Army Black Knights...oh, and welcome to Discrim Concepts

Welcome to Discrim Athletic Concepts, the name's Anthony, though the good folks at Chris Creamer's Sports Logo Community know me better as Discrimihater.  Don't ask about the name, the story behind it's rather boring and I don't remember all of it clearly.  Anyways, I've been designing uniform concepts as something of a hobby since 2001, and have been interested in sports uniforms long before then.  Main reason I don't call myself a graphic designer, really, is mainly my lack of interest in business design, combined with not even being close to the best artist in my family.

Anyway, my life story aint what you came for, is it?



Football is my main sport, as I'd grown up in my grandpa's lap watching the Bears on Sundays, and I'd played as a lineman in high school.  Fittingly, the first post will feature a football set.

The U.S. Military Academy is the oldest of America's service academies, though since the name is a mouthful, everybody simply calls it either Army, where most graduates will serve for four years IIRC post-academy, or West Point, after its location north of New York City.  West Point's eleven, the "Black Knights of the Hudson," were consistently among college football's strongest teams during the first half of the 20th century, but the academy's gridiron fortunes took a sharp decline thereafter, most noted recently in their inability to defeat archrival Navy.

Army adopted a knight-centric identity in the late 90s, and I count it as a personal favorite.  However, at least for this set, the knight was slain by the academy's classic symbol, the mule.  Back in 2010, I'd posted a few Notre Dame vs. Army concepts in honor of their game at Yankee Stadium, and had initially used the knight/A on Army's sleeves before concluding it simply didn't fit the old-time baseball feel I was going for.  After replacing it with the mule, someone'd suggested I make an Army alt based on the mule's towel, though I soon put any ideas on the backburner.  Fast forward to 2013, and I decided to finally get around to it.  Without further ado, first, the home black and traveling white.

The first draft of the home and away actually looked much different than these.  Hell, they looked nothing like this at first.  In any case, I'd posted these at the CCSLC a few weeks back, and a combination of persuasion and positive feedback regarding the third convinced me to use the third's design for the home and away.  Two sets later, and this was the result.  The helmet is largely the same as what they traditionally wear, though the pants usually use a thinner stripe, more like that of the Oakland Raiders than the New Orleans Saints-style pants I went with.  On the top of the pants stripe is the Athena helm, which is the centerpiece of USMA's academic crest.  Both jerseys use the "mule yoke," consisting of two stripes near the edges of the yoke and a large block A on each shoulder.  The letters "USMA" grace the back, and the home numbers are gold outlined in gray, while the away numbers are black with gold and gray trim.

The third jersey I'd posted at CCSLC, oddly enough, became the base for the home and away.  Not all that common, but it's happened a few times in real life with teams like the St. Louis Blues, LA Kings and Pittsburgh Penguins.  The most notable differences are the yoke being black in contrast to the gray body, and the gold numbers shadowed in black rather than outlined, as I usually prefer alternates to be at least somewhat different from the home/away design.

Think gold-gray-gold wouldn't work?  If the gray is further from the light, silvery gray Ole Miss and Air Force have worn in recent years, and closer to the dark gray the New Jersey Nets wore as an alternate during the Jason Kidd era, it would.  Hell, UCLA's made powder blue jerseys work with gold helmets and pants for decades.  Granted, the Bruins' unis looked like shit last season, but then UCLA's AD is braindead and incompetent.

Anyways, you may have noticed the differing patches on all three jerseys. Army began the practice of wearing various unit insignia in the late 80s against (who else?) Navy, and the concept would've seemed incomplete without em.  On the black jersey is the 3rd Infantry insignia, that of the 1st Infantry, aka Big Red One, graces the whites, and the gray features the 1st Armored Division.