Design-A-Wildcat Uni, Pt. III

December 5, 2009

By Phil Hecken

Today we begin with Round III of the Clarksville “Design-A-Uniform” Contest, with a plethora of superb entries. If you missed the first two rounds (or just want to refresh your memory or see the parameters), click here and here. Lots to get to today, so lets dig right in:

Amy Preston: submission

Hello,

I’ve been following Uni Watch for at least a year now, and although I don’t comment, I find it all very interesting. The opportunity to redo a uniform for a baseball team combined my two favorite things – design and baseball. This was by far the most fun thing I’ve ever had the opportunity to create!

With that being said, here are my submissions for the Design-A-Uniform Contest. Attached are a home white with “Wildcats” on the front, an away gray with “Clarksville”, and and alternate black (hey, he asked for it!) top that works with both pant bottoms with a “CHS” logo I came up with. I also came up with a new Wildcat logo that I think would work well for the school.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks so much for the opportunity!!

Amy Preston

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Michael Princip: submission

Phil, here ya go. My first attempt at designing a baseball uniform, and specifically a high school baseball uniform. Not much to say here really except I tried to stay old school with the fonts ‘CHS’ wordmark etc. It also looks like my subliminal inspiration, for the logo, came from vintage East India? ;o) This was fun.

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Paul Radetsky: submission

Phil:

Just forgot to get this to you, hope it’s not too late.

Thanks.

Paul Radetsky

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Ricky Roy: submission

hi, attached are my designs for the contest
i have a White home, a gray road, and purple one and a black one that could be worn as home or away.
also attached is the logo used for the hat and the black uniform
thanks,

R.Roy

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Matt Sajna: submission

Phil,
I hope this email isn’t too late. Just wanted to send in a logo that I thought up for Clarksville High School. I put it onto some hats to. Hope you like it.

-Matt Sajna

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Andrew Schroeer: submission

Hi,

I realize this is being submitted after the unofficial deadline; I hope it is not TOO late!

I like old-school designs and scripts, so that’s the direction I took this in.

Attached are submissions for the hat and a chest logo (a la the Detroit Tigers); I didn’t have time to flesh out the full uni, but I would imagine it would have piping like the Tigers jersey, and that’s it (gotta have piping at the end of the sleeves, too!).

Version 1 (CHS) was aimed at the request for a black hat that incorporates the purple.

CHS_alt is also aimed at the black hat, but without the offending purple. If purple had to be incorporated somehow, it could be somewhere on the shirt or it could be on the bill (not that you would, but you could).

CHS_alt_2 is to show the new CHS insignia with the current cap’s color scheme.

The CHS_Unis in their various guises are fairly self-explanatory, I think.

Again, I hope this isn’t too late!

Thanks for a great website, and a great contest!

– Andrew

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Thomas Stafford: submission

Hello gentlemen,

Attached is my entry, please let me know your thoughts. Thanks.

Have a good one.

Thomas Stafford

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Chad Stilson: submission

Thank you so much for extending the time. I hope the Clarksville High School likes my designs.

Thanks!

Chad B. Stilson

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Ben Traxel: submission

Hello Phil,

Thanks for another fun assignment! A little bit about my submittal, I started by looking up some quick history about Clarksville but didn’t find anything that really struck my eye from a uni standpoint. Looked over the school district website but still came up blank. Since the mascot is not incredibly unique I had nothing there either! Well, I went to Creamer’s website and looked up every college that used Wildcats as their name and checked out the options. Davidson seemed to have my favorite but I really didn’t want to do anything that detailed (call me lazy). So I just started messing with a C and seeing what I could come up with. Tried the paw thing but seemed overdone. Ended up with the Cat Eye in the center of a modified Reds/Bears C. Didn’t turn out too bad so I ran with it. Then I worked on the unis. The whites (actually cream) after a while ended up wanting to be single colored. I think the old style really came off nice. Stuck a generic C on the hat just because it seemed to go with that particular design. The grays and yellows are other design options as well. Anyway, I’m sure there will be plenty of tough competition but very glad to participate.

I worked some more on the Clarksville project and came up with a second set. Put some teeth in the C logo among other changes. Limited my use of purple as I know it is not a favorite of a lot of people, though being a Kansas State Alum it doesn’t bother me much (for bias reasons obviously!). Since the football coach likes black I mocked up some football unis and made black a large part of the design.

