Ranking the Los Angeles Pro Sports Logos: Classic Dodger Logo Remains Classy

Over at that other media outlet Paul Lukas, purveyor of the Uni-Watch blog, has set upon the unenviable task of ranking every uniform set in the four major US sports. Not one to back away from a chance to write a labor intensive article about minutia, I thought I'd take a crack at some Los Angeles sports rankings. Today I will be ranking every logo used by a Los Angeles sports team, and on Monday I'll have every uniform worn by a Los Angeles sports team ranked.

First we need some rules, every list needs some rules. I'm only including the pro sports teams that appear atop the front page. Sorry to fans of the Avengers and Sparks.

In ranking the logos I will be using a lightly modified version of the parameters set forth by Bush League Factor. No matter how classic a logo, things like putting a piece of equipment in the logo that has nothing to do with the nickname will be looked down upon. Now without further ado, the rankings:

1. Los Angeles Dodgers - The Dodgers have only made one change to their logo since moving to Los Angeles, and that was this year. You probably didn't notice, they made the lines thicker and straightened some of the angles. The logo looks cool, it's the Dodger script and there's this baseball flying past. While one can take issue with the fact that the team nickname is a Brooklyn regionalism that now simply refers to an abstract concept and that the logo without the wordmark is more suited for a team called the Dingers or the Homers, that ignores what the Dodger brand has become. The logo symbolizes consistency, and a certain classic-ness. Best I could compare it to is the Coca-Cola script. It just, is.

2. Los Angeles Clippers - It's not a best of list until you do something controversial. The Clippers have a better looking logo than the Lakers. The Clipper logo has a basketball in motion instead of a word in motion; that makes more sense. The colors red and blue look cleaner than purple and gold, and the Clippers had the good sense not to color in the basketball. The Clippers actually began using the flying ball logo while in San Diego before moving to Los Angeles, so it's wasn't adopted to copy the Lakers. The Clippers also recently changed the position of the basketball in their logo, and the whole thing looks cleaner and more balanced.

T3. LA Galaxy - The issue with the LA Galaxy logo is that they tried too hard. Two shades of gold, two shades of blue, the white LA has a gray shadow. It takes away from any simplicity and becomes a bit distracting once you notice it. It's like a rainbow of very similar colors. It's an improvement over the old logo, which suggested space but also suggested water draining and cyclones. The quasar relates to the nickname, but I'd rather it were the most prominent thing in the logo. When the time comes in the future, simpler would be better.

T3. Los Angeles Lakers - I don't like the Laker logo, but it's a classic so there's no touching it. Whereas the Dodgers have that consistency going for them, the Lakers adopted new colors to match the expansion LA Kings, and whereas the Dodgers have come to be an abstract concept the Lakers can't help but sound like a misplaced regionalism. Lakers? Where are the lakes? The logo is a basketball with the word mark in front. And those speed lines. Where is the word mark going? The basketball shows no sign of movement, so growing up it always looked like paint splatters.

5. Chivas USA - CD Chivas USA uses the same logo as CD Guadalajara, except without the eleven stars representing eleven Mexican First Division titles. So the critique is more of Guadalajara than it is of Chivas USA, though extra points are taken off for copying verbatim their parent club. My complaint is the same as the Galaxy, too many colors. Yes, blue and yellow and the knight's helmet are all a part of the Guadalajara coat of arms, but tacking that on to a team called the rojiblancos just clashes. Manchester City, as a counterexample, uses the Manchester coat of arms, but done in the club colors.

6. Los Angeles Kings - The Kings started out purple and gold, then switched to Raider colors for the Gretzky era, then brought back purple and now ditched it again. The crown in the current logo is the same as the purple era crown, with the crossed hockey sticks on top. Removing the hockey sticks would be a first good step, the next step would be finding something else to put in the top quadrant and maybe removing that dividing line all together. The Kings are close, it's just still not there yet.

7. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim - The Angels have gone through several identities over the years. Paying the Dodgers for the rights to use the name of a former PCL team, the Angels' original logo was just a mess. There's both a baseball and a diamond in case you had any confusion about what sport they were playing. The California Angels had a bunch of different looks, the nice change was the halo came down upon the A, like the sign outside the stadium. Now the Angels use the stylized A as their main logo, and while it looks cool, I can't help but wonder why the Angeles have always used parts of an angel (wings, halo) and never just had a cartoon angel mascot. We'll ignore the Disney years. Also lose points for regionalism, as they are not in the county of Los Angeles but in the Greater Los Angeles region.

8. Anaheim Ducks - Do the Ducks have a logo? I mean, this is a fine word mark, but where's the logo? I get that the D is supposed to be a webbed foot, but it only shows up as a logo on the alternate jersey. The old Ducks logo was a mess too, with double hockey sticks and a goalie mask and a puck. It's like they went from trying too hard to show they played hockey to not trying to show anything at all. Also, they're named after a kids movie about a team in Minnesota.