Columbus kicks the F out of American soccer in rebranding Crew
From the very beginning, and the Columbus Crew were there at the very beginning, the badge the players wore on their uniforms appeared exceedingly odd. Three guys in hard hats? What has that to do with soccer? What has that to do with Columbus?
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In the capital of Ohio, not one of the 10 largest regional employers is an industrial concern. It’s Ohio State, the city schools, a few hospitals and an investment bank. Not a lot of heavy lifting.
“There was a disconnect with our marketplace,” said Mike Malo, the Crew’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer. “We were representing this blue-collar, steelworking kind of brand, and that was not indicative of our marketplace. Columbus is not really a town with that kind of makeup.”
Malo said the team’s research indicated the millennial demographic did not care for the crest, and that was a concern given the importance of marketing to that group. Although Deadspin since has called it the “worst logo in sports” and London’s Telegraph this week included it in a compilation of “weird, wonderful and woeful” team crests, it wasn’t as hated as some might think. On a scale of 1-5, those surveyed graded it on average a 3.8.
“We didn’t want to be average,” Malo said. “We wanted to be loved.”
Altering the team’s crest was at the core of the Crew’s project to rebrand one of the founding clubs of Major League Soccer. In place of the three hard-hats is a symbol incorporating the team’s black-and-gold color scheme, a stripe and check pattern that many consider reminiscent of Germany’s Borussia Dortmund. It has met with nearly universal acclaim; one adidas representative told Crew management he’s never seen such a universally positive reaction to such a change.
There is one very large difference between the Crew’s new crest and most of those in the European game, however. The team now is identified on its logo as Columbus Crew SC.
Some of Columbus’ competition in Major League Soccer made the mistake of choosing “FC” as part of their names, but the Crew are “unapologetic” for choosing to identify themselves as a soccer club.
The writer George Bernard Shaw once said the U.S. and Britain were “two countries divided by a common language.” Shaw died in 1950, though, long before America became a soccer nation – and somehow allowed itself to be re-colonized by England’s linguistic approach to the game.
There are terms in the sport that are unique to the game, and mastering that part of the game’s language is part of the intrigue of becoming a fan. But the stuff for which we already have perfectly good words?
A player does not have talent; he has quality. A player does not have great skill; he has technical ability. A player is not great; he is rated. A fan must not be a fan, but a supporter. Call a field a field, and you’ll expose yourself as a philistine. It must be called a pitch.
Jozy Altidore plays for Sunderland in England’s Premier League, so he is a “Sunderland man.” That’s probably better than being a Marlboro man at this point, but wouldn’t it be more descriptive, more to the point, to call him a Sunderland forward or a Sunderland striker (or, sadly, a Sunderland reserve)?
The height of this tyranny, of course, is the Americans who insist on calling the sport football. It’s absurd to hear English announcers doing soccer play-by-play on U.S. networks use the term that is preferred in their home country. They’re getting paid by American broadcasters to speak to Americans, and yet they behave as though their audiences are entirely composed of ex-pat Brits.
When in London, sure, but in New London the game Landon Donovan plays is soccer. Donovan McNabb played football. Football has been called football here in the U.S. since at least 1876, and it is by far the most popular sport in this country. More people watch football on TV than anything save for zombies. It’s silly to proclaim, as one young fan at Tuesday’s U.S.-Honduras game did with a hand sign, that the game he was about to watch is “REAL football.” For a lot of us, soccer might be preferable to the game everyone here calls football, but it’s still soccer.
Not being defiant about it as I am, but the Crew acknowledged THIS when amending their name. They are based in Columbus, which is so consumed with Ohio State football the sports fans there sometimes fail to acknowledge they’ve got major-league sports and big-time college hoops, as well. It would have been absurd to attach an “FC” to their crest.
“We’re a soccer league. In the United States, that’s what we are,” Malo said. “We need to own that. We were following the league, the direction and the research the league had done.
“We are the first soccer club in this league. We are unapologetic for that. We’re not a European club. We’re a United States soccer club. We wanted to make sure people understood that. It really wasn’t much of a choice for us.”
It was an impactful choice, though. The external pressure on MLS to follow the norms of the world game rarely is applied with a view toward what makes soccer in America, and this league in particular, unique. Whether the subject is promotion/relegation or the fall-to-spring season or the FIFA international calendar, too often the argument against the MLS approach is a default, “That’s how the rest of the world does it.”
Well, the rest of the world doesn’t have an NFL. Or an NBA or NHL. Or Major League Baseball. And that’s to say nothing of major-college sports. There is competition for the attention of the sports fan in the U.S. that does not exist in any other nation. Trying to win a word game over which sport is properly called football is only going to repel NFL and college fans, who represent the largest segment of sports fans in this country.
There is a charm to Premier League traditions such as “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at Anfield. MLS can’t recreate that simply by digging into the great American songbook and finding a showtune that sounds inspirational and playing it before matches. The growth of the game here has to be organic. And if it’s to last, it needs to occur with an understanding of the environment. In its rebranding, Columbus Crew SC has abandoned all pretense and presented itself honestly.
Columbus has had a football team it loves for more than a century. For a fraction of that time, it’s had a soccer team it ought to love more. Maybe that starts now.
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