Thanks again.

Ben Traxel

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David Vines: submission

Hey, I’m David and I’m a student interested in graphic design. Below is a short description about each of the uniforms I designed and some of the styles that inspired them. Hope you like ”˜em.

Primary Logo: A simple, clean, purple paw with a thin gold outline.

Alternate Logo: The three-paw “flag” alternate logo is modeled to reflect the state flag of Tennessee, with the stars on the flag being replaced by the school’s paw logo. This patch appears with gold paws and a purple backdrop, but these colors can be inverted.

Home Whites: These are easily my favorite of the bunch with the gold letters, purple pinstripes, and the primary paw logo as a sleeve patch. It’s very important that the stripes are as thin and as dark as possible on this jersey. There are also purple socks along with a purple belt, which I think is a nice final touch.

Road Greys: Grey uniforms with “Clarksville” written across the front and purple piping along the uniform. Sleeve patch, hat, and socks are the same as the home uniform.

Purple Alternates: Solid purple jerseys with gold sleeve piping and the “Wildcats” wordmark across the front with a black outline. It’s notable that the purple on the jersey is slightly lighter and the jersey’s wordmark is slightly more yellow than it appears on the other unis. These uniforms also need their own set of white pants, because the home pinstriped pants on a non-striped jersey would look like crap.

Black Alternates: Since your coach is asking for a black set, I created this alternate and a new cap to go along with it. The jersey has the letters “CHS” across the front, purple piping, and it goes with either grey or white pants. The most notable change on the uniform comes on the sleeve patch, where the three-paw “flag” logo is used instead of the primary paw logo.

Primary Hat: This cap features CHS Script logo in purple over a gold background, a purple brim, and a purple squatchee. The three-paw alternate logo is used as a patch on the side of the cap.

Alternate Hat: This hat is intended to be worn with the black jerseys, but can also serve some double duty with the gray roadies if you so choose. Similar to the Red Sox new alternate caps, this one features your team’s primary logo on the front over a black background, with a purple brim and squatchee to boot. What makes this makes this hat stand out are the small uniform numbers that are sewn onto the left side of the cap. I love football helmets with numbers on them (Alabama, Chargers throwbacks) and even though they are rarely if ever seen in baseball, I figured why not give it a try, especially since the black uniforms are the only ones with a numberless front.

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Well, we’ve now completed Round III of the Design-A-Uniform contest. Yet another stellar round of submissions from all involved. Make sure you heap plenty of praise upon those who submitted their designs, as this was another fantastic batch. Our final round will be tomorrow, after which I believe Coach Walls will be making some of his final decisions, and we’ll put the finalists to a vote. Stay tuned!

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UW #1 Seahawks Fan Michael Princip has been tracking the Oregon Ducks and all of their 2,456 possible uniform combinations this season. He’ll be updating it after each game.

The Ducks, as I’m sure you’re all aware, WON the Civil War last Thursday evening, at Autzen Stadium, defeating the Oregon State Beavers, and in the process, earning a trip to the 2010 Rose Bowl against tOSU. Fantastic game was the Civil War, with the Ducks donning a “hybrid throwback/modern” uni set. Be sure to click on each of Mike’s graphics in the “Ducktracker” for pictures of each uniform combination the U of O has worn this season. He’s got some neat stuff in there, so poke around. Special thanks to Mike for providing updates for me and the UW board immediately following each game. It’s been a fun “ride” so far, with one more stop on New Year’s Day.

Here’s Your Updated Ducktracker

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Uni Watch CFL Fan and my buddy, Mike Styczen, who assisted me with some interesting trademark explanations (and with whom I plan on teaming up for a mega-post in the future), has done an outstanding bit on the Grey Cup, which is basically Canada’s equivalent of the Lombardi Trophy/Super Bowl. We had originally planned on having this run last Sunday, but because of the language barrier (I don’t speak Canadian), it was delayed until today. But, trust me, it’s well worth the wait. So, here’s Mike. — PH

The Grey Cup

By Mike Styczen

The 97th Grey Cup was played last Sunday between the western champion Saskatchewan Roughriders and the eastern champion MontrÃ©al Alouettes. The game was played at at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, Alberta — the end zone logo at the bottom of the photo is for the Calgary Stampeders, and at the top for the University of Calgary, who share McMahon with the Stampeders.

