Sabres logo-otomy

By Bruce Eaton
Sabres Logo
Change the team name to the Erie County IDAs and the new logo would be perfect.
Karl Marx conjectured that religion was the opiate of the people only because there were no pro sports leagues in nineteenth century Russia to distract the population from its misery. But here in twenty-first century Buffalo, we’re lucky to have such diversions. During the Bills Super Bowl run, a lot of Western New Yorkers actually believed that because good things were happening on a football field in Orchard Park—and Chris Berman was even talking about our chicken wings on ESPN!—good things were happening everywhere in the region. Some time later in the Flutie Era we woke up in faded Zubaz and realized that there had been a boom economy virtually everywhere in the country except Erie County.

This past year we’ve had control boards, crime sprees, and casino delusions, but they all can wait. It’s hard to think about these things when your professional hockey team is changing its team logo—and the rumored choice is not the classic logo of yore, but rather a futuristic mishmash that would be better suited for the roller derby team that takes over the old Aud when Bass Pro finally punts its plans into Lake Erie. Hockey fans battled valiantly all summer in the media and on the Internet to make their wishes known (quaintly believing that because they support the franchise, someone might actually care what they think). The inevitable came to be when the Psychotic Goat logo of the Rigas Era was put out to pasture and Twenty-first Century Schizoid Bull was officially unveiled. And here I’ve got to admit that I’m just like everyone else—I’ve put a lot more thought into the new logo than trying to figure out why it’s taken longer to repave Genesee Street in front of the airport than it took to build the darn airport in the first place. So I too have a few thoughts on Logo-gate.

Whereas the classic Sabres logo and uniforms were simple and elegant—the sports equivalent of Buffalo’s rich architectural history—the new logo better represents the architectural crimes that litter the office complexes and industrial parks of the suburbs, overly busy pastiches barely worthy of a student design project. Change the team name to the Erie County IDAs and the new logo would be perfect.

Few groups have bigger egos than professional sports teams owners and management. But even George Steinbrenner has wisely resisted any temptation to mess with tradition and change the Yankees logo. Almost all the great sports franchises have one thing in common: a logo that survived intact through the years and became an icon more powerful (and profitable) than anything that could be cooked up by modern day marketing geniuses.

In defending the new logo, Sabres General Manager Larry Quinn revealed that focus groups were an integral part of the process. Memo to Larry: focus groups have ruined politics, FM radio, and just about every other thing thrown into their lowest-common-denominator hopper. Not something to be proud of. (Good thing Frank Lloyd Wright skipped the focus groups.)

For a franchise trying to hold on and survive in a small city market, the original Sabres logo is a powerful reminder that our roots are Old NHL; we’ve been around a lot longer than all those franchises that get handed to boom towns, go bust, and get shuffled somewhere else. The new logo screams Sun Belt Team With Tenuous Fan Base.

As with most change, I suppose we’ll get used to the Schizoid Bull. But just as there’s still some of us who think the Bills play in Rich Stadium (take your name off the field house, Ralph, and maybe we’ll think otherwise), I suspect that for a lot of Sabres fans, their team’s logo will always be a simple buffalo and two crossed sabres. Hopefully the team will be around long enough for management to finally agree—maybe around the time there’s traffic back on Main Street.


Bruce Eaton programs the Art of Jazz at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and is
a regular contributor to Spree.


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