Over-Under Wordmarks
March 17, 2009
| Kevin
Zdancewicz
On a recent Sports
Illustrated
cover, the magazine featured its picks for the Elite 8 in a pretty
cool picture. (Interestingly, the teams SI chose ended up receiving
the top
eight seeds in the tournament) Aside from the creativity of that cover
photo,
one thing specifically jumped out at me. Notice potential National
Player of
the Year Blake Griffin of Oklahoma on the far left. If you watch a lot
of
college basketball, you are more accustomed to seeing Griffin in this jersey. Can you spot the difference?
Continuing with Fanatic’s
March
Madness focus this week, the featured jersey above comes from the South
region’s No. 2 seed Oklahoma Sooners. By now you have probably observed
that
the OU jersey above and on the SI cover presents “Oklahoma” above the
number
and “Sooners” below it. Otherwise identical to the team’s regular home jersey, this particular uniform
appears to
have been worn only once this year, in an early-season game against
USC. Very
few teams wear a layout similar to this, with the school name above the
number
and the nickname below it.
Originally, I thought OU was
the
only team to put the school name and nickname on the front of the
jersey, but I
came across one other team solely because they played the Sooners this
year. The
University of Utah (No. 5 seed in the Midwest) also has this layout on
their road
uniforms and
takes it a step further as their home white jerseys feature “Runnin’ Utes” arranged above and below the
number. I would
venture to say that these are the only two schools with school name and
nickname on the front of their jerseys and that Utah is the only team
to put a
two-word nickname over and under the number. (If you know of other
examples, by
all means, let me know. There are over 340 Division I basketball teams,
after
all)
What makes Oklahoma and
Utah’s use
of this lettering style further notable is that you usually only see
schools
with two words in their names going with the over and under the number
look. North Carolina is a well-known example. Schools
with State, Tech, or even College in their name are also common.
Universities named
after historically-significant people, like George Mason,
often use the layout style, as do directional schools.
I keep writing something
wordy like
“above and below the number” to describe this jersey layout – ensuring
that it
will not catch on in the vernacular. I did some extensive research and
have
been unable to come up with an official name for the style. I’m not
sure what
to call it. I was originally going to go with “double-decker wordmark,”
but
that seems much more appropriate for the look of Oklahoma State or Texas Tech (a few years back). “Bi-level
wordmark”
is a
possibility or “over-under wordmark” – as in a shorter version of “over
and
under the number wordmark.” Further suggestions welcome, but no matter
the
name, at least now you have something to keep an eye out for in the
tourney
once your bracket is inevitably ruined.
(Update: Add Old Dominion University from a few years ago to the select
list of schools with an over-under
wordmark that includes the
team nickname.)
(Update 2: Here's an example of the over-under wordmark from the NBA's Detroit
Pistons. Here's another example of a double-decker wordmark from Louisiana
Tech.)
Photo Courtesy of SoonerSports.com;
Thanks to Jordan Sogn for pointing me toward that link.
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