It was an exciting game, coming down to the last two plays. MontrÃ©al came back from 16 points down in the last 11 minutes, and with no time on the clock and MontrÃ©al down 2, MontrÃ©al kicker Damon Duval missed a 43 yard field goal. Saskatchewan wins! But wait – Saskatchewan is flagged for too many men on the field (13 instead of the regulation 12), and Duval kicks it through from 33 yards. MontrÃ©al wins 28-27!

Halftime entertainment was provided by Blue Rodeo, a reasonably innocuous Toronto pop-country band.

It was MontrÃ©al’s second win since 2000, against five losses in that time. Saskatchewan last won in 2007.

A little history about the Grey Cup itself:

The Grey Cup was originally donated in 1909 by Albert Grey (the Governor General of Canada and the grandson of the man for whom Earl Grey tea is named), to be awarded to the top amateur football team in Canada. For many years the trophy was awarded to a variety of amateur, military and university teams (including last Saturday’s Vanier Cup champions Queen’s Golden Gaels three times in the 1920s). From the 1950s onward, the Grey Cup was contested only among professional teams, and since the founding of the Canadian Football League in 1958, the trophy has been awarded to the CFL champion.

In one of the nicest traditions in sport, the Grey Cup is brought onto the field by Mounties in their red serge uniforms to be presented to the winning team. This year, in a bit of a twist, the Grey Cup was brought through the stands to the field.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders are known for their rabid following. “Rider Nation” is known for following their team to road games in western Canada, dressing entirely in green, and (you couldn’t make this up) carving watermelons to wear as helmets or lingerie. Also remember that, for the World Junior hockey championships coming up in Saskatoon and Regina next spring, Team Canada is wearing a special green jersey to honour Saskatchewan fans and the Roughriders. Calgary has a large population of Saskatchewan expats and Regina is only 7 hours away by car, so the city was full of green, the stands at McMahon were full of green, and the city was actually sold out of watermelon last week.

The Riders home jersey is among the nicest in the league, green with a bit of black and white trim, worn with silver pants. The road jersey is a mirror image of the home jersey and is worn with green pants. This year, as part of the CFL’s “retro” year honouring the 1960s, they’ve been wearing a beautiful green throwback jersey with grey pants and a 1960s helmet logo, as well as a white alternate jersey with a different throwback helmet.

The Alouettes have a spotty history. The team was an original member of the CFL, moved into the weirdest stadium ever built (Autostade) in the 1960s and then Olympic Stadium in the 1970s. They made a splash signing NFL talent they couldn’t afford in the late 1970s and folded in 1982. The team was immediately reborn as the MontrÃ©al Concordes (owned by Expos founder Charles Bronfman), were renamed the Alouettes in 1986, and folded again at the beginning of the 1987 season.

The current Alouettes were founded in 1994 in Baltimore as part of the CFL’s ill-fated U.S. expansion, won the 1995 Grey Cup, and then moved north to MontrÃ©al with the move of the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore in 1996. They moved back to Olympic Stadium as the Alouettes and struggled at the gate for the first two seasons. In the fall of 1997, a scheduled U2 concert forced the Alouettes to move a playoff game to Percival Molson Stadium at McGill University in downtown MontrÃ©al at McGill University. The move to the smaller, more intimate venue caused a surge in interest in the team which has lasted to this day. The Alouettes now play their first 8 home games each year at Molson Stadium and their final home game and all playoff games at Olympic Stadium.

The Alouettes have an odd if memorable uniform. Red, white, blue, silver, black, I couldn’t tell you what their primary colour is. The home uniform is primarily red and the road uniform is primarily white, and this year they’ve also worn a blue alternate jersey, and a black alternate jersey. They’ve got red pants, blue pants and silver pants and I can’t figure out what gets worn with what, other than that they don’t wear monochrome. Twice this year as part of the retro year, they wore a sweet red throwback with white pants and an awesome white helmet.

