South Carolina Stingrays

1

A logo like this could go to my head if I'm not careful. See, the old logo for the Stingrays was awful. And this one is a massive improvement. In fact, the logo itself doesn't grab any penalties except for the "Name in logo" penalty that affects something like 90% of the logos in existence. It's like whoever designed this logo actively tried to avoid all the pitfalls I talk about on this site. If I didn't know better, I might think someone involved in the team had shown this site to the designer and said "Give me a logo that doesn't break any of these rules." And if it happens with one team...well, the sky's the limit, isn't it? It may be just a matter of time before all hockey teams abandon their JACKAL¹ logos and replace them with good ones. And then I could finally say that in my own small way, I had made the world a better place to live in.

Mind you, I'm not that delusional (close, but not quite). Even if I was, the fact that they did earn those two points for putting the name in the logo does sort of kill that theory. Still, it makes for a nice fantasy. Unlike most fantasies, it's at least theoretically possible. And it's G-rated.

Now, before I go any further, let me apologize for the fact that this review is basically going to be a lovefest. I havn't done one of those in a while, but I haven't had any reason to for a while. However, I really do love this new logo, and I've always loved the team name. So here goes nothing.

As I said, I love the name. In fact, when people ask me (and oddly enough, people actually do ask me this) what I think the best name in sports is, this one often comes to mind. It has a lot going for it. First, any good name will have connotations that inspire respect of some sort — admiration, fear, you name it. Stingrays clearly inspire fear: between the fact that anything involving the word "sting" is scary (unless you're talking about that guy from The Police) and the fact that most of us aren't entirely certain what a "ray" is, that's a name that gets our attention. Second, originality is a plus. Today there's the baseball team in Tampa Bay and the hockey team in Corpus Christi, but when the South Carolina Stingrays were founded back in 1993, there wasn't another team on the continent named after rays. Third, local color is a good thing: Yes, there are stingrays off the coast of South Carolina. I even like the extremely subtle pun (stingrays are also known as "skates") in the name. I had to penalize them for it, but I at least made it a half-penalty in order to acknowledge the cleverness and subtlety of it.

The only bad thing about this name is that they call it the South Carolina Stingrays instead of the Charleston Stingrays. They need to fix that. The Stingrays are once again the only ECHL team in South Carolina (they weren't from 1997 to 2008), but they still need to change the name. But still, if that's the worst I have to say, then clearly I don't have much bad to say.

As for the logo, they did great with that as well. First, you can't knock a simple red, white, and blue color scheme, and the silver accents don't do anything to hurt it, either. Second, the stylized drawing of the stingray is great. The shadow effect works. About the only criticism I can come up with is that the background looks a little unbalanced with the red left half and the white right half. I'd have made the entire background white. But as with the name, the worst thing I can come up with to say is a minor quibble at most.

In short, I love this name and I love this logo. If you look at the Class of 2008-09, it's clearly the best; it doesn't even have any competition. And if you look at all the classes, it doesn't have much.

Final Score: 1 point.
Penalties: Region (egregious), 5 pts; Wordplay (half penalty), 4 pts; Alliteration, 2 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts.
Bonuses: Cool-Logo, -5 pts; Cool-Name, -4 pts; Local, -3 pts.

¹ For those who don't remember or haven't encountered it before, "JACKAL" is an acronym I use on very rare occasions which stands for "Just Another Crappy Kartoony Animal Logo".