Ladies and gentlemen,
The Cleveland Guardians!
Ya know it’s great to see the old Arena Football League getting back to its roots in major markets and expanding bac- oh shit, this is actually the Cleveland Indians rebrand. My bad. My bad, you guys.
I’ll be honest. It leaves a lot to be desired. It’s named after a bridge and/or Space Force. So it’s cool, I guess. Let’s look at the logos:
Okay, so pretty much the same thing. You wanted “-ians” to still be in the name. You could have just named yourself the “Ians” as a tribute to all the mediocre middle class white dudes who live in your city. OR you could have called yourself the Cleveland Brians as a tribute to all the mediocre middle class white dudes who live in Kansas City.
If you wanted to stick with the -ians theme you should have just named yourself the Cleveland Clevelandians.
Regardless, it’s clever rebrand, not a good rebrand. Huge fan of the art-deco motif in the logos though. I think that’s an underrated style that more teams should embrace.
As for the political aspects of the name change, they brought it on themselves. If they would have gotten rid of Chief Wahoo altogether in the 90s like people wanted, instead of making him progressively more cartoonishly racist, I think they would have been able to get by with the name.
Overall, this seems like a lot of effort for a team that’s going to be moving to Nashville within the next three years anyway.
Now…hit the music!
