October 2022 - Adamsonmedia.com

Branding time in the XFL

The original XFL was one-and-done in 2001 because it lost its primary broadcast partner due to astonishingly low TV ratings.

Nearly two decades later the rebooted XFL was one half-and-done because the plug was pulled midseason due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

**Scott Adamson writes stuff. Follow him on Twitter @adamsonsl**

The third XFL? Only time will tell if Dany Garcia, Dwayne Johnson and RedBird Capital Partners can provide the 2023 league with a path to sustainability. Once the league kicks off next February, we’ll start to have a better idea.

For now, though, it’s time for alternative football nerds to unite and make our feelings known about the eight teams’ logos.

“The team names and logos are the results of the diligent work and tireless collaboration between the league marketing team, ownership and our creative partners,” XFL President Russ Brandon said in a statement. “This is the moment where our brand comes to life and our shared vision becomes reality for our cities and fans everywhere. We couldn’t be more excited by what we have built, and there is more on the horizon.”

Branding – I freely admit – is now my primary interest in any tackle football league outside the NFL or CFL. I may or may not watch them play in the late winter and spring (really, I just want the guys to get paid and keep their major league dreams alive), but I need to know if they make my fashion sense tingle. If so, I might throw some cash their way and buy a hat or shirt.

So, here is how I’m grading the eight teams. It has nothing to do with their coaches, locale, or potential for on-field success, it’s based solely on my personal preference of their look.

And remember, this is only one short, bespectacled man’s opinion; if yours is different, we can still be friends (or at least friendly acquaintances).

Away we go …

Kudos for repping the city of Arlington, where the team and XFL headquarters are located and which is 20 miles from Dallas. I can see why the team kept the nickname, though. “Renegades” is just a good, solid alt-football identity, although the bandit-style logo from XFL 2.0 (now the secondary logo) was much better than this one – at least to me.

Grade: C.

Nothing particularly wrong with the nickname or logo, but I was hoping for some more color to go with the red. Plus when I think of Defenders I think of Marvel, not DC (if you know, you know).

Grade: C.

I tend to root for New York-based sports teams (I took Mick Jagger’s advice and once bit the Big Apple), so I decided to pull for the New York Guardians in the most recent XFL. However, I also really liked the name “Guardians” as well as the gargoyle-inspired logo.

Since many New Yorkers move to Florida when they retire, I’m gonna pretend that’s why Orlando didn’t go to the trouble of finding something new to call the club.

Grade: A.

Good name and logo two years ago, good name and logo now. I liked the callback to the Houston Oilers in 2020, which prompted the Tennessee Titans and NFL to file for trademark protection because a business that generates $18 billion annually must scratch and claw for every cent. Not sure why they felt the need to protect the brand of a team that moved to the Volunteer State a quarter century ago and changed its name to Titans in 1999, but whatever.

At any rate, there should be no such issues with this one.

Grade: B.

Brahma is the Hindu god of creation, and if you’re like me that’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of San Antonio, Texas.

I kid, I kid …

A Brahma is also a bull, so for me it’s reminiscent of one of the city’s most famous and successful minor league football teams – the Toros. That San Antonio-based club played in the Texas Football League, Continental Football League, Trans-America Football League, Southwestern Football League and Mid-America Football League.

Of course, the San Antonio Toros have nothing to do with the San Antonio Brahmas, I just felt the need to briefly hijack my own column with obscure facts.

Grade: C

The gridiron artists formerly known as the Dragons are now the Sea Dragons. When the rebrand leaked I wasn’t sure why they wanted to switch from a mythical monster to a real (if weird) fish, but that was really none of my concern. Fortunately, a Sea Dragon is a dragon hailing from Seattle, while a seadragon is something very different.

Good to see they stuck with the fire-breathing reptile for the logo and made it even better than before.

Grade: A

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Not only was this team the attendance leader in the 2021 XFL (28,541 fans per game) but it already had a sweet logo and uniform.

Grade: A

After flopping in Tampa, the Vipers slithered west. A viper is a venomous snake, and there are all sorts of these no-shouldered creatures in the Nevada desert. The logo gives me a strong “meh” vibe, but the name “Vegas Vipers” rolls off the forked tongue.

Grade: C

Halloween, werewolves and flame retardant costumes

I love Halloween.

Always have.

It is without question my favorite holiday – there isn’t even a close second.

Sure, you get presents at Christmas, colorful eggs at Easter, chocolate covered cherries on Valentine’s Day and term life policies on National Insurance Awareness Day, but you don’t get to dress as a werewolf.

I mean, I guess you could, but trying to work a werewolf into a Nativity Scene might be pushing things a bit. Then again, sheep are involved and werewolves like a good sheep now and then, so who knows?

Throw in some silver bullets with that gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and you realize how wise those men really were.

Point being, Halloween gives you the opportunity to be someone else for a day, watch spooky movies, and keep the inside of your house dark so Trick or Treaters won’t ring your doorbell.

As for werewolves, I was rather obsessed with them during my formative years. In fact, I used to take toothpaste to school and, during recess, lick a small bit of Colgate and swish it around so that it would appear that I was foaming at the mouth.

Werewolves, in case you don’t know, tend to foam at the mouth – or at least the committed ones do. And, by god, I wanted to be a committed werewolf.

Fortunately, my grammar school had no guidance counselors, so there was no one to check on me to see if my lycanthropy was interfering with my school work or mental health.

For the record, it was not.

I was an “A” student, and as far as mental health goes, I was as well-adjusted as any boy capable of assuming the form of a wolf while retaining human intelligence could possibly be.

The greatest Halloween, though, came when I was about 8 and my mom bought me a werewolf costume at a department store.

That was back in the days of those hard plastic masks with rubber bands on the back, and rayon outfits that tied around your neck.

The major selling point was that they had to be “flame retardant.”

That was of the utmost importance to my mother, who if she said, “I’ll get you a costume, but it has to be flame retardant,” once, she said it a thousand times.

Apparently, before these outfits came along, Trick or Treaters tended to burst into flames.

I never saw it happen, but I’m sure it was horrific … dozens of children bopping along with their little bags of candy and then suddenly turning into human torches.

And to the credit of the flame retardant costume makers, in all the years I wore their products I never caught fire, nor did any other kids I saw wearing them.

That’s impressive.

Anyway, this particular costume was a Wolfman, and it was reminiscent of the 1941 movie “The Wolf Man,” starring Lon Chaney, Jr.

It was made by Ben Cooper Inc. and, aside from looking cool, there was a sticker on the front of the box letting me know that the mask was ventilated.

That was important, because suffocation slows you down when you’re going house to house.

Knowing I looked menacing and could breathe freely made me more proud of this costume than any I’ve had in my life.

It was great to be with my posse out ringing doorbells, and then have the candy-giving parent or adult guardian tell me how scary I looked.

Of course, there was that one guy who opened the door, looked at me and said, “Oh, you must be a mean dog!”

Dumbass.

I kept that werewolf mask for months, taking it to school with me to augment my toothpaste-induced mouth foaming.

It finally wore out, though, and as I grew a bit older, I began to broaden my Halloween horizons.

I went as Batman for several years, and still have Batman masks, capes and onesies that I wear from time to time.

If there’s one thing I like better than a werewolf, it’s a Dark Knight.

And even though I’ve reached the age where I can order from the 55+ menu at Denny’s, I still have the urge to dress up for Halloween.

And this year, I might even go old school, relieving those carefree days of my youth when I ran around in flame retardant costumes, howling at the moon.

I think I’ll go buy some Colgate.

Editor’s note: This column was originally published in 2018.

London calling

When Roger Goodell was in London to spread the National Football League gospel earlier this month, he spoke at a UK Live event before the Green Bay Packers-New York Giants game at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Now that the league is a regular visitor to England (Denver meets Jacksonville today at Wembley Stadium), rumors of international expansion come up quite frequently.

Goodell isn’t exactly trying to squelch them.

“I think there’s no question that London could support not just one franchise, but I think two franchises, I really believe that,” Goodell said at the fan gathering hosted by Sky Sports.

“And that’s from a fan perspective, a commercial standpoint, from a media standpoint, I think you (the UK fans) have undoubtedly proven that and thank you for that.”

Talk of a London franchise has been a hot topic for several years, although possibly awarding two to the Swinging City is a fairly recent development. The biggest news to me, however, was how Goodell responded to a question from Sky Sport’s Neil Reynolds.

Reynolds pointed out the three NFL-ready stadiums in London (Wembley, Twickenham and Hotspur) as well as future games scheduled for Munich and Frankfurt, and asked the commish about the possibility of an international division in the NFL.

“That’s part of what we’re doing, right?” Goodell answered. “We’re trying to see could you have multiple locations in Europe where you could have an NFL franchise because it would be easier as a division.”

While I’d love it for my friends there who want a team (or teams) of their own, I’ve never been able to wrap my brain around the logistics of having one or two European squads when the other 32 are in the contiguous United States. It wouldn’t be an issue if we had a transporter, but according to Star Trek, human teleportation isn’t scheduled for mass use until 2121.

Anyway, let’s say the NFL does grant London two teams (I’d put one in the AFC East and the other in the NFC East). It seems the only way to deal with the travel issue is to have long home stands by the London teams followed by extended road trips.

Sure, the NFL has plenty of money to make weekly junkets from an American NFL city to England, but it’d be asking a lot of a player to spend Week One in London, Week Two in San Francisco, Week Three back in London, etc. I don’t see how their body clocks could ever sync up.

If I had to come up with a plan for this (and I don’t, so you needn’t worry) it would be for the London teams to go with a four road/four home/four road/four home/plus one (17^th game) scheduling format. Maybe a couple of U.S. cities without NFL franchises could be the home-away-from-home for the Londoners, serving as a base camp to train and fly in and out of when they have their month-long stays in America.

It’s not perfect, but it seems workable.

The division plan is a better idea, but it still has pitfalls.

Let’s say London 1, London 2, Frankfurt and Munich make up what we’ll call the European Division. Playing each division foe twice along with the balance of a 17-game schedule, that gives the United Kingdom/Germany wing of the NFL 11 or 12 games on their side of the pond plus five or six in the United States.

You’d still have to go with a wonky home and road slate, though. And aside from that, what do you do with this one division dangling all by itself?

Is it part of the AFC, NFC, or neither?

Of course, the biggest question of all is how to stock the teams. It seems logical (and necessary) that the four European franchises be part of the regular NFL draft. But there would be culture shock issues to deal with and – in the case of players drafted by Frankfurt and Munich – potential language barriers.

While some athletes would love a chance to live and work abroad, many would likely be trying to find a way to get the German teams to make trades with those based in the Lower 48.

“The question I think is going to come down to, not so much the logistics about travel, that’s clearly a challenge, it really comes down to whether you can do it competitively,” Goodell told Reynolds. “Where the team here or the teams in the States coming over can continue to be competitive and that was the challenge when we did the regular season games.”

Ultimately, the NFL will have to figure out how big is too big. Thirty-two franchises are a seam-busting number for the top tier of any professional sports league, and growing beyond that runs the risk of diluting the product.

Plus, you’d have to feel for fans in places like St. Louis and Oakland who’d love to have an NFL team back only to see franchises go to places where tackle football was nothing more than a novelty just a few years ago.

For now, all this is just talk – interesting talk, certainly, but with no definitive plan of action behind it.

Yet with the NFL continuing to expand its footprint and develop an international fan base, it’d be silly to dismiss the idea of a team or teams in Europe, whether through expansion or relocation.

Besides, the rivalry between the London Spitfires and London Skylarks would be fantastic.