Oakland County Cruisers

What a down December for The Sports Logo Pundit. Not a way to end a pretty good year overall. Oh well, I hope to get back on the horse starting next week.

Until then, I would like to blow your mind with what is perhaps the saddest logo contest that I have ever come across. Last week, the Frontier League announced that in 2009 the Oakland County Cruisers would be joining the league. Never mind the fact that they don't yet have a ballpark, they have more than a year to get that done. But they did eschew the normal name-the-team contest and skipped straight to the logo selection process...


Oh boy, how will I ever choose? Do I go with the most horrible neon green in both baseball and automobile history or with the nearly unreadable scripts complete with gradients? And as a fan of rec league softball t-shirts, I'm really all about the clip-art background designs, it's about time someone brought these back to professional baseball.


Team: Oakland County Cruisers
League: Frontier League
Location: Waterford, Michigan
Merchandise: Sweet! You can buy shirts with at least three of the logo choices on them.

Quad City River Bandits

It's late and I need to go to bed. But I just saw this and wanted to quickly share. The Quad City River Bandits are back! Thoughts?

Cal State Northridge vs. Utah Valley State

I just posted my first Big West Conference Report for the college basketball blog Storming The Floor. After seeing Cal State Northridge handle Utah Valley State, I had to name the Matadors the Team of the First Month...

Team of the First Month: Cal State Northridge
UC Santa Barbara was picked to win the Big West by the media and they have lived up to the billing by going 9-1 in the first month. No surprise there. Cal State Northridge didn't get a lot of preseason love but the Matadors have taken care of business against lesser opponents. Led by senior forward Calvin Chitwood (13.3 ppg, 7.5 rpg) and senior guard Jonathan Heard (12.5 ppg, 5.9 rpg) and complemented by junior three point specialist Deon Tresvant (11.4 ppg) and junior rebounding force Tremaine Townesend (10.8 ppg, 9.5 rpg), Northridge has only been beaten by Duquesne and Gonzaga. Both were thumpings and their biggest win so far was against Cleveland State, so it's hard to get too excited. But it's better than expected and better than any other non-Gaucho Big West squads.

Here are a handful of pictures from the game...


Welcome to the Matadome, all 1,600 seats of it. What a dump. It's an embarrassment of a Division I facility. But it is home to the hardest working cheerleaders in the NCAA...



Seriously, I've never seen cheerleaders lead more cheers. They performed during every single timeout and did a solid job. Not bad for what is essentially a glorified community college. Oh yeah...don't forget the basketball...



Too bad the students have forgotten. Despite a good team, students don't turn out that for games in any meaningful way and the ones that do sit on their hands. The loudest group of students was a bunch of deaf kids. Seriously.

Now, about that logo. It's a solid logo when you just quickly glance at it or see it in a much smaller form. But now that I've found a larger version and really looked at it, it's a bit rough. What is with the big thick black line on the nose and chin? I suppose it's supposed to be a shadow, but it's really unnecessary. And how big can one man's hands be?

Team: Cal State Northridge Matadors
Conference: Big West
Location: Northridge, California
Arena: The Matadome

Vancouver 2010 Olympics Mascots

Have you seen the 2010 Olympic mascots yet? I know I'm a little bit late - these were released last week - but I love Quatchi, Sumi and Miga - they are really cute. I'm so going to buy the set of all three for my kid (maybe kids by that point). And they have a cool website too! It should come as no surprise to anybody that knows me that the mascot that I'm most like is Quatchi...