Rams, vintage-inspired

The St. Louis Rams are reportedly going to pull the trigger on a uniform overhaul in the near future, likely 2015 or 2016, and much to my annoyance, their owners are hinting towards at least a throwback to these:

bestsportsphotos.com

Purely on an aesthetic basis, I've never liked the Fearsome Foursome set.  I much prefer their 50s golds:

wikipedia.com

College to Pro: Russell Wilson

Most of the NFL's star players spent their college careers at one place.  A decent number of others spent time at junior colleges, then transferred to a four year school.  Then there are the rare cases of guys who transferred for one reason or another, such as Russell Wilson.

courtesy seattlepi.com

Though NC State was still wearing the Falcons ripoffs when he first got there, at the end of his time there, the Wolfpack was wearing much plainer fare.  Likewise, Wisconsin hasn't made any major changes to their uniform for a couple decades.  The contrast of both styles with that of the Seahawks' avant garde set was too amusing to pass up.  Hell, in this case I figured the hawk head alone wouldn't be enough, so I worked it into a passable S, then made a left-side version to avoid the "badge of cowardice" that would result.  For NCSU, I brought the 90s wolfpack heads out of retirement, figuring they'd be a good substitute for the wraparound hawk head.  Finally, wolf tails are on NC State's pants.

I recall having a cap with a snarling badger on it in the early or mid 90s, though that logo is rather hard to find.  As I didn't particularly like it anyway, I went with Bucky over a red/black wraparound stripe.  The W's on the pants stripe is a concession to the fact that I couldn't find the paw print I'd originally intended to use.

Arizona Cardinals

One thing I like doing in football concepts is modifying traditional elements in some way, and few things scream "traditional football" like Northwestern stripes (the thin-thick-thin stripes worn by the Steelers, Lions, Iowa, BYU, and namesake Northwestern, among many others).  Back in the late 90s, ESPN started airing Arena league games live, and among the AFL's top teams were the Arizona Rattlers and San Jose Sabercats, both of whom utilized Northwestern stripes in what remain the most distinctive manners I've seen, SMU's use of them on their shoulders notwithstanding.  The middle stripe on the Rattlers' sleeves was a turquoise/copper diamondback pattern, much like the Diamondbacks would later utilize, while a sunburst graced the Sabercats' uniform.

Arizona Rattlers courtesy azcentral.com

College to Pro: Charles Woodson, Randy Moss, Adrian Peterson

A few years back, probably even before then, I'd occasionally wondered what pro players' college and pro uniforms would look like if their overall styles, for lack of better terms, were flipped with each other.  That, in essence, is the idea behind an off-and-on series I like to call "College to Pro."  I've been posting sets of these for a few years now at the Sportslogos.net boards, so this aint my first rodeo, just my most recent.  First up, my newest C2P concepts: Charles Woodson, commemorating his return to Oakland.

Whenever a C2P set features the Raiders as the NFL team, I've thrown together a mock Raider shield, and Michigan is no exception, though I had to do a bit of diggng for the wolverine head I used, otherwise I was ready to go with the M.  And in all honesty, the numbers could just as easily have been blue instead of maize, so you can take it as a bit of artistic license on my part.  On the Raiders side, the jersey is modeled after the late 90s Michigan road white, with silver and black replacing maize and blue, naturally, and the Raider shield replacing the M's on the sleeves. 

A few months earlier, I'd posted a little Vikings two-step in the form of Adrian Peterson and Randy Moss.  As I've found myself saying more frequently than I do with normal concepts, some things happen, most often it'll be an issue that prevents a true swap, for instance the Vikings having their famed horns, but Oklahoma not really having anything horizontal that'd look good on a helmet (I'm sorry, that stagecoach is just ugly).  Thus, the Boston Bruins ripoff meant to evoke a wagon wheel.  The OU jersey is based on the recently-retired Vikings uniform, and as you can see, I had a much easier go of it making the Vikes resemble the Sooners.

Now we got Randy Moss...and I'll tell ya what, I got childhood memories of the 1-AA championship game, of Marshall and Youngstown State duking it out, and later on, the other Adrian Peterson and Georgia Southern dominating.  Fortunately for what I had in mind, Marshall's mascot is a bison (what "Thundering Herd" alludes to).  Which has horns.  And would be based on the Moss-era Vikings uniform, which they never should've abandoned.  Granted, the bison logos Marshall uses now were adopted several years into Moss' NFL career, but there are times you gotta make excpetions.  In a C2P context, I ended up calling such a case the Woodson Exception, oddly enough.  The Vikings uni here, honestly, was destined to be overshadowed through no real fault of its own, merely due to Marshall's uniforms being pretty basic.

Have a good weekend, and be thankful you aren't a Bucks fan.  Getting swept by the Heat aint progress, no matter what Kohl thinks.