Charlotte Knights

-22

I. Love. This. Logo. The horse is a great representation of a team called "Knights", owing partly to the image of knights on horseback and partly to the chess piece (and of course, these two images are themselves closely linked). Blue and green is a great color combination that you just don't see very often. This particular rendering of a horse is very well done. The wordmark looks elegant (particularly for a sports team), and somehow even the use of a sword for the "T" in "KNIGHTS" works.

It's not perfect. In particular, the green could stand to be just a little lighter and/or less bluish. From a distance the whole thing could turn into a single shape. It would still be a neat shape, but if you're going to make a two-color logo then it should be recognizable as such from a distance. But that's really about the worst criticism I can find of the logo. As for the name, we all know that "Knights" is one of those classic names which is unassailable.

But there is one area where this team completely drops the ball, and that's with their mascot. Their mascot is a dragon. Yes, a dragon. I get the association between knights and dragons, but that's actually part of the problem. Having a dragon as the mascot for a team called the Knights is like having a hunter as a mascot for a team named the Bears, or a rebel soldier as a mascot for a team called the Yankees, or a demon as the mascot for a team called the Angels. You'd think the mascot would be a horse like in the logo, or maybe an actual knight. And it's been this way for 22 years now. Clearly either the people running this team don't quite understand the point of a mascot, or I don't.

Still, I'm not here to critique mascots (not that that's ever stopped me before). I'm here to critique names and logos. And as I said, they've done an impeccable job with both.

Final Score: -22 points.
Penalties: None.
Bonuses: Name, -10 pts; Logo, -12 pts.