Here’s to hoping the XFL has better football than they do logos

The new XFL will start their inaugural season in February, and on August 21 the long-awaited team names were announced. Well I’m a little late to the party, but here I am to tell you how I feel about the XFL’s new team names along with their logos.

Now for a little background, I care about this stuff a lot. Team names, logos, and even colors are matter of great discussion at my house. I’ve always loved when a team can truly represent a city from its history to its culture to its people. Now let’s get into the new XFL teams.

We’ll start in the West with the Seattle Dragons. Simply, I think the dragon looks just fine and they have some nice colors, but what does a dragon have to do with Seattle. The name sounds like something a third grade flag football team would have come up with. Dragons are cool and all, but it just does not work for the city.

Heading south to L.A. we have the Wildcats. I think the colors are really good on this one. It feels warm. It feels south. It feels L.A. Wildcats is a decent name. There are plenty of big cats native to Southern California. I don’t mind the simple logo, but at the same time this is the XFL and not the MLB.

Moving on to Texas we have two teams, the first being the Dallas Renegades. As a whole this isn’t a bad one. Obviously, the cowboy on the logo fits the city. The colors mesh well too. My big concern with this one is the name. Renegades? I get the idea, but I feel like there are some better options. The Outlaws. The Bandits. The Desperados. Any of those would have been better.

The next Texas team is the Houston Roughnecks. They definitely got creative on this one with both the logo and the name, but I think maybe a little too creative. I think the hidden ‘H’ for Houston in the logo is a nice touch. I’m a real sucker for those hidden meaning moves, but the logo just has too much going on. Besides the ‘H’ you have a star and an entire freaking oil rig. Now try slapping that on to a helmet and having it still look good. Logo’s should never be too complex, and this one is. Similar to the Renegades, Houston has the idea but there has to be something besides Roughnecks. At least pick something that people don’t have to look up the definition of.

Traveling north to St. Louis we have the internet’s favorite, the Battlehawks. The name is amazing. I don’t know what a Battlehawk is supposed to be, but it sounds cool. The colors are solid as well, but the logo is a bit messy. A sword with wings, I guess that’s something. All in all, a solid name and logo.

Soaring down to Tampa we find my personal favorite of the bunch, the Vipers. I don’t know why I like this one so much. For some reason the green and gold sticks out to me. The logo is a little lack, but it gets the job done. The colors feel very Florida to me, and snakes of course are a good choice to represent the state.

Back north at our nation’s capital is the Defenders. To me, this one get’s a little lost in the bunch. It’s just kind of boring. The name makes some sense for Washington DC, but I feel like it could make sense in ten other cities as well. Red and white are fine but adding in blue would have been much more fitting. As for the logo, it’s a shield. Yeah, it’s a shield with DC crammed on there with some lightning bolts. Doesn’t really scream ‘center of U.S. politics.

The last logo/name combo up for critique is the New York Guardians. Now, I do like the colors on this one for sure. Not only is gray suitable for the sprawling metropolis, but its my overall opinion that gray is not used enough for sports teams. Anyways, the logo doesn’t make sense. It looks cool, but I don’t get what it has to do with guardians or New York. Just like the Defenders, the name is just meh. It could be the New York Defenders and the D.C. Guardians and no one would even know the difference.

There. It is done. We got through all the teams and my opinion is now one of the thousands out in the world. As an overall grade, I would give the XFL a C+. They got the project done and yeah, it turned out all right, but not their best effort.