The XFL — the zombie league that refuses to die — has announced the names and logos for the eight teams that will be participating when the league’s latest incarnation gets under way next February.
Here are the eight team identities and how they’ve been adjusted, if at all, from XFL 2.0 in 2020:
- Arlington Renegades: Had previously been Dallas Renegades.
- D.C. Defenders: Carried over from XFL 2.0.
- Houston Roughnecks: Carried over from XFL 2.0.
- Orlando Guardians: Had previously been New York Guardians.
- St. Louis Battlehawks: Carried over from XFL 2.0.
- San Antonio Brahmas: New team entry.
- Seattle Sea Dragons: Had previously been Seattle Dragons (but have now apparently learned to swim).
- Vegas Vipers: Had previously been Tampa Bay Vipers.
And here are the logos and “storytelling” silliness for each team:
Arlington Renegades
D.C. Defenders
Houston Roughnecks
Orlando Guardians
St. Louis Battlehawks
San Antonio Brahmas
Seattle Sea Dragons
Vegas Vipers
———
No word yet on the uniforms. The league is scheduled to begin play on Feb. 18 — six days after the Super Bowl.
This is definitely a thing that just happened…
Totally agree. This did.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves now…
Las Vegas Vipers is a good name and I was thinking before could be a good name for the NBA expansion team there. Unfortunate that this probably means that won’t happen…
St. Louis Vipers was the old RHI (Roller Hockey International) team. I wonder if there was an arrangement made. I believe those old logos are still owned by someone who was affiliated with the league.
I’ve long though that if Pittsburgh ever gets an NBA team again, they could be the Pittsburgh Vipers or Pitt Vipers.
Or the Chicago Bulls could relocate…
Pitt Bulls!
It’s been done, in the Major Indoor Lacrosse League. (Commercial: link)
The problem is that Pitt is the university, PIT is the airport, and PGH is the preferred three-letter abbreviation for the city. So attempting to do Pitt [Whatever] doesn’t work, unless we’re talking about the Panthers.
is it me, or does the Viper logo look like the medical picture of a woman’s anatomy?
I think the Dallas Stars Mooterus still holds the title on that one,
After this league dies again after 1 season it still could happen. Don’t give up hope on the Las Vegas Vipers of the NBA.
The videos are laughable. For SA, they totally ignore history saying it’s the first time professional football has been played in the city. What about the WFL, USFL and other leagues that have had teams in the Alamo City?
San Antonio had a CFL team, for God’s sake!
Even the CFL had a cup of coffee in San Antonio in 1995, before retracting back to Canada.
I think you mean the WLAF, not the WFL.
WFL – Wings
USFL – Gunslingers
WLAF – Riders
Wow, I liked the XFL20 icons better.
Weird that they did not make the Orlando team the Vipers. Of course, the 2020 XFL missed out on giving the Vipers name to St. Louis to name them after Randy Orton.
Good that they got rid of the generic Wildcats name that the 2020 LA team used. I’m surprised that they kept the Guardians name instead of holding it for a future NY team, or coming up with something new with the existence of the Cleveland Guardians.
Great job in changing the Houston logo so it no longer looks like a blatant ripoff of the Oilers logo.
The Roughnecks ‘had’ to change out the derrick logo and whatever the secondary looked like, as the NFL took them to court for being too similar to marks owned by the Titans and Patriots.
I would have liked the Wildcats name to be used in Houston…while “generic”, it’s oil-industry slang (even mentioned in the team info blurb above) as well as a well-known football term, so there’s that…along with an improved combination of red/orange/black.
Agreed about the Guardians. It’s not a very good name at face value and it’s now being used by a Big 3 team. So why continue to use it at all, let alone when the team moved anyway?
Is the Cleveland roller derby team going to sue the Guardians?
no but the orlando guardians most likely can
link
interesting the same nickname comes with the same type of issues for both Cleveland and Orlando
I wonder how if the guys who write this storytelling stuff can say a single word of it with a straight face.
David,
For money of course. and they think they are cleverer than you because they made it up.
Big logo downgrade for the DC Defenders
Better name than the Commanders though!
Massive downgrade
The first logo’s interlocking lightning bolts forming a “DC” was the single most clever thing the league had going for it. Cryin’ shame.
Ha, this is awesome. Loved how the XFL did the name storytelling for the Vipers and Guardians, as if those names are connected to Vegas and Orlando (when they are clearly recycled from previous teams who played elsewhere).
And of course the San Antonio Brahmas are a blatant tribute to The Rock, who co-owns the league (one of his other nicknames was the Brahma Bull). It’s like when the Charlotte Bobcats were named after their owner, Bob Johnson.
I’m from Texas, born and raised in Houston. My father was an All-City RB in the mid-60s in San Antonio. But I had never heard of a Brahma Bull until the Rock said it on WWE television. News to me that we have Brahmas in San Antonio.
Our hockey team in Fort Worth back in the 90s and 2000s was the Fort Worth Brahma’s.The played the San Antonio Iguana’s.
Now you know. Thank you Dwayne Johnson.
Ugh. That Guardians logo is BAD. Like San Jose SaberCats bad. Or Nashville Predators bad. Like the CEO had a buddy who needed some paid design work and couldn’t admit that the project wasn’t up to snuff.
like rip off of the carolina panthers bad
No…this is a ripoff of the Carolina Pathers:
Panthers Wrocław of the European League of Football
I feel like the San Antonio team is just a relocated LA Wildcats
Why, because they are the only one without traceable lineage to a 2020 team?
Yep
Does WWE (or some other entity/person) retain the rights to the original XFL logos/names/uniforms/etc?
While I’m sure no one in Orlando or elsewhere wants to see the Rage ever again, I think the Las Vegas Outlaws actually sounded and looked liked (well, at least dressed like) a legitimate football team.