Here’s one interesting quirk – the Canadian Football League is also known as the Ligue Canadienne de Football and has two official abbreviations: CFL (english) and LCF (french) with corresponding league logos. All teams wear a league patch at the base of their collars: the seven teams outside QuÃ©bec wear a CFL patch and the Alouettes wear an LCF patch.

The Alouettes wore their usual white road jersey for the Grey Cup with blue pants and Saskatchewan wore grey pants with a new throwback jersey (similar to the throwback jerseys mentioned above, but with Colts-style shoulder stripes instead of sleeve stripes. Both teams wore advertising patches for Rona (a Canadian home improvement chain) and for Celebrex (arthritis medicine). There’s a much larger gallery of photos on the cfl’s web site.

It was a great week, lots of fun parties, a cool parade, lots of green, good weather, and a close game to top it off. Uni-wise, Saskatchewan was the clear winner with the throwbacks, it would have been nice if Montreal had broken out white versions of the throwbacks they wore during the season, but still the game looked very nice.

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Phil here. AWESOME job with that Mike. For many of those in the US who not only couldn’t be at the game, but couldn’t even WATCH it, this was an extra special treat.

But wait! Uni Watch “screen grab general” and master “colorizer” Larry Bodnovich (who also assisted me with a column earlier this year) also has some amazing screen grabs he wants to share, and which put a perfect capper on this section.

Check out Larry’s magnificent screen grabs for a history of the Grey Cup, as well as a history of both Saskatchewan and Montreal in the CFL.

Had enough CFL yet? If not, you can always check out this column I co-authored with Hockey Wing President & 13th Man Teebz earlier this year, on the “defunct” American teams in the CFL’s ill-fated expansion south of the border.

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Guess The Game From The Scoreboard: Another reader submission today, this one comes from Danny Wittels, and its neither a major sport nor from the United States, so I’m gonna have to rate the difficulty as “high”. Although, for those of you who follow sports outside of the United States, it may not be so difficult. As always, if possible, please try to find a LINK that includes the date, location, teams and final score. Ready? Guess The Game From The Scoreboard. And, as always, if you enjoy the game, please send me some new scoreboards! Drop me a line. Thanks!

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Alrighty, Ricko’s got a new Benchies today, and I’ll let him do the honor of introducing it. Here’s the Rick:

“Ah, Friday nights. Such big plans. Such optimism. Come Saturday, though, your friend wants to know how it went. You can say something vague. Make him think… Aw, hell, better to just explain how life makes your head spin…”

Thanks Ricko. Enjoy your Saturday Benchies.

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Lukas In The News: In case some of you missed it in the comments section yesterday, UW Prexy Paul Lukas was featured in a fantastic piece in Newsday, which is a pretty big paper in the NYC/LI area. Now, the article is “subscriber” only, but since I’m also an Optimum Online customer, I get the whole article. For those of you who can’t read past the first few lines, here’s the relevant portions:

Nike mostly threw history and lore out the window in favor of drumming up retail sales. By putting “a visual signifier on a dozen different teams,” as sports uniform maven Paul Lukas pointed out in a telephone interview, “you’re creating a cross-branding thing. By doing that, you’re saying that individual teams and schools are not what matters. You’re creating a new team. Team Nike.”

Lukas readily acknowledges occupying “a very geeky niche” in “obsessing” – his word – over sports uniforms with his on-line uniwatch blog and similar Uni Watch column for ESPN.com. But he is not alone, generating comments from readers as numerous and passionate as arguments over polls and the BCS bowl system.

“People who care about uniforms care a lot about uniforms,” he said. “They care about the visual aspect of sports. They care about logos. They care about team colors.”

Those logos and colors facilitate a team-follower association, while the Nike culture is “the retail tail wagging the on-field dog” situation, as Lukas put it, in which “the first question you now ask [about team uniforms] is, ‘How is this going to sell at the team shop or at Modells?’

“In sports, especially college sports where players change so much – in four years a whole new roster – what is constant? What are you rooting for? It’s that uniform and that logo. If you change the design, it’s jarring. You’re messing with something people feel very strongly about.”

“It’s interesting what is happening in college sports, and especially college football,” Lukas said. “It used to be that the sportswear companies did what the schools told them to do. Now it’s the other way around and Nike, especially, gives the marching orders. The outfitter somehow supersedes the school, and has unfortunately been successful with turning the proper relation of team-and-outfitter on its head.

