Packers Thinking of Putting Logos on Their Jerseys

From Sports Business Daily. The article is hidden behind a paywall, but you can get the gist from the title.

I suspect that the other sports were just looking for someone to step into the limelight and take the hit before bedecking their gear with logos. That "someone" turned out to be the humble Mercury of the WNBA, with the blessings of NBA Commissioner David Stern. Yes, soccer clubs have corporate logos but American soccer doesn't have a David Stern.

Corporate logos might be the road to heaven, or the road to hell. But wherever that road leads, the first milepost of the road was in Phoenix.

WNBA Logos; Comets Coming Back?

Yet Another Bad Idea ranks sports logos from seven sports leagues: NBA, MLB, NFL, WPS, NHL, and MLS. And of course, the WNBA.

He puts the skills of the WNBA logo creators right smack in the middle. According to the author, the NBA has the best logos and MLS has the worst.

His ranking of WNBA logos from best to worst:

1. Indiana Fever (#9)
2. Seattle Storm (#12)
3. New York Liberty (#42)
4. Detroit Shock (#56)
5. Phoenix Mercury (#59)
6. Connecticut Sun (#66)
7. Houston Comets (#69)
8. Los Angeles Sparks (#90)
9. Washington Mystics (#99)
10. Minnesota Lynx (#117)
11. San Antonio Silver Stars (#120)
12. Sacramento Monarchs (#140)
13. Chicago Sky (#150)
14. Atlanta Dream (#155)

The Atlanta Dream: last again. He puts the New York Islanders, Pittsburgh Pirates and Oklahoma City Thunder as the only teams with worse logos. I disagree with his placement of the Monarchs at #140 - it's one of the more creative logos - but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You might be asking "Why did he put the Houston Comets on the list? Doesn't he know that the franchise folded?" The answer is yes, he does know, but he writes:

"I did something controversial with the WNBA. Technically, the Houston Comets are not a current team: the team folded after the 2008 season. However, as the 2009 season hasn't started yet, I included them (plus, there's a push to bring the Comets back. It would be devastating to the WNBA to lose the most successful franchise in its short history). The first number you see for the WNBA above includes the Comets; the number in parentheses does not."

This is the first I've heard of such a push. I suspect this is just idle speculation, but it would be fantastic if it were true.

Thunderstunk!

Oklahoma City unveiled the new logo and name for their new NBA team.

The name was no surprise. Clay Bennett decided to call it the Thunder. He was unable to use the name Tornadoes because god forbid a tornado hit the midwest and some clueless newsman led the broadcast with "Tornado kills five in Tulsa, and Tornadoes kill the Clippers 106-89." Thunder has never killed anybody, not yet anyway.

As for the logo, to paraphrase the old joke, "That logo wasn't released. It escaped."



Here are the rules.

NBA: plural nouns as mascots
WNBA: abstract nouns as symbols

The way it is, and the way it should be, forever and ever, amen. As a big fan of the Atlanta Dream and all the grief we got because of our name, well who's laughing now?

I can't name a logo in the W that's worse than that one. Even the Washington Mystics logo looks better, because if you squint really hard you might detect a whiff of magical smoke in Washington's logo. (Atlanta, unable to represent "Dream" in concrete terms, simply went with a stylin' red-blue-white logo that any ABA team would have been proud to have.) Whereas OKC's logo represents...nothing.

I suspect that OKC called their team the "Thunder" because they hoped that fans would mistake them for the Seattle Storm.