The Sports Logo Pundit Has Moved

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McMurry University

McMurry University has been without a nickname and mascot since 2006 when the NCAA forced them to drop their Indians moniker. Five years later the Abilene, Texas school is in the final stages of picking a new nickname and voting for the name is currently underway here. Your choices: Bison, War Hawks and Circuit Riders.

Despite having no stake in the name (though I did say I was a friend of the university when I voted), I personally have submitted my vote for Circuit Riders, which is described by the McMurry search committee as “preachers who traveled from church to church during the founding of the Methodist church.”

Though I think Bison is too common and boring, I can easily get behind War Hawks because I think McMurry is more likely to produce a decent War Hawks logo. Circuit Riders would be a unique name but would be pretty difficult to illustrate in a satisfactory way. I fear they would just go with the McM logo shown above – a serviceable letter mark - and just tack the Circuit Riders name onto their athletic teams.

But the possibility of a great Circuit Riders logo is just too strong to pass up. I’m probably getting my hopes up for nothing, but I’m a sucker for the chance at the ridiculous. Vote Riders!

Catch Me On The Twitters

Has it really been over two years since I last posted on The Sports Logo Pundit? Well, perhaps I'll get started again soon.

Lots of logo news has been in my brain so the very least I can do is start a Sports Logo Pundit Twitter account. So until I can get back to blogging, follow me - @SportLogoPundit - for all your logo news needs (or at least some of them).

Oklahoma City Thunder

Prepare for my most intellectual review EVER...


Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.....Your logo TOTALLY sucks!

We Want Cave Shimp! We Want Cave Shrimp!

The Sports Logo Pundit is back! Recent emails from a couple of baseball front office folks has rekindled my interest in this blog and it's about time I got it going again. I'm not going to lie, I got a little tired of sports logos. Couple that boredom with a brand new baby in the house and you should be able to understand why you haven't heard much from me. I can't promise tons of posts or greatness, but you can expect at least a few posts each week. We'll just have to see how it goes.

One of the biggest reasons that I'm back is to encourage everybody to vote. Now I'm not talking presidential politics, I could care less. No, I'm talking big important stuff - like what to call the new Bowling Green, Kentucky baseball team. And I'm not doing this as a public service, I'm here to rally the troops for one name in particular...

"Bowling Green Cave Shrimp
Mammoth Cave, located near Bowling Green, is home to the endangered Kentucky Cave Shrimp, a sightless albino shrimp. The blind cave shrimp has been registered as an endangered species since 1983."

I haven't felt this strongly about a name the team contest since the GBL thought about naming one of their teams the Surprise Desert Penguins.

Please click here to go vote for the Cave Shrimp. Come on...do it for the Sports Logo Pundit. He needs the Cave Shrimp to win.

Picture stolen from Bus League Baseball who is also behind the Cave Shrimp name 100%

Tacoma Rainiers

When is an alternate logo not an alternate logo? I think the answer is probably when it adorns every single piece of merchandise available in the team store, appears on every single publication - ticket brochures, pocket schedules and programs, all the staff clothing features it and generally, the primary logo is nowhere to be found.

That's what I observed at the Tacoma Rainiers home opener a couple weeks ago. Everything was plastered with this logo, a logo that is technically their alternate and supposedly was only supposed to be worn on special occasions. Maybe the team won't be wearing it all the time on the field, but off the field, this logo suddenly seems primary.

Which is too bad, it's not a very good logo at all. It doesn't fit at all in with the current set of logos at all and while the star is supposed to represent the Mariners affiliation, the elimination of the teal totally distances it from the Mariners.

But what makes this a disaster is that the cursive "R" that is an iconic northwest symbol that has been passed down through generations to represent the word Rainier - from the Seattle Rainiers to Rainier Beer and now to the Tacoma Rainiers - is nowhere to be seen. I'd even suffer through the awkwardness of this logo...


...over the new alternate logo simply because the cursive "R" is front and, well, off-center.

Other parts of this alternate package work better than the logo. The jersey script is fantastic and the red and the blue really remind you of the Seattle Rainiers jerseys . However, the jersey itself looks like a softball uniform. Check out those sleeves! Not to mention that I'm a traditionalist that hates solid color uniforms. That's a whole nother post in itself.

Whatever, it's not the whole package I have a problem with. It's the complete takeover of Cheney Stadium by this lesser alternate logo. Is this logo the future? Will this become the primary logo shortly?

If it does, I'm extremely disappointed. I'll admit that an update is overdue, but an overhaul, and a cheap overhaul at that, is completely unnecessary.


Team: Tacoma Rainiers
League: Pacific Coast League
Location: Tacoma, Washington
Stadium: Cheney Stadium
Mascot: Rhubarb
Merchandise: Very little available. I hate that MiLB.com has taken over many team's online presence.

Seattle Sounders FC

I am so happy that Seattle's new Major League Soccer ownership group listened to the fans on the naming of the team that I'm willing to look past the awkward blue shield in their new logo. The fact that the team will be called the Sounders is enough of a victory for me.

I don't even mind the FC part. I understand the need to differentiate between this team and the current, original Sounders. That makes perfect sense to me.

And I'm not just saying that because I plan on applying for a job with them and I'm super nervous about my Googleability. I'm moving back up to Seattle in July and I'd love to be in on the ground floor of a new franchise. I would've wanted to work for whatever they called the team, it's just a bonus they are the Sounders.

However, I do think this concept I wrote about last year is a far superior logo.

DAY AFTER UPDATE - After I wrote this review last night and read Dave's comment, I went to bed and while trying to fall asleep I thought more about the Sounders logo. I've come to the sad conclusion that I can't overlook the faults just because of the name. In fact, because I love the name so much, I really feel cheated now by this lackluster effort.

I mentioned the second, blue shield that doesn't make any sense to me. I guess it was simply a way to get that blue somewhere in the logo. But how about this concept - a ten minute tweaking by jl murtagh on the Sportslogos.net forums. So much better, so much cleaner, improved upon by an amateur.

While that eliminates the unnecessary shield, two major problems still exist. First, the lettering. It's pretty obvious to me that they selected this logo long ago and left the name banner blank so they could fill it in when the time came to name the team. That being the case, the logo doesn't reflect the name Sounders at all and the lettering itself if just a basic font with just a tiny bit of embellishment. Nothing interesting or unique or eye-catching or marketable. Just a name, in normal font. Whoopee.

But what gets me the most is the design of the Space Needle. It is so basic, so cheap, that I'd expect to find better in the touristy gift shops that are in the Seattle Center. In fact, I'm sure I can probably find the same design on one of those three t-shirts for $9.99 table.

What I didn't think about last night is the missed opportunity that this logo represents. This could've and should've been so much better. This is a weak effort and whoever designed it can't really be proud of it. I bet it ended up being a logo by committee, and no logo looks right after that process.

As it stands now, this isn't an ugly logo, just a poorly designed one and it would've been no matter what name filled that banner.


Team: Seattle Sounders
League: Major League Soccer
Location: Seattle, Washington
Stadium: Qwest Field

2008 Bigger Dance - Now With DWP! Office Pool

Every single year I post something about this and hope someone will play along with me and nobody ever does. Well I don't care. Why not try one more time.

The 2008 Bigger Dance is here! The Bigger Dance is a tournament run by Seattle sports radio station KJR to determine what pop-culture female is the "Queen of the Hardwood". I'm not proud to love this contest, but I do. It's one of my great meat head pleasures. But the main reason is because the final prize is so awesome - A free trip to ANY sporting event in the world. Airfare, hotel and tickets included. Oh, and the babes, too.

This year I've setup a DOWN WITH PANTS! Office Pool. So if you are interested in competing against my entry, just go to The Bigger Dance page, sign up for a Sports Club membership (Sorry! Hopefully that's not a deal breaker. I don't ever get any spam from them if it makes you feel better), and then enter...

Pool Name: DOWN WITH PANTS!
Password: downwithpants

I want to offer a prize to the winner of the pool, I just haven't figured out what it should be.

In case you're wondering, my Final Four consists of Stacey Keibler, Hayden Panettiere, Jessica Biel and Jessica Alba. Stacey Keibler and Jessica Alba face off in the final with Jessica Alba taking home her third straight Bigger Dance Championship.

Sadly, they missed the boat. No Kristen Bell. Have they seen the trailers for Forgetting Sarah Marshall yet?

