University Of Iowa Tells High School To Stop Using Similar Logo

by Glenn Davis | 5:05 pm, November 19th, 2010

There are a whole lot of high schools out there – way more schools than there are acceptable mascot names. Eventually, names will start to repeat…over and over and over. It’s inevitable. And really, how many different decent ‘Wildcat’ (for example) logo designs can there be? Combine that with the fact that kids will undoubtedly think it’s cool to don uniforms that look like the ones the big-time colleges and pros use, and you’ll have some design/uniform overlap.

The problem with such overlap: if it’s too obvious, it might not be allowed. And that’s how we wind up with a situation like the one involving the mighty University of Iowa Hawkeyes and the Murrieta Valley (Ca.) High Nighthawks. The Nighthawk and Hawkeye, you see, look rather alike, and Iowa wants Murrieta to stop using it. It can happen gradually, but Iowa says it has to happen.

But is this really necessary? How bad of a rip-off could this be? Here’s Iowa’s logo:

And here’s Murrieta Valley’s:

…Oh. Um…I see. Well, in Murrieta’s defense, you’d have to rotate their logo several degrees clockwise (and change the color!) before it would be an exact match for Iowa’s Hawkeye…

OK, fine, it’s completely copied. But we’re confident that if you look anywhere in the country, you’d find similar ripoffs. (Check out this W on the helmet of a school not far from where I grew up in Central Jersey…then compare it to that of Iowa’s Big Ten rival Wisconsin, for example). It’s a tough thing to police.

And because of that, such copying is likely to continue. And really, we don’t see that much harm in it. Sure, branding is important, but are high schools really that much of a threat to these huge universities’ brand identities? We imagine Iowa would sell about the same amount of merchandise whether or not Murrieta Valley’s logo looked exactly like theirs – and that Murrieta probably doesn’t sell enough of its own to put much of a dent in Iowa’s bottom line.

And still, we can’t shake the question: Murrieta, couldn’t you have at least tried to make your logo a little different?

[H/T SPORTSbyBROOKS]

Photos via here, here, and here