Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks

106

There's an oddly common theme in the hockey logos I review: animals biting hockey sticks in half. I'm not sure why it's so common. Breaking a hockey stick is not a particularly effective tactic insofar as propelling the puck into the net is concerned. The best explanation I've ever been able to think of is that the team is trying to imply that all their players still have all their teeth and are thus able to chew through sticks. The problems there are obvious. First, it's a baldfaced lie: there's not a single team in the entire sport that doesn't have any players missing their teeth. Second, anyone who did try to chew through a stick soon wouldn't have all their teeth. Third, as I just said, is that there's no point in doing so.

The baseball analogue — animals biting baseball bats in half — is quite rare in comparison. But here we do see one example. This makes even less sense than chewing through a hockey stick (I didn't realize until just now that it was even possible to make less sense than that). In hockey, the rules require that you drop a broken stick immediately, but it is at least theoretically possible to play with a broken stick as long as the blade is intact and you don't mind hunching over like Quasimodo. But it's pretty much impossible to play with a broken bat. The ball is hard enough to connect with as it is, and even if you succeed the ball will probably knock the bat out of your hand. I suppose it's a useful thing to do if you're accused of having corked the bat, but that's the only real reason I can see.

The xylophagous diet is not the only unusual thing about this bird. He's also missing a large portion of his body. In fact, as best as I can tell he has no torso whatsoever. He is also missing feet, which makes sense since there's no torso for the feet to connect to. But somehow that doesn't stop him from having tail feathers that hover precariously in midair. Seriously, where are those tail feathers coming from? If they were like normal tail feathers, they'd be connected to his tail (duh). But that would require a torso (I suppose there could be a small one obscured by the wing, but it would have to be no bigger than the head and that wouldn't be any less strange). Maybe the tail feathers glued onto the wing? The two-dimensional quality of the logo makes it hard to tell.

Compared to the missing torso and unexplainable tail, the fact that the bird has teeth scarcely even warrants comment.

It's really a shame, because this has the beginnings of a great logo. Add a torso and lose the bat (and the teeth chewing through them), and this could be a darn good logo. And the name is solid, even if there isn't any such thing as a redhawk. (Well, there's a pistol that has that name, but no bird simply called a redhawk). But the inept omission of roughly 50 percent of the bird (by volume) just kills it. I could even tolerate the silly teeth and broken bat, if only the bird wasn't broken as well. But as it stands, this logo simply does not work.

Final Score: 106 points.
Penalties: Region, 8 pts; Software, 27 pts; Compound, 34 pts; Equipment, 13 pts; Letter, 24 pts.
Bonuses: None.