos and the hand drawings are very impressive. Looking forward to the Tritons and Villains concepts based on the hand drawings..

My faves are Tucson, Chesapeake, Toronto and Shreveport.

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I had this one ready for awhile, but I'm still not completely sold on the Pharaohs brand. I'm working on a Memphis Phantoms logo as well, so I'll let the board vote on that later.

Memphis1.png

And for Birmingham, I went with Mulcibers. Mulciber is another name for Vulcan, but in an archaic sense, the word can refer to any blacksmith.

Birmingham.png

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Birmingham, AL

Birmingham Blitz

Birmingham Vulcans

Memphis, TN

Memphis Pharaohs

Memphis Jackals

Oklahoma City, OK

Oklahoma Roughnecks

Portland, OR

Portland Cutthroats

Sacramento, CA

Sacramento Grizzlies

Sacramento Silvertips

You realize, I hope, that when I said the next five commentators could pick my next cities, I really didn't mean for the next person to try to grab five of them :) . Further, I said you could pick a city to get a concept, but I largely have concepts already in mind.

For the cities you mentioned, I have the Birmingham Mulcibers, the Memphis Pharaohs/Phantoms (haven't made up my mind, but obviously I have a Pharaohs logo finished already), Oklahoma Cyclones, Portland Primates, and my forerunner is still Sacramento Scorpions (hmm, I could keep my scorpion designs and go for Sacramento Manticores...)

Anyway, that all said, I do like the idea of a Roughneck logo. I suppose at the core, I could just re-appropriate the old Houston Oilers logo, but I suppose that'd be cheating.

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Those aren't bad suggestions but I'm not sure what I could do as far as logos for a racing theme. The Stars Football League has a team called the Daytona Racers with a fairly decent logo, but overall I don't want to make a football logo based on another sporting event. Ideally, I wanted to make something that would relate to Raleigh's identity as a research and high-tech area. I was considering Carolina Catalysts, but once I added Charleston to the map, I had to drop the Carolina title. I suppose I could still use Raleigh Catalysts or Raleigh Alchemists.

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