Dear Nike and Lisa Love,

I am not a fan of the new logo and uniforms.  ASU is behind a lot of schools when it comes to traditions as it is.  I am very disappointed that you would trash our school colors and logo in a disgusting attempt to move some more merchandise.   I found the videos hyping the change to be offensive as well.  The message of “We’re changing, deal with it, you’re just whining because you can’t handle change” didn’t help me feel all warm and fuzzy about the new Nike State University designs.  I’m sure there are people on Eugene who think that football jerseys with tread plates on them are super cool, but the rest of the country thinks they’re a joke.  I’m not happy about my favorite team moving into the same category.

The thing is, I can handle change.  In fact, I could even get behind the addition of black to the jerseys if they weren’t so stupid.  Being Freaky Metal Kid, my closet is full of black shirts.  I’d love to have some Sun Devil gear in black, but this new stuff is no longer recognizable as Sun Devil gear.  ASU colors are Maroon and Gold.  That’s the name of the fight song.  The lyrics of “Maroon and Gold” include a line “Fight for the old Maroon (and Gold!).”  The black jerseys are noticeably lacking in Maroon.  Color-wise they look like Iowa Hawkeye or maybe Missouri Tigers jerseys.

They could have been ok.  In fact, you got one right:

The volleyball jersey has maroon and gold on it!  Softball looks fine too, although it doesn’t seem like a departure from ASU jerseys I’ve seen before.  If the black basketball and football jerseys correctly used maroon numbers with the gold trim, then everything would be fine.  It would still be possible to recognize them as Sun Devil colors.

After the colors, there’s of course the Sparky problem.  Sparky, the Sun Devil, is a unique and easily identifiable image.  Anyone who watches college sports can see Sparky and know that he represents the Arizona State University Sun Devils.  There are no others like him.  There are some other teams of devils out there, but none that would be confused with Sparky’s Sun Devils.  The pitchfork is not nearly so recognizable.  First off, ASU’s nickname isn’t the Pitchforks/Tridents.  When someone sees this logo, an obvious first thought is “Who are the forks?”  Secondly, there IS competition in this area.  Sun Devils and Blue Devils are different enough, but I don’t like how much this new logo reminds me of the UCSD Triton logo:

I think the new ASU version is actually a little worse because of that mysterious stuff on the handle.  Are those flames?  Seriously, what the heck? Again, I can accept change.  I understand that ASU has used multiple logos on the helmets over the years.  The idea of putting a pitchfork on there rather than Sparky actually makes sense to me.  The players are Sun Devils, so you decorate Sun Devils with pitchforks rather than images of other Sun Devils.  Sure, that makes enough sense.  Sparky doesn’t have to be the primary logo on the helmet.  He does need to be the logo everywhere else though.  Arizona State Sun Devils should be represented by a Sun Devil logo, not a flaming fork.
It is my hope that this will all go away.  It did once before.  Remember this accident?

That goofy disaster of a uniform lasted one season before our players went back to dressing respectably.  I really hope the same thing happens again.

Sincerely,

a fan of Sparky