East Kentucky Miners & Indiana Ice Miners

The Sports Logo Pundit would like to welcome two of the latest teams to enter the minor league sports landscape: The East Kentucky Miners of the the Continental Basketball Association and the Indiana Ice Miners of the Mid-Atlantic Hockey League.

While it doesn't appear that anything is official, according to this article, former Miami Dolphins quarterback Jay Fiedler - an Ivy League graduate for what it's worth - and his business partner are planning on relocating the Florida Pit Bulls, a failed ABA team, to Pikeville, Kentucky to become the East Kentucky Miners of the CBA. This will be the second CBA team that Fielder's ownership group operates. The Indiana Alley Cats (who it doesn't appear have paid their web hosting bill lately) joined the CBA last season.

I'd be willing to bet that you have no idea what the MAHL is. Don't worry, I didn't either. The MAHL is a startup hockey league hoping to get off the ground in the fall. The Ice Miners of Indiana, Pennsylvania join the Mon Valley Thunder and the Wooster Warriors as the first three teams to be announced for the inaugural season.

When I first heard about the MAHL, I thought that it might be either a fake or a fantasy league, something seemed fishy about it. But after doing a little bit of research it appears that it's on the up-and-up. Operated by Andrew Haines, who also either runs or ran the American Indoor Football Association and the National Profesional Basketball League (two leagues with varying success. The AIFA just completed a relatively successful first season while the NPFL tried to have a season but crowned a champion in April after only six games), the MAHL will at the very least give it a go, but I wouldn't expect a high quality product on the ice. Minor league hockey is a tough nut to crack, just ask the UHL.

Now that we know the teams, there are so many questions that come to mind...

1. "What are the odds that two of the newest professional teams have the Miners nickname?"
2. "How is it possible that they could release such similar logos simultaneously?"
3. "Which Miners logo is better?"
4. "How will global climate change affect the mining of ice? "
5. "Which team has the better chance of survival?"
6. "Is Miners the most overused nickname in all of minor league sports?"

Here are the answers...

1. 500-1
2. Lack of creativity
3. Doesn't matter, they are both ripoffs of many other logos. Maybe a slight edge to the Ice Miners because their wordmark is pretty cool.
4. It has gotten so bad in the ice mining industry that they had to retrain them to play hockey.
5. The CBA is on iffy ground, but Jay Fiedler signed some pretty hefty contracts as a football player and probably has more money to waste. Plus I still have my doubts that the MAHL will ever play a game.
6. Now it is.

Team: East Kentucky Miners - "COMING SOOON"
League: Continental Basketball Association
Location: Pikeville, Kentucky
Arena: Eastern Kentucky Exposition Center

Team: Indiana Ice Miners
League: Mid-Atlantic Hockey League
Location: Indiana, Pennsylvania
Arena: S&T Bank Arena

Know Your NCAA Tourney Logos - Eastern Kentucky Colonels

It's the most wonderful time of the year, without a doubt. Championship week and the NCAA Tournament are my Hanukkah and my Christmas all wrapped up into one. I really wanted to do a logo tournament this year, and I still might, but I will be enjoying the first two rounds of the tournament from the Mandalay Bay sports book in Las Vegas far away from my computer so it might be tough. Instead, everyday until I leave for Vegas on Wednesday night, I will introducing you to some of the lesser known NCAA Tournament logos.

Tonight we take a look at the Eastern Kentucky Colonels, who beat top-seeded Austin (Let's Go) Peay 63-62 to capture the automatic bid out of the Ohio Valley Conference thanks to a floater with 2.9 seconds left by freshman Josh Taylor. They were his only points of the game - you got to love that.

I reviewed their logo two years ago when the Colonels made their first appearance in The Big Dance since 1979. Since then, Travis Ford left to go coach at Massachusetts and EKU decided to "improve" their logo last year and now feature the snarling, angry dude above.

Unfortunately, that means that they ditched the happy Colonel Sanders logo that I was really digging on back in 2005. I don't think the new logo is a bad design necessarily, although he kind of scares me because I think I know why he is so angry, but I loved their old logo. It was a nice throwback without being exceedingly unprofessional and it had more personality than the engineered intensity of the new one.

So welcome back to the tournament Eastern Kentucky, I wish you all the luck and I hope that you upset either the #2 or #3 seed that you will face. Just don't think that your angry Colonel will intimidate anyone, it won't. In fact, I have my stinking suspicion that it just might make some players play even harder just to stick it to him.

Team: Eastern Kentucky Colonels
Conference: Ohio Valley Conference
Location: Richmond, Kentucky
Arena: Alumni Coliseum

Eastern Kentucky Colonels

We are smack dab in the middle of March Madness here at the Sports Logo Pundit (a good reason why we have been slacking in the posts department lately) and I noticed a few teams in the field of 65 that I didn't know anything about. So to educate ourselves and hopefully educate you I bring you the first installment of the Sports Logo Pundit's "Who are these schools?".

The first school to be featured is the Eastern Kentucky University. EKU is a public school of about 16,000 students located in Richmond, Kentucky. The Colonel's athletic teams compete in the Ohio Valley Conference with schools like the Murray State Racers and Austin Peay Governors (Let's Go Peay! Let's Go Peay!).

Both the men's and women's basketball teams made the NCAA tournament. It's the first time for the men's team since 1979. The women made their first NCAA tournament appearance in 1997.

The men's team is coached by former Kentucky guard Travis Ford. Coincidently, (yeah right, like the selection committee didn't plan it this way) the Colonels will take on #2 seeded Kentucky in the opening round of play.

The Colonels have perhaps my favorite logo of any team in the NCAA Tournament this year. Usually that award goes to the Ragin' Cajuns of Louisiana Lafayette (more on them later) because of their name only. But this logo is so classically cool that it's hard not to like it. I had no idea that Colonel Sanders was a EKU's mascot. You know he puts an addictive chemical in his basketball teams that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!