Happy Friday the 13th! In today’s Ticker, we’ve got some new men’s college hoops unis, a potential new court design leaked in NBA 2K24, and more!
Uni Watch News Ticker for Oct. 13, 2023
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Baseball
MLB
- Spectacular photo here of Bob Gibson waiting on-deck at Fenway during the 1967 World Series. Note the jacket he’s wearing — he has his uni number on both sleeves! Was this common practice at the time? (From @BSmile)
- With the American and National League Championship pairings now set, it’s worth noting that each league features an ad-clad team (Astros, D-backs) facing an ad-free team (Rangers, Phillies).
Football
NFL
- Here are the Ravens and Titans uni combos for this weekend’s game in London. (From Andrew Cosentino)
- The Browns are going mono-white this weekend, which I must say is becoming one of my favorite looks in the entire NFL.
- The NFL has told Emily Morgan, the young graphic designer whose redesigns of pro teams have gone viral and whom Paul covered in a Substack piece back in July, to cease and desist using their logos. (From multiple readers)
- Pretty incredible that “the worldwide leader in sports” let this typo get published on their front page. Talk about an apostrophe catastrophe! (From multiple readers)
College
- Houston had a BFBS field design for last night’s game. (From Ignacio Salzar and Clint Dickinson)
- Fort Valley State QB Kelvin Durham had two mouth guards attached to his helmet during yesterday’s game; apparently only he used only one during actual play.
- Throwback helmets on tap for North Dakota. (From Bob Tuomala)
- Here are this weekend’s uni sets for Mizzou, Tennessee, and UNC.
Hockey
NHL
- The Capitals have released their alternate jersey schedule. (From multiple readers)
- The NHL is considering holding a game in Mexico City.
More
- Reader Bob Sullivan’s team won his beer league championship. Appropriately, the league’s trophy is a serving bowl soldered to an empty keg.
Basketball
NBA
- The newest NBA 2K24 update adds an alternate court design for the Celtics, though we’re yet to find a screenshot. The Celtics have not formally announced anything to this effect. (From Matt Straub)
College
- New unis for Texas Tech men. I like the white and red designs, but that black one leaves something to be desired. The wordmark is so small, it will hardly be legible in the arena and on a broadcast. (Thanks, Phil)
- New unis for Dayton men. (Thanks, Phil)
Soccer
International
- England: Both the Premier League and the the women’s professional divisions will wear black armbands during their next fixtures in solidarity with the innocent victims in both Israel and Gaza. (Thanks, Jamie)
Auto Racing
- Haas Formula 1 drivers Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg will have one-off fire suits for the US Grand Prix next Sunday. (From Jeremy Brahm)
Grab Bag
- Our own Jamie Rathjen has sent along a few more AFL Women’s Indigenous designs: Fremantle, who will be known as Walyalup for the round, Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne, plus the ball design.
Comments (31)
– The NFL coming after Emily Morgan is the pettiest thing I’ve heard in a long, long time.
– That “Bronco’s” apostrophe catastrophe is my ultimate pet peeve. I don’t understand why so many adults think adding an apostrophe is the correct way to pluralize a noun.
– Surprisingly sensible response to the Gaza conflict from the English FA.
She’s selling shirts with team likenesses on them. How could they possibly be okay with that?
I agree. I’m a graphic designer and you always have to be careful using any corporate logo (any logo really). Big business takes their branding seriously, which is one of many reasons why they’re multi-billion dollar companies. Yeah, totally sucks and seems petty, but trust me, this is par for the course and quite honestly, as a graphic designer, you need to know stuff like this
Has anybody here actually checked out her work? She doesn’t “use” corporate logos. She makes her own ones that could be used by the teams.
NFL team accounts were literally commenting on her posts encouraging her. I’m not saying that justifies her making money off the endeavour, but it certainly makes the NFL’s resposne questionable.
The Houston game was last night.
Yup. Fixed.
Pretty crappy of the NFL to tell that gal to stop doing her logo designs. She did a good job with them. Most felt very generic, Madden relocation level, but others were upgrades. Her upgraded Pat Patriot was REALLY good.
The Titans quadruple navy from head-to-toe is one of the worst looks in the league. Shame that a team with the vibrant history of powder blue/red/white decides to go so DULL. Same with the Patriots as we’ve discussed.
“The Titans quadruple navy from head-to-toe is one of the worst looks in the league”…but one that I concede is the best look that they have out of their non-Oilers options – hoping big changes are on the way very soon!
The Ravens have yet to wear their white jerseys with white pants, which is much better than the leggings look they’re going with on Sunday.
Navy/navy/light blue would be my choice.
If you have a navy or black helmet, I’d rather see white or light-colored pants than navy or black.
Of course, if you have orange or red as one of your colors, that should be your road pants.
How do people feel about the Phillies throwback uniforms having the hat and uniform Ps being different? I personally don’t like it, but I know people liked when the Tigers had different Ds on their hat and uniform.
Its one of those quirks that would never be allowed to persist if the uniform were designed today, but I love that they reproduced it in the throwbacks
link
I wish they brought back the zippered jersey. The number and P look lower than what they have on the current version.
