Just minutes ago, in South Florida, the official logo for Super Bowl XLV was unveiled. It was designed by the NFL, rather than our local host committee. If there were any doubts that it was Cowboys Stadium itself that convinced NFL owners to bring the game to North Texas, those may be put to rest by seeing how prominently the $1 billion ball field is featured in the logo. The use of the Lombardi trophy also evokes the winning tradition of the Cowboys nicely.
As logos go, it beats the pants off XLIV, XLIII, XLII, or Houston’s Super Bowl. Sure, its metallic sheen exudes a somewhat cold exterior. But I think that fits the image that the Cowboys themselves like to project. They don’t try to be your cuddly local team. They just want to be un-apologetically awesome.
Since we’re going to have to see this thing all over the place for the next year, let’s be thankful for how well it’s been done.
UPDATE: Well, now it appears that North Texas isn’t that special. As our man in Miami (Art Stricklin) explains, after the jump, the NFL has apparently tired of designing a whole new logