Bush League Factor

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	Laredo Bucks	-2
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Posted 2005 October 6

In my experience, the Central Hockey League is not a fruitful hunting ground for decent logos. You've got skating seafood, bees on steroids (yeah, I know...the bees thought it was linseed oil), and cartoon characters voiced by Rosie O'Donnell, all in one league. I did some quick math, and found that as I write this, the average CHL team's BLF score is 43, whereas the AHL and ECHL are both under 26. (Admittedly, the UHL and SPHL are even worse.)

All of this explains why I was quite surprised by this classy little logo.

Not only is the deer not a silly cartoon, but he actually looks distinguished, almost regal. You only see him from the neck up, but he's clearly standing proud.

The color scheme is a nice variation on the classic blue-and-gold.

The logo is simple, with only four elements, all of them very straightforward: the deer itself, a (thankfully subtle) outline of the state of Texas, the team's name, and a star. (It isn't immediately apparent, but the star indicates where in Texas the city of Laredo is located. That's a nice touch.) It's compositionally balanced as well.

All in all, this is a logo that catches your eye precisely because it doesn't try to catch your eye. In a logo world full of cartoon characters and gaudy colors, here's one that lets understatement carry the day. And much like a person wearing a simple tuxedo at a Halloween party, this is the one that grabs your attention.

In a word, this logo is elegant.

The name is a good, solid one as well. Like "Titans", it's a basic name that is surprisingly rare in the sports world. It's not in-your-face aggressive like "Wolves" or "Wildcats", but it's definitely a word that conjures images of strength and power. People might snicker at the lack of masculinity implied by a name like "Rosebuds" or "Canaries" (these are names of actual teams, by the way, though they both folded decades ago), but they won't snicker at a name like "Bucks".

The name is as elegant as the logo.

I still have to score it, of course. But the scoring winds up being quite gentle, on account of the fact that the team gets both the Cool-logo and Cool-name bonuses. It technically earns the "Local" bonus, which would make it the first team to get all three bonuses, except that I established a precedent with the Quad City Mallards that I don't give the local bonus when the team's name is an animal with a range over an extremely large area. Still, a negative score is nothing to sneeze at.

Final Score: -2 points.
Penalties: Name-logo, 2 pts; State (egregious), 6 pts.
Bonuses: Cool-name, -5 pts; Cool-logo, -5 pts.