Every year our family fills out brackets for the NCAA Mens basketball tournament. (Virginia just won the whole tournament for the first time, way to go!) A little background information before the details of how the brackets get filled: My husband is a sports guy, he can tell you who plays for what team, team mascots and colors, etc. My son is just now getting into following sports on the TV, especially basketball and soccer. My daughter and I don’t follow sports on TV. Period. (When I want white noise but nothing that will distract me, I put sports on TV)
So when it comes time to fill out our brackets, we each approach it a little differently. My husband and son go with their knowledge of the teams and gut feelings about who will do better in each match up. My daughter goes by the mascot, she picks which mascot she likes better. On the other hand I make my decisions by a combination of mascot and logo. As an animal lover, animals always win over human mascots by default and also over the ‘out of the ordinary’ mascots like trains and nuts (yes Ohio, I’m talking about you). My brother played basketball from middle school through college and after attending +99% of his games, please forgive me if I cannot stand watching basketball games on TV! The bracket is the only way I can stay connected to the tournament. Logo design is really important in my line of work and in branding a company, so naturally I use this way to participate.
Here is a good example of how I chose my teams: I love both ant eaters and badgers. So when I saw the match up between the UC Irvine Ant Eaters and the Wisconsin Badgers, simply choosing the animal I liked better wouldn’t have worked. I took a closer look at their official logos.
BTW ***** The copyright for these images belongs to their respective colleges, I am in no way claiming copyright or ownership, just showing how awesome their logos are!****
University of California (UC) Irvine: Ant Eaters-
I like how the letters intertwine to create an interesting design. That plus the modern looking Ant Eater make for a good logo, either part of the logo could be used on apparel and be interesting. However, a non-sports person wouldn’t right away know what school was being represented, how do you know the order of the letters. Bright and contrasting colors also grab attention.
University of Wisconsin; Badgers –
I love the look on this guys face and his strong posture. I’m not a fan of the text or the font being used. I find it a little less than exciting but you would obviously know what school was being represented by the logo, even for us non-sports folk. Bright and contrasting colors also grab attention.
My ultimate pick was the Wisconsin Badgers, even though in real life I like ant eaters better! The logo came across more clearly and I knew who I was voting for without question. Now obviously large schools with fans that number in the hundreds of thousands don’t need to say who they are, they are popular enough for their fans and other sports followers to know right away. I came in last, tied with my daughter, no surprise there. My husband came in second and my son won with the highest number of points. No one picked the overall winner, but my husband was glad everyone was into it to some degree.
Logos matter! Want to chat about your logo? What was your favorite mascot in this years tournament? Feel free to comment below or contact me directly.