By Phil Hecken, with Rob Holecko
The long and winding road that leads to your door has finally come to a (temporary) end, as we’ve now finished all of the voting for the UWFFL contest entries. Today, we’ll announce the final two winners and then the man who really devoted a tremendous amount of time and energy to this contest will announce where we go from here.
So at this point, I’ll just turn it over to Rob Holecko — a big thanks to him and to all who submitted. To those whose designs did not win — don’t despair, because this is really just the beginning.
For that, here’s Rob with the
UWFFL Wrap
By Rob Holecko
We are finally here, the final installment of winners in the UWFFL uniform redesign contest. The votes are in and we have chosen winning designs for both the Tampa Terror and the San Francisco Reign Fire. We’ll have the totals and the winning designs below, but first let’s talk a little bit about where the UWFFL goes from here and how you can still be a part of it even if you didn’t enter or win the design contests.
We offer our congratulations again to all winning designers for all twelve teams and especially to Brett Callero and Wes Peters whose wonderful designs won for multiple teams. While these twelve designs will remain the winners of the Uni Watch UWFFL redesign contests, we will be convening a crack panel to sift through the best entries and find the best combination of twelve unique owners to run the twelve clubs. Brett and Wes that won multiple times will be given the opportunity to offer input as to which of the winning designs that they’d like to move forward with, but in the end, the panel will decide which combination of owners and teams gives us the strongest batch of twelve teams from top to bottom. So for those of you like Andrew Seagraves, Jeff Provo, Adam Cain and others who did well in the voting but didn’t win for any particular team, you may still likely be offered to run a franchise.
We have set up a Google+ page to run the league from here going forward. If you’ll look at it you’ll see all the previous activity with the league and if you’re interested in the UWFFL feel free to join the community. Also you can follow us on twitter at @UWFFL.
If you look over to the right of the Google+ page, you’ll see three links to minor leagues affiliated with the UWFFL, the Eastern Association, the Central League and the Pacific Coast Conference. These will be the minor leagues that will feature the future members of the UWFFL, you can adopt one of the available franchises or create your own expansion team. Membership in the minor leagues is unlimited and everyone can create teams and place them in the proper geographic minor league. All you have to do is design the team and post the uniforms, helmets, press releases, whatever else you want to let people know about. Over the next two months, until we appear again in Uni Watch, just get to work on developing your expansion teams and after you post them up to the Google+ page, brag about them to us here in the UW comments, and then in December we’ll be choosing one team from each of the three minor leagues to be promoted to the UWFFL for the 2014 season.
Good luck to all of you who choose to take part, I know a major stumbling block before was that many of you felt designing for an existing team was too constraining but now that you will be able to design your own teams from scratch hopefullly many of you will choose to take part.
Now on to the last two teams. Brett Callero won for both Tampa and San Francisco, including a runaway win in the Reign Fire vote.
Brett appeared on 970 KDSF yesterday and was interviewed about winning the San Francisco contest. Brett’s segment on the show begins at about the eight minute mark here:
Here’s the winning Terror design:
And the winning Reign Fire:
Congratulations again to Brett and to all the winners and we’ll see you later this summer as the 2013 UWFFL season prepares to get underway.
Thanks Rob, and congratulations to Brett (and all the other contestants). This was a great contest, and I want to give everyone huge props for their participation. I’ll have another contest to announce soon.
Uni Tweaks Concepts
We have another new set of tweaks, er…concepts today. After discussion with a number of readers, it’s probably more apropos to call most of the reader submissions “concepts” rather than tweaks. So that’s that.
So if you’ve concept for any sport, or just a tweak or wholesale revision, send them my way.
Please do try to keep your descriptions to ~50 words (give or take) per image — if you have three uniform concepts in one image, then obviously, you can go a little over, but no novels, OK? OK!. You guys have usually been good with keeping the descriptions pretty short, and I thank you for that.
Like the colorizations, I’m going to run these as inline pics — click on each one to enlarge.
And so, lets begin:
We begin today with Zachary Schwartzer, who decided to tweak the new Dolphins unis, and noticed an inconsistency with the new Vikings unis:
Phil,
I felt a lack of orange in the new uniforms. Didn’t want to change it too much since I actually like the new uniforms, less is more in their case. I also tweaked the numbers just a little. The big change came in the logo. It’s a mashup of a few different logos I found on the internet but even though it was just a quick mock-up, it still beats out the logo they switched to in my opinion.
The second picture is of some strange inconsistencies in the Vikings number font. I’ll be interested to see what all the numbers look like.
Sincerely,
Zachary Schwartzer
Next up is Adam Northenscold, who actually set about to fix the Vikes new number font:
Hey Phil,
I thought the Vikings number font could have been done much better. I used
my amateur Photoshop skills to “fix” some of the screen shots you posted.IMHO, I would prefer they not used the serifs at all, but at least these
nest better and feel more balanced.Adam N.
We close today with Cole Armstrong who thought he could improve upon the new Jaguars helmet:
Phil,
What if, instead of doing something “innovative” like putting two colors on a helmet, Jacksonville did something ACTUALLY innovative, something unlike any other major-league sports team? Something absolutely crazy?
It’s always fun to mess with the uniforms of newer teams that have less of an established tradition. As a 49ers fan, I have never had any inclination to do a Uni concept for my home team, because the uniform is so iconic… I’ve seen my team win (and sadly, lose) Superbowls in the classic red and gold. But the Jaguars… they present lots of possibilities. I’ve never liked their logo or their uniforms much. Furthermore, I don’t like the idea that every NFL team’s helmet has to feature its logo on both sides. The Bengals have one of the best helmet designs in the league, they are simple and unmistakable.
Long ago, there was another group of people in the Caribbean area that called themselves the Jaguars, hoping to channel the strength of the animal. They didn’t put little jaguar logos on each side of their head; they wore the head of an ACTUAL jaguar, or a replica of one, on their head. They were the Aztec Jaguar Warriors, and you can’t beat them for style.
So the Aztecs didn’t live anywhere near Jacksonville… neither did actual Jaguars! And no NFL team is located in or near Aztec lands. I’d say Jacksonville has as much right to borrow inspiration from Aztec tradition as any other NFL team. So, with that in mind, I present you my idea for a new Jacksonville Jaguars helmet design.
Yes, I drew it in about 45 minutes in Microsoft Paint. Sorry, it’s all I’ve got. If you or any of your readers want to edit it or use the idea and do a much better version, please feel free. I’m pretty proud of it and just want to share.
The hardest part was figuring out a way to include teeth, which I eventually squeezed around the the “Riddell” plaque. I felt it was necessary to include teeth for fear that the new helmets would inspire a derogatory nickname like “The Toothless Cats.” I think the eyes are the part I am most proud of. They even incorporate a little bit of Jacksonville’s teal color scheme.
Enjoy!
-Cole
And that’s it for today. Back with more next time.
Stirrup Fridays…
Because we love the stirrup here at Uni Watch, this section is devoted to those of us who sport the beautiful hose on Fridays — a trend popularized many years ago by Robert P. Marshall, III. For many of us, it’s become a bit of an obsession, but a harmless one — a reflection of our times. Where we once had Friday ties, which has been replaced by Casual Friday — we now have Stirrup Fridays. It’s an endearingly simple concept — no matter where you work (or even if you don’t) — break out a fresh pair of rups to compliment (or clash with) your Friday attire.
A smallish set for today.
Robert Brashear:
Comrades Phil and Rob,
Wearing the 71 Bucs for the 2013 Pens…as close as stirrups get to Las Vegas gold….
Robert Brashear
John Graham:
Phil,
This week’s patient happens to be an orange tabby. Red, white, and black are client’s local high school colors.
Jake
(Once again the patient’s face was hidden to protect the innocent)
John
John K.:
Phil,
Wearing the Seattle Pilots in support of my younger son’s Little League Mariners, who are entering the playoffs.
John K
James Poisso:
Phil,
Today was a day for these classic O’s stirrups.
James Poisso
Michael Clary:
Phil:
Hope I’m not angering the Stirrup Gods, but it was 94 °F, I had the day off, and there was no way I was going to wear Sox and Stirrups together today.
Also, I believe every house in America should have a home plate on the front porch.
– Clarybird
And that ends today’s look at Stirrup Friday — all of you who participate, send me your pics and a brief (~50 words) description of their relevance, and I’ll run ’em here on Saturday (and sometimes Sunday too!). Be sure to visit Robert’s House of Hose for news on rups.
And now…here’s …
Comrade Marshall’s Rupdate:
Comrades!
First and foremost, the long national nightmare is over…The “beer shower” 59’s are to be shipped to me Monday/Tuesday according to the aesthetics’s factory (about time, eh?). I am very sorry for this, it took too long. Unfortunately they have knitter problems on special outside the box orders for free thinking revolutionary’s like us. This is not a shock if you really think about it, we are a persnickety bunch, so thank you all for your patience. The bottom line, I have not been able to offer anything truly “new” because of this delay, but finally next week I will do so, and i promise a quicker turnaround my brothers and sisters in hose. That being said I have some Rays already in production so I will throw that out there as “new” selection for the weekend.
This weeks Stirrup Friday winner…
Last week week was a fluster cluck of miscommunication, so I wound up with multiple winners, yet the certain vet that actually won didn’t get in touch. Once again zzzzz’s image was great, so nertz to the buy one/get one winner this week, you just get one if you promise to keep these coming when you can, I love them (please contact me).
from each according his stirrvp, to each according his strype!
That’s pretty much it for today. Just two small bits of “news.” First off, the New York Football Giants will be wearing white pants this season. That’s a good article with a pic, but also included in there is nifty photo gallery of Giants unis throughout history.
Personally, I LOVE the white pants (being brought up in the period where they were segueing from gray pants to white pants with the old uniform style, before they went to the late 70s-90s “GIANTS” white pants). I wasn’t upset when they returned to the gray pants a decade or so ago, but I still preferred the whites. And now they’re back, at least for the home (blue) jerseys. They’ll still wear gray pants on the road, so these are just alternates. (h/t to Ryan Rodriguez for the story.)
Also, to beat the proverbial dead horse, The Christian Scientist Monitor put out a story entitled, “Redskins name change: Will Congress make team act?“. It doesn’t cover much new ground, but now “10 members of Congress have sent a letter asking for such a switch to Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell, Redskins sponsor FedEx, and all the other NFL franchises.”
I’m all for the Washington Football Club changing its name, but I don’t think Congress could or should be getting involved. Snyder should see that he’s on the wrong side of history and recognize that the change would be good, but he shouldn’t have to do it under Congressional pressure. Not only is it bad precedent (and who knows if it would have any effect or whether they have any ability to actually affect such a change), but it opens the proverbial can of worms. Yes, “Redskins” is racist but what about other team names? This opens up a slippery slope if there ever was one.
I’m firmly convinced the team will have a new name within five years, Paul feels it will be much longer and some don’t think a change will ever occur as long as Synder owns the team. No matter what happens, the last thing we need is Congress bringing about (or trying to bring about) a change this way. It will happen. Eventually. But not this way.
Everyone have a great Saturday and enjoy the summer that finally seems to have arrived. Tomorrow I’ll have a VERY special “Designing Minds” that you guys will not want to miss.
Follow me on Twitter @PhilHecken
Peace.
“Naming a street after a historical figure with a dubious record of racism, political affiliation or treason is not a first for the Metro Atlanta area. Heck, they carved three of them into a side of Stone Mountain. Removing the name of one anti-semite and replacing it with another is just par for the course, down here.”
–Roger Faso
Coupla thoughts:
1) Thanks again for the pre-seven am post!
2) I’m a big Redskins fan and would be fine with a name change. I don’t think it will happen . . . until Snyder figures out how to maximize his profits doing it (e.g. still being able to use “Redskins” throwbacks and thus being able to sell 2 sets merchandise for 1 team)
3) If Congress acts on the name, would they act on the logo, too? If they acted on the Redskins logo wouldn’t they have to act on Chief Wahoo and Chief Knockahoma? And what about the NFL Chief’s nickname? Theirs is not as racist as the aforementioned names/logos, so is that where the line is drawn?
Congress has no power to act on the Redskins name directly. Indirectly, revoking already granted IP protection for derogatory names, is also problematic. Especially if members have already demonstrated through, say, a letter to the team, that they intend the law to target one individual company. A court could reasonably rule that the law is intended as a bill of attainder and thus unconstitutional. But a law changing the standards for standing in a private suit to overturn trademark protection under existing law would not test Congress’ powers, nor expand “big government” in any way. It would, rather, make more effective the application of existing laws, and would also leave the issue to private parties and to the courts.
So if Congress wants to act, that would be the way to go. The point being not to get the Redskins in particular to change their name, but to fix a loophole that prevents the law of the land from being enforced and that puts some companies above the laws that all other companies must follow.
It’s interesting to see the Giants adding the gray into the stripes on the white pants. Maybe now that they’re going away from being historically accurate they can put some effort into making the uniform match itself better. Add some blue to the white jersey, some red to the blue jersey, maybe a bit of gray to both…
I agree.
Place that same stripe pattern on the white “sleeves” and make the numbers blue. Reverse the red and blue stripes and plop them on the blue jersey with white #’s. That would achieve OCD goodness. Right, Robert?
Maybe even make the helmet #’s gray.
Baseball players wearing camouflage military-ish uniforms does as much to honor our troops as wearing blackface does to honor the civil rights movement.
I do want to add a couple comments about the UWFFL that I neglected to mention in the article:
1.) I want to acknowledge the great job Brady Ivie, who also designed our league logo, did in making up the three logos for the minor leagues. If you go to the minor league G+ pages from the main UWFFL G+ page you’ll see them. Brady did an awesome job on these on a short deadline and everyone should give a shout out to him and tell him how much you like them.
2.) Also I neglected to mention that anyone may own up to three expansion franchises (one in each of the three minor leagues) and therefore someone who owns a UWFFL franchise can own as many as four teams at one time. The only exception to not being allowed to own more than one team in a particular league is if your UWFFL team is demoted from the major league to a minor league, you may keep both teams, even if that leaves you with two teams in one minor league. (If this can be avoided by moving one of the teams to a different minor league, however, that can also happen.)
If you have any other questions about the UWFFL and the three minor leagues, don’t hesitate to ask them.
I am a mossback uni traditionalist, usually, but man, do I love what Cole did with that helmet. Fabulous, witty, super cool. Rock it, my brother.
Another ringing endorsement from the U-W geezer wing here.
I don’t think congress should do a thing about the name. They have no right to do a thing.
Don’t these Congressmen have better things to like devise ways reduce the unemployment and crime rates in this country?
If my Congressman wasted his time (and taxpayers money) writing letters to change the name of a football team, I would certainly not vote for him or her.
There are larger fish to fry here.
Congressmen can work on multiple things at the same time. It’s not like they’re losing sleep working arduously on the Redskins thing, it’s just an additional measure they’ve gotten behind.
Would love to see a real life mockup of Cole’s Jags helmet ’cause it’s just pure… F’n… crazy. And by my Rule of 53, it would look insane seeing an entire team wearing those!
This’ll fix those Viking “numbers”:
link
But that would completely destroy the spirit of the uniform.
The Giants should wear those white pants with the white jersey. White over grey looks terrible.
+1 The only thing worse is white over silver, i.e. the UGA Bulldogs.
I’d pointed this out back on draft day, but if you look REAL close at the Greenway pictures, they did the same thing to the TV numbers. Left shoulder has the added serifs, right shoulder does not.
I’m sure they’re sorry they messed with the numbers in the first place. What a clusterfuck!
That Jaguars helmet would be more than awesome.
link
According to that article the Giants will only be wearing the white pants for 2 games, so most home games will still feature the grey pants.
After the announcement that Ottawa’s new CFL team would be called the RedBlacks, and their new sawblade-style logo was released evoking Ottawa’s logging past (which their old team also tried to evoke: link) I made a joke concept uniform with the entire jersey made of lumberjack checkerboard plaid, just to make fun of the dumb name RedBlacks.
The concept got retweeted by a few people who didn’t know I was joking, and who thought it was the actual leaked RedBlacks uniform. This went all the way to Jeff Blair, nationally syndicated radio host on Prime Time Sports (which is simulcast on TV across Canada), reporting the plaid jersey as fact. Here’s the clip of them discussing it:
link
Afterwards, I did decide to make a proper concept that made use of the plaid, just because even though my original was a joke I think it would be a cool, unique design feature to A) call back to the city’s history of logging, lumberjacks and log-rollers down the Ottawa River, b) make good use of the admittedly dumb RedBlacks name. Here’s my still-not-likely-realistic-but-less-goofy concept:
link
I like it! The plaid makes your uniform concept unique and memorable. I actually think you could add more plaid to the design. Heck, I kind of even like the jersey from your “joke” design. It could use some tweaking, perhaps, but I’m not convinced that a plaid jersey couldn’t work if it was done well. Case in point, I love Manchester United’s link
, which features the gingham design made famous by the city’s textile industry. A plaid jersey might be a bit more difficult to pull off in American or Canadian football, logistically speaking, because of the multiple panels and venting zones in modern jerseys. Nevertheless, I think it’s a concept worth exploring.
Attractive, unique, and do-able!
The Orioles network MASN is showing the Turn Ahead The Clock game from 1999 between the O’s and Angels with all their large logo glory.
For game 2 of the day/night doubleheader against the Cardinals, the Giants are wearing their Sunday “SF” Jersey with their regular all black cap.
Originally when I saw the Cole helmet I thought of a dollar store in FLA targeting tourists. But what the heck, it’s Jacksonville, who cares! It might work…maybe.
Teams wearing Homestead Grays unis went 0-2 Saturday. (Pirates and Nationals.)