Brandon's Unknown Talent: Baseball Card Photographer

It was 2001, I was the Director of Media Relations/Community Affairs for the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings baseball team in Harlingen, Texas. Rapidly approaching was Team Baseball Card Night on our promotional schedule and we didn't have any cards made yet or had take any pictures yet and the deadline to get the photos in to ensure delivery by game day was only a day away.

We had no money to hire a professional and this was just before everybody and their mom had nice digital camera. So, since I had a camera that was a little bit more than a normal point-and-shoot - a beat up 35 mm Canon AE that was originally my parents when I was a kid that I had equipped with a nice zoom lens - I was enlisted to take the pictures.

Nevermind the fact that I had no experience and didn't really know how to use my camera that well. Until that point, I had just taken pictures for my amusement. I really didn't think that I'd do some work that would have to be published. But again, since the team had no money, it was up to me. I had one day to get it right.


I found the cards while I was home last week and all in all, given the circumstances, they aren't that bad. The color is horrible - I've always had trouble with the color on that camera for some reason. And some of the players I just couldn't get a good picture of - Willie Oropeza and Carlos Duncan in particular.

But some are really good. I love the picture of Joel Barreto because he was one of the only players that I took portraits of that smiled for me. No surprise there, he was always happy. Too bad you can't see his eyes. That's the problem with baseball caps.

And Joe Fretwell was such a good guy, one of the best dudes on our team. The card is a little weird because they cropped the picture so much, but the original photo is incredible and because of the beer ad over his shoulder, it fit him perfectly. Not that he was a drunk, it just worked with his personality in a weird way. It's one of my best pictures I've ever taken. I gave him the original when the season was over.


Clark Viegas was one of our coaches that we also signed to play for us late in the season when we were out of contention and didn't want to go through the hassle of finding a player to come down for only a week or two. This picture is great because it captures him looking like he's a coach showing you proper technique, but it also captures him as a player as well. Plus, he was a good guy too so I was happy to get a good picture of him.

Many of my best pictures were of the nicest guys on the team because they would help me out by posing or smiling or would let me keep taking pictures of them so I had a bunch to choose. The worst pictures are of guys that didn't care and didn't help or I didn't like enough to make sure they had a nice picture they would be happy with on their card.

And then there's the Jamie Clark card. Don't even ask me how I got him in this position, there's a point when you are throwing long that you hit and I somehow captured it. It was the only one that turned out of him, so I had to use it. Turns out it's one of my favorites and he was cut from the team before the cards were even finished, so I doubt he even saw it. I got future Major Leaguer Bobby Madritsch in a similar pose.

It still amazes me that I was asked to do these cards in the first place. It clearly illustrates just how shot the budget was for the WhiteWings that year. We didn't have a very good year on the field or in the stands and it hurt. It got so bad that there were times when payroll almost wasn't met. Occasionally our assistant general manager had to go out a few days before payroll and personally collect checks from people that owed us so that we would have enough money in the bank. Ah, the life of an independent baseball team.

What also amazes me is that this was only seven years ago - just yesterday in my book - and nobody associated with the team had a digital camera yet. That's crazy. The technology has advanced so quickly, has become so cheap and so readily available in such a short time period, it's absurd. Now anybody, and pretty much everybody, could take these pictures.

To see the whole set of professional baseball cards with amateur photography - these are crappy scans, by the way - click here.

South Shore Shooters

So anybody who thinks that a good nickname for a Gary, Indiana based sports team would be the Shooters, please raise your hand. Seriously, Andrew Haines and the rest of you team owners, you can put your hand down - you don't count.

And don't go defending it by telling me that it honors the local casinos, either. That's almost as bad as it's other connotation.

Wait, it's not actually in Gary? It's in Dyer, 10 miles away? Well that makes it soooo much better.

Oh yeah, and while we're at it, Dyer - enjoy your half season of ABAish hockey. Good luck with Mr. Haines there. He's never burned anybody.

Doesn't anybody do research before investing in sports franchises anymore?

Team: South Shore Shooters
League: Mid-Atlantic Hockey League - What a joke
Location: Dyer, Indiana - the greater Gary area
Arena: Midwest Training & Ice Center