Someday, I hope a team makes two separate rebrands – one that will inevitably get leaked, that will serve as a decoy. And one that will actually be decent.
That clearly didn't happen with today's announcement that the worst-kept secret in MLS has been unveiled. Ladies and gentlemen, your Kansas City Snorting:
Oh, wait. That's not the new Kansas City logo. That's a picture I got from a Google Image Search for "This sucks." I wonder why I would confuse the two.
Fine. I'm not a Kansas City fan, and I'm certainly not their owner, so I have no say in what their soccer franchises chooses to call itself.
And after fifteen years of the crappiest nicknames and logos ever pumped out of the sneaker factories, it's a little surprising that it's something as innocuous as the new Kansas City logo would be the one to drive me to the bell tower.
But it's the very blandness that has made my brain snap like Jim Otto. It's so insipid, so dull, so generic – it reeks of those unlicensed soccer video game crests you'd see for "Manchester Forest" or "London United." I look at that logo, and I can taste the stale coffee in the committee room where they were told, "Let's come up with something that won't offend anyone."
I know, that's nothing new. This crest, objectively, isn't any more tedious or ponderous than the Toronto and Dallas nicknames, or the Beckhamized Galaxy logo, or Real Salt Lake. Portland fans monstrously overreacted to their updated logo, but it was the Whitecaps logo that was a real basket of chicken dicks. This Kansas City logo is just oatmeal in comparison.
But for me, this logo is the straw that broke the camel through the eye of the hurricane.
The club just twatted this:
Well, that's a relief, because the name sounds like shit.
If you wish to be particularly annoyed, mosey over to here and enjoy the blithering about the "design elements." See, the lines to the left? That represents the Missouri-Kansas state line! Even Mark Rothko thinks that's a bucket of shaving cream.
Or enjoy the silly "SC" logo's explanation of being a tribute to "the Hellenistic statue of Winged Victory." I have a feeling Adidas isn't too happy about that reference. I hate it myself, because I can't for the life of me understand where I'm supposed to be seeing it. But it's appropriate enough, I imagine – the most famous Winged Victory statue has no head – just like the people who designed this logo.
As with everything else that's wrong in the world today, I blame the mid-90's. The original MLS names and logos were pretty much the sports version of Poochie, the Rockin' Dog from "Simpsons" – but those logos so thoroughly poisoned the well that MLS has been reacting to it ever since.
Now, MLS is a teenager, and as such is depressive, self-conscious, paranoid, and conformist to the point of petrification. MLS has tried the "Hey! Look at me, I'm so edgy! I'm wearing something wacky instead of having a personality!" to "Please don't let me stand out in any way," but it's not anything different. Just two ways of dealing with the same problem – an abject failure of imagination.
I suppose we could spin this as a step towards truly post-modern soccer. "Those aren't actual tigers and birds playing baseball," we could sniff knowingly. "We reject your attempts to label us. We aren't symbols. We aren't metaphors. We aren't even simply athletes – we are fully realized human beings." And eventually, the logo of the Kansas City People Who Play Soccer In Exchange For Money can be Kierkegaard saying "If you label me, you negate me."
Yeah, we could do that. Or we can remember that this is all supposed to be fun and entertaining in some way.
Thank you for indulging my impotent Internet blogger rage.
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