Every single one of these logos looks like it was made in the team builder feature on Madden. Couldn’t be more generic, which is fitting given how pointless this league is.
Agreed, incredibly generic. Of the spring leagues in the 10 to 20 years I think NFL Europe was about the only one that had some character for the teams and didn’t feel generic video game teams.
Wow, at least this time around they used a High School Senior to draw up the teams and logos. Uninspired is the word that comes to mind. Just hope the product on the field is better than the last couple iterations of spring football
The BattleHawks are now just Battlehawks. Subtle but important, I suppose.
The “storytelling” didn’t mention they kept the the “STL” in the logo, upside down.
Huge downgrade for the Vipers. The wild green unis looked cool as hell and now they’re black and red? boooooooring.
I mean, I see that they’re kind of carrying it over into Orlando’s color scheme, but the green is way too dark and is going to suck all the fun out of it.
I need a sworn affidavit from the design team of the new Renegades logo that they didn’t switch the location at the last minute.
I cannot look at that logo and NOT see a D In the background. The bottom left of the logo implies that it continues behind the slash.
Hearing that the Bandana Man is the secondary logo, but this new one is over-thought trash
I have nothing to back this up, but I wonder if the team wanted to be Dallas but there was some sort of stipulation where Arlington insisted on the place name if the team was going to continue to stay in Arlington. Maybe they already had the logo designed before the change as you suggested.
It’s absolutely a D lol
I actually like the DC logo. But that Seattle look – it’s like a high schooler thought the Norfolk Tides had a cool look, and tried to make his own version for a class design assignment.
Agreed, the 2020 logo was at least fierce. Why were they not allowed to use that one?
I like the DC logo as well. The Houston one is OK. The others are terrible, and the messaging for the Renegades’ logo is problematic: A diagonal stripe to represent Texas’s flags of rebellion? You mean the Confederate flag?
“Flags of rebellion” is rich. In that it is a lie. The only flag, singular, of rebellion with prominent diagonal stripes ever flown by Texas is the Confederate battle flag. Stephen F. Austin proposed a rebellion/republican flag (link) with diagonal stripes in the canton, but I don’t believe anyone ever made or used that flag. Otherwise, Texas rebellion flags have been dominated by rectangular blocks of color and by stars, not diagonal lines.
And the thing of it is, the Renegades R mark is a strong design, but it in no way makes me think of the Confederate battle flag, or the Confederacy at all. It’s a distinctive, stylized R that should scale very nicely. Why burden the logo with unnecessary baggage about paying tribute to treason against the United States?
Prediction: The Renegade team will lead XFL in penalties. They have a blatant disregard for authority. Good luck with that.
“Seattle Sea Dragons: Had previously been Seattle Dragons (but have now apparently learned to swim).”
Thanks for the really big chuckle this morning Paul. Broke me up!
What glorious BS marketing speak. A masterclass really.
Houston Roughnecks looks a little bit a lot like Round Rock Express (AAA for the Texas Rangers)…
To me, the “Sea Dragons” are a cheap, lazy knock off of the Kraken logo.
That was my immediate thought when I looked at it the first time too
Looks like my WLAF Orlando Thunder eye-searing neon green jersey is going to get some use!
Paul, I noticed that you described the “storytelling” for these XFL team logos as “silliness”, a theme you’ve hit on many times in the past.
Now obviously it’s subjective but don’t you think that both within and outside of sports, many logos, uniform designs, wordmarks etc do actually use symbolism to convey a certain message or tell us more about what the images represent?
The most obvious example being the US flag, with 13 stripes to represent the original 13 states and 50 stars to represent the current states. Is this “silliness”?
Symbolism is, you know, symbolism.
Cringe-inducing marketingspeak that tries to create ridiculous “storylines” while transparently checking off boxes for no other reason than to justify the marketing dept.’s existence is, well, silly.
If you don’t see any daylight in between the U.S. flag symbolism and the XFL logo descriptions, that’s up to you. I happen to disagree.
But it feels like they did it the wrong way around My Lawn. It feels more like they designed the logos and then worked their “Story Speak” to tells us why the logos look like they do. “The bolts and horns evoke the relentless force of stampeding Texan cattle: louder than thunder, more powerful than a bolt of lightning.” What a steaming load of Brahma shit!
Missed opportunity to call St. Louis team the BattleHawXXX.
Y’know, ‘cuz it’s the XFL and they’re XXX-TREME to the MAXXX, bro!!!
Like many others, when I was young I created my own leagues with my own teams and logos and colors. One rule I had: you got 64 crayons and you can’t use the same crayon twice. So one team could use red but another had to use brick or orange-red or bittersweet.
One team, the Garden State Cougars (in New Jersey with a nod to Golden State) wore light green and dark green. Best way to describe it would be the Bucks old rainbow uniforms in the late 70s.
Orlando looks to be wearing the double green, but now it seems if a team uses a light green it has to be neon/snot green.
Would be pretty awesome if the Battlehawk’s historical photo didn’t include a picture of a Nazi.
Whenever I hear XFL I’m reminded of Roller Derby, Pro Wrestling or Mud wrestling.
Thems some ridiculous storytelling about these minor league logos. (I need Visine after the Seattle one)
The Pentagon is in Virginia. The “most Defended Capital In The World” line is hilarious for so many reasons. The prior logo at least had 3 stars. What is this foolishness?
Is that the Washington Monument penetrating a star in that DC logo?
I’d be curious to see if any of the relocations that occurred were due to the USFL 2.0 and it’s success last year. I can say here in Houston, the town embraced the Roughnecks but didn’t get too into the Gamblers. This will be interesting how the two leagues do this season.
The Battlehawks being described as “the sentinels of the skys (sic)” just feels so on-brand for this nonsense!