Plus the number font isn’t quite right and the NOB font is wrong (regardless of which arching was originally used at different points). The weird thing is the replicas they showed for sale in the team store have more accurate lettering than the ones worn by the players. If you’re doing to do a throwback, do what you can to get it completely right.
The mis-matched P’s are ’74-86 ‘accurate’:
link
My beefs (aside from the powder blues being worn at home):
Major: No vertically arching NOB:
link
Minor: No chain-stitching:
link
Cheap, cheap, cheap!
The Ps in your photo of chain stitching are not mismatched. They may not be identical, but they both have the lace to make the interior look like a baseball. Brian may be correct about not having a baseball on the jersey (which may explain why the Blue Jays did not bring back the 70s-80s logo), but any batter who would be confused by those should probably not be in the league.
IIRC, the “P” on the jersey isn’t allowed to have the squiggle that makes it look like a ball because of a broader rule banning images of baseballs on jerseys…
The Phillies are a strange case where their current uniforms are semi-throwbacks to the Whiz Kids all while also wearing throwbacks with the powder blues.
I love the cursive P logo and maroon is such a rare color in MLB that I wish they would go back to their maroon pinstripes too. I think their 80s look was spectacular.
With that being said, I’m perfectly fine having two logos for the sake of having the throwback.
It was done on purpose. The hat has a maroon baseball in the negative space. The jersey P would have a white ball in the negative space and could be confused with a baseball. Can’t have a baseball on the jersey, lest a hitter be confused. Same goes for white sleeves on a pitcher or frayed/cut sleeves on a pitcher or a white glove. The Tigers (and Yankees, and Braves at one point) had different logos on the same uniform because of benign neglect and a lack of eagle-eyes manufacturers when most was done locally.
*eagle-eyed
This was one of the weeks San Francisco originally posted on their uni schedule would be a white jersey game, but Cleveland had already posted nearly two months earlier that this was one of their throwback games. The Niners amended their uni schedule before Week 2, because they also originally had white penciled in for the game in LA, but as the Rams chose white at home, SF had to update accordingly, and fixed the Week 6 error as well.
Of course, the Niners ought to be wearing their red throwbacks for this game, even though they’re not meant to emulate their AAFC years like the Browns’ unis, but their regular unis are fine.
The BROWNS mono-white uniform would be one of my favorites too if only the helmet stripe matched the pants stripe….not sure how they missed that!!
Unless Emily Morgan is making money on her designs, which I could see being problematic on the legal side of things, I don’t see how the NFL can tell her what to do with her own work. That’s ridiculous.
I think she is/was though. Because in the comments of her post I saw reference to an online store.
But there were also people there suggesting she just use the city name and not the team name as well as not showing the before photos.
While some of her designs are kinda cool, she’s taking copyrighted designs, tweaking them, and selling them for profit. The NFL might be a multi-billion dollar behemoth, but that doesn’t make what she’s doing okay.
As an aside, what I would really like to see is the NFL send cease-and-desist letters to high schools that blatantly poach helmet logos. Where is the school pride in stealing a pro logo? And what are they teaching their art students by saying, instead of designing our own logo, let’s thieve someone else’s work? Make it a school/art project and let the kids design the logo.
Totally agree with this thought on Emily’s designs. Her “new” versions are little more than tweaks on the current versions. And if you want to do that for fun, then great. But you cant sell the design under the teams name. There are creative ways around this. Don’t use the team name in any design. Dont use ANY elements from the current logo or branding. Create something totally original.
What is an “element” of a design? In every single video of hers I’ve watched, she starts from scratch and ends with something completely different from the existing logo. Granted, you can usually tell what team is being represented, but it’s not like she’s taking the Cowboys’ logo and broadening the stroke on the star (which in my book would be a “tweak”).
The 1926 New York Rangers logo was totally different than what it is today. The New York Rangers’ primary logo has a long and storied history that dates back to the team’s formation in 1926. The original logo featured an image of Lady Liberty holding a hockey stick with the word “Rangers” written across it. Evidently the uniform crest was to be totally different also. Tex Rickard, president of Madison Square Garden, was awarded the Rangers in 1926. Rickard’s franchise began play in the 1926–27 season. The first team crest was a horse sketched in blue carrying a cowboy waving a hockey stick aloft, before being changed to the familiar “RANGERS” in diagonal. Maybe you guys could do a deep dive on this
I don’t have a photo but I think the early 70s Pirates may have done the matching lower sleeve numbers.
After I read Paul’s interview with Emily, I immediately wondered how the NFL would react to her profiting from their trademarked property. Yes, Emily’s personal story is ‘heart-tugging’ but its a bit disingenuous to portray this as a ‘multi-billion dollar’ corporation intimidating ‘poor little me’.
Companies secure copyright and trademark protection for a reason – to provide a legal basis to prevent unauthorized use and misuse of their intellectual property. If the NFL knowingly allowed people to use their trademarks to sell merchandise without seeking permission first, the courts may not support their efforts to prevent such misuse.
The Phillies may thankfully still be ad-free but I’m still ticked they went the whole season without the sleeve numbers because of a possible future ad.