When it comes too professional (American) football the teams in California are playing an odd game of Jenga with frequency that we have not seen before in any professional league where teams are being pulled out of one city and placed in to another city. I am not a fan of teams relocating because it affects the entire community not to mention it is almost uniquely, though not completely exclusively, an American issue.
In 2014 the San Francisco 49ers moved to Santa Clara but they kept the San Francisco name, colors and logo. In 2016 the St Louis Rams moved back to Los Angeles, where they played for 48 years before moving to Missouri. This month the San Diego Chargers are also returning to Los Angeles, where the team originally formed in 1960 before moving to San Diego in 1961.
It has not been officially announced but 3 days ago the Oakland Raiders filed relocation papers to move to Las Vegas. If the NFL approves the move the Raiders will be in LV by 2020.
The new Los Angeles Chargers, shortly after announcing their move, revealed a new logo similar to the LA Dodgers baseball team’s logo which was just torn apart on the internet. Two days later they unveiled the new logo but with the teams original Powder Blue and Gold coloring, which was also ripped but not as bad. A day later they stated that the new logo will not be used on anything but advertising materials. This was probably the quickest a name change/logo change has been pulled since Netflix announced Qwikster.
One of the things I like doing with digital art is working on What If? scenarios, this works well with my interest in sports because I do create custom cards to get TTM (Through The Mail autographs) or just to post on my sports card blog. With the Chargers and Raiders changes I went to work to see what their new helmets might look like and posted them on my blog. I use a watermark on my digital work (the name of my sports card blog) because not long ago someone pulled a sports card image that I had created for fun from my blog and printed and sold it as their own work.
Here are the Los Angeles Chargers helmets that I did when the new logo was released:
Here are the helmets I made using the original Chargers color scheme
When I read about the potential Raiders move to Las Vegas I again went to work. I did a review of the sports teams (college, minor league, semi-pro and professional) that are either now or were in Las Vegas and noticed that red, silver/gray and black are a common combination so I went with that for this purpose. Las Vegas is also home of the future Las Vegas Golden Knights expansion NHL hockey team so to play devil’s advocate I used their color scheme of steel gray, gold and black.