Stop the Madness! Logo Trilogy Ends Here!

Hopefully! For a while at least, right?

There were other ideas I had about team logos that I felt were pretty much unaddressed. I'm not the final judge on logos or uniforms. The first post in The Madness series was a bout of inspiration caused by the "fauxback" jerseys the Tampa Bay Rays sported the other night. I discussed the basis for them, then discussed some other things barely related, and then the updating of old brand identity, and then inspirations for other teams.

The second post in The Madness, the one from before my 800th post, was solely a discussion of the baseball team currently playing in Oakland; the A's.

This post, the final(?) in the trilogy, will cover a slew of ideas and topics, will be much less focused, and will have more pictures.

I'll start with the NFL and some weird observations. This kind of stuff always got me going: which animal or thing has the most entries when it comes to team logos? I'd usually imagine cats (Lions, Bengals, Jags, Panthers) or even guys (Raiders, Redskins, Patriots, Buccaneers, Vikings)(well that does kind of tie it, but their branded logo for both the Vikings and the Buccs aren't guys). Turns out it's birds.

Arizona; and the older versions of this cardinal are less angry looking, but only slightly:

 Atlanta, again with the updated hawk, more slanty and angry looking:

Baltimore; talk about an angry bird, named for Eddie Poe's poem:

Philly; and finally we get a badass bird of prey, eagle...yeah baby:

Seattle; this seahawk's changed shape and color a few times in it's history:

Ah, bloodsport and modern dinosaurs...

So, moving on to more interesting things: the ugmos. Now, I don't have an exhaustive list of the ugliest designs ever, but I do have a list of things I really despise, the looks and designs that make you scratch your head. The teams have since changed them up, but here we see how bad it can get.

This first one may say more about me than otherwise. I've said before that maybe a baseball team called the "Angels" might be a more historically natural team name for an LA entity, but that doesn't mean I have to like it so much. I begrudge them, and, on occasion, root for them. Very rare occasion, but that has nothing to do with their name. But the next two logos are my most hated baseball logos ever: the dreaded Disney Angels logo:

And the outfit...looking like a well-off softball team...

Disney made their way into hockey as well:

Yikes.

Next is my most hated NBA name and logo, the Washington Wizards:

Next we move on to hockey, and the NHL's most well-known and most-hated iteration of a logo, the dreaded Buffuslug. This was an ugly mistake by the Buffalo Sabres.

And my mom's favorites, the mustard and brown Padres from back in the day. Holy shit.

You can find their updated logos many places, and have probably seen some of them at some point. Hell, the very year the Angels changed their unis to what it is today they won the World Series.

If that was the ugly, what would constitute the good (I'll get to the bad in a second)? For me, and this is just an opinion thing of course, I've noticed that upstart leagues that challenge dominant major leagues yield some sharp looking logos on occasion. Especially in hockey.

Back in the early '70s the NBA was the main basketball league, and the ABA came along and brought both the 3-point line and flashy play, they brought stiff competition. Eventually they were folded into the NBA, which adopted the 3-point shot, and added four teams: the Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers, and the New York Nets (now Brooklyn). The Spurs and Pacers logos have changed very little over the years, while the Nuggets and Nets changed more often.

The AFL came along and challenged the NFL, and as a result we got the Super Bowl. The ALF was absorbed into the NFL, became the AFC, and something weird: the Dolphins logo has never changed dramatically in their history, and the same goes for their color scheme--virtually unchanged. The Broncos started out fugly, and slowly came out of it, almost. But, one of my favorite logos from the old AFL teams is from a team that's not around anymore (changed locations and graphics):

I don't know why I like this derrick so much. maybe the colors...

So, earlier I mentioned rival leagues and merges, smart designs, and hockey specifically. Some of my favorite major sports logos came from the AHL, the upstart rival that was eventually absorbed into the NHL.

The first: the Nordiques, a team that played in Quebec City, the furthest north of any major league team in North American history. This team eventually relocated to Denver and became the Avalanche. I don't know why I like this as much as I do...

The second: the Edmonton Oilers. Again, I don't what it is about this logo, but I always like it, even as a kid. I didn't even know who Wayne Gretzky or Mark Messier were back the, and I still liked it.

The last: the Hartford Whalers. Again, no idea about my infatuation with this. The "H" in the negative space, the whale-tail, the only major league team ever on Connecticut. I don't get it...I don't particularly care for whaling, like I do for, say, beer brewing--like, the Brewers are a team I like philosophically. But whaling? These guys moved to North Carolina and became the Hurricanes.

Three teams from the old AHL, pretty cool looking gear.

How does music look in team affiliated gear?

Well, the blues:

And, jazz:

Okay, so I'll get to what I'm calling the "bad", when it maybe really should be called the "bizarre" or the "out of place". These two logos were ones I found randomly picking up the logos I was putting together for this and the other two posts. These were the kinds of things that I mentioned in Post 800 about tangentially discovering things while looking up other things. Uh, here we go:

That first head is from a hockey team in Sweden, and the second, if you know your geography, is from the Czech Republic, for another hockey team.

The Swedes and the Czech are using aboriginal American, Native Americans, in their logos. Um, WTF, mate?

I got nothing.

I do, though, have a three tiny logos that correspond to a conversation I had with my mom:

I prefer the cursive "I". The block "C" is lame and Chief Wahoo? At least the Swedes and the Czech give their logos dignity.

Two teams use logos that are so intertwined with their regions identity that in those regions those symbols represent more than a "team":

(Sigh) I'm done.

What a waste.

My favorite random logo so far:

Too many fucking logos. Had enough?