Las Vegas Aviators

33

When I first read that the Las Vegas Aviators name was chosen was a reference to Howard Hughes, I wasn't buying it at all. Sure, Howard Hughes had lived in Las Vegas at one point, but it was hardly the only place he had ever lived, and not the place he was mostly associated with (at least, not in my mind; I acknowledge that's a debatable point).

He also just struck me as a strange choice of a person to associate your team with. Sure, the man was highly successful as a pilot and as a businessman, but it seemed to me that all of that got overshadowed by his later-in-life eccentricities. I suspect that if you asked a hundred people to sum up Howard Hughes in a single word, that word wouldn't be "aviator" or "billionaire" or "tycoon", it would be "weird" or "strange" or something equally dismissive. I wasn't entirely certain why they had chosen the Aviators name, but Howard Hughes seemed more like a convenient story than the actual explanation.

But then I did a little digging and found out that the Aviators are owned by a subsidiary of the Howard Hughes Corporation. So, yeah, I was wrong. The question to ask here wasn't "Why would a team name itself after Howard Hughes", it was "Given that a team was going to name itself after Howard Hughes, how were they going to do it". And from that perspective, it absolutely makes sense that they'd pick an aviation-based name over an eccentricity-based name.

Not that I was inclined to complain in any case. Any time a team in Las Vegas avoids the obvious gambling reference, I'm satisfied. All those stupid names I complain about when used in other cities — stuff like Sod Poodles, Biscuits, and RubberDucks — would probably get a pass if used in Las Vegas just because they weren't gambling references. Okay, you're right: that's a bald-faced lie. But I would probably make a comment along the lines of, "But at least it's not some lame gambling reference."

Given the name, there were two obvious directions to go with the logo: an old-timey aviator or a modern-day one. They went with the latter. And the result is...well, it's good, but that's as far as I'm willing to go. Don't get me wrong, it's got some things going for it. But it's got a few marks against it, and somehow it just doesn't grab me. The mountains are kind of nice, but did we need four different shades of yellow and orange to show that? I know the aviator's face is supposed to be stylized, but it's so stylized that it looks robotic. And that, in turn, makes me thing of Daft Punk. Still, all in all the logo is well done. Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good here. It's a solid 'B' effort, maybe even a 'B+', and that's not bad.

Final Score: 33 points.
Penalties: Scenery, 11 pts; Colorful, 31 pts.
Bonuses: Graphic, -9 pts.