“To my mind, it’s an honor for Nike to be making the uniforms for a school. But they’re a retailer as well and an outfitter, marketing to younger fans who buy this stuff. So you’ve got a 18-year-old sensibility driving what hundreds of thousands, really millions of fans and alumni, have to look at. Basically, the inmates are running the asylum.

“This is part of the larger video-game-ization of sports, the superhero-ization of sports. When you use terms like ‘pro combat,’ you have these fantasy teams and the players become like comic-book superheroes. And superheroes don’t wear uniforms. They wear costumes.”

Bad ones, at that.

Well said, Paul. And props to Newsday writer John Jeansonne for a well-written (and obviously well-researched) article.

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That’ll do it for this fine Saturday. I guess there are a few football games of note today — like the SEC Championship (pitting No. 1 Florida against No. 2 Alabama), plus the Big XII Championship and the ACC Championship, and a few other big and small games of note. Don’t forget to post some of your nominees for “Best” or “Worst” uni matchup of the day.

Thanks again to everyone who submitted their Clarksville Design-A-Uni entries (final set coming tomorrow) and make sure you give some love to today’s submitters; thanks also to Mike Styczen (“Mike 2”), for a terrific Grey Cup “mini-article,” and for everyone who’s been sending me NFL ‘uni tweaks’ — another batch will also run tomorrow.

Everyone have a fantastic Saturday!

Comments (184)

1) I’m very impressed with the skill and creativity of the folks designing the Clarkville Wildcat unis. I’ll open a submission and think ‘Hey, that’s the one I’d pick’ and then open another and it’ll change my mind, etc, etc. Nice work, all.
2) The Alouettes should go back to the throwbacks more often. The current uni is way too ‘Buffalo Billish’ for my taste.
3) I can already tell you the best uni game of the day is Texas-UNL, no matter which of them wears white and which wears color.

Tried to pull it down to one box score, but to no avail on the “Guess the Scoreboard”: “My Guess

[quote comment=”365092″]Tried to pull it down to one box score, but to no avail on the “Guess the Scoreboard”: link[/quote]

Second attempt

I tell ya, we need some of our UW readers to apply for jobs at Nike, Reebok, Under Armour and the like. I have enjoyed these submissions more than 90% of the stuff the big companies put out. Kudos!

Also… after texting a bit with Powers last night about my stomping grounds (West Point),while I was at the Army hockey game vs. Sacred Heart (I rarely miss a Black Knights hockey game) I was thinking about getting a few of us UWers together for some Army sports events. I have a pretty close relationship to some of the guys, and could probably get most, of not all, the tickets for free depending on the final number. They play tonight, and then are off until after break, so I was thinking maybe a Fri or Sat game toward the end of January when they host UConn. The big series is the weekend after that, vs. Air Force, but the tickets for a group for that game won’t be as easy.

Looking down the road, the Army baseball team is awesome (and has a VERY nice uni set)…. so that might be something we can look at.

Anyway, let me know….and we’ll see what we can do! It’s a very strong hockey conference,the quality of play is awesome and there isn’t a bad seat in the house. It’s also an excuse to spend time on one of my favorite and most scenic campuses/military posts in the world. There’s also some nice restaurants/bars in Highland Falls, for some pre or post-game activities as well. If you’re in the Hudson Valley during January, it just might work!

Cheers!

Terrific, terrific job on the CFL story today. Thanks! Two things I wonder:

Why the hell doesn’t Versus show the Grey Cup game? They televise championship pilot air acrobatics (or whatever obstacle-course flying is), professional bull riding, the UFL, among others … but not the CFL?

And, just as importantly, perhaps we need to track down that Rider fan in the bikini top. That takes some creativity and seems like the best example of DIY to date — profile necessary!

what a tremendous column today!!! great stuff on the CFL, and I totally agree that someone in the US needs to pick that up. we have sports networks showing poker non-stop and no one showed the Grey Cup?!

think the uni design contest for Clarksville is amazing. can we have a uniwatch contest to see who we’d vote for?

let me be the first to say I think Chad Stillson is the man! fabulous work, sir.

Guess the scoreboard is 1998 FIFA World Cup round of 16 match between England and Argentina: