Was there ever a league that completely epitomized the design styles of its time more than the XFL? The XFL was a professional football league that played one season in 2001. The league was founded by owner of the World Wrestling Federation, Vince McMahon. Unlike the USFL who tried to go head to head with the NFL, the XFL was intended to be a major professional sports league to complement the NFL during the offseason, but failed to find an audience and folded after its first season. The idea behind the league was to bring some wrestling excitement to the game. Roughing penalties were few, the players could celebrate on the field and television coverage feature some really original camera angles.
The league also provided some seriously entertaining team logos. The league featured eight teams in its one and only season, and each had a logo that was filled with the popular sports design styles of the time. Here are a few of my favorites. The Birmingham Thunderbolts featured a lightning logo that was used in a very unique way on the team's helmets.
The Orlando Rage had a very unique look as well. The team's mascot was an angry, red faced man who looked like he was suffering from a serious headache! The word Rage is an extremely hard one to create a visual image for, but this one gets the job done. The helmet featured more unique striping that was different than the type of striping seen in the NFL.
The Chicago Enforcers had another great look. The logo featured a simple stylized C with a fist punching out of it. The logo looked great on the Enforcers' black helmets. The look was very simple, but effective. The colors worked great together and created a great look.
The XFL was a league that wasn't around very long, but made a big impact on logo design and how we thought about football as an entertainment product. The concept may have been a bit crazy, and the football wasn't quite up to NFL standards, but who can forget characters like "He Hate Me"? The XFL definitely has its small place in sports logo history.
NBA Logo News: Philadelphia 76ers
I couldn't let the day go by without commenting on the wise choice the Philadelphia 76ers have made by returning to their classic red, white and blue colors and old school logo. The return of this logo signals the end of the use of black and gold, which was way overdue. As a huge fan of the Doctor, Julius Erving, I can't wait to see the 76ers return to the look they had when he was tearing up the NBA.
good topic! the XFL had some impactful (can you believe that's really a word?) imagery. i always thought the "rage" logo was great... even tho it looked to me like the poor dude was constipated. then again, constipation would fill me with rage too.
there's some some cool xfl uniform style guides and uniform diagrams over at the xfl memorial network:
http://www.all-xfl.com/xfl/teams/teams.shtml
Posted by: marc | June 24, 2009 at 02:54 PM
We here in Philly are very happy to have our old Sixers logo back.
Posted by: Johnny Griswold | June 25, 2009 at 06:41 AM
The Birmingham Thunderbolts were originally supposed to be called the Blast. I have a t-shirt with the same logo but it says Blast on it.
Apparently the Memphis Maniax logo has every letter in Maniax hidden in it. Go here to see it:
http://sportslogos.net/logo.php?id=5248
Posted by: Zubaz is Zu-back!!! | June 28, 2009 at 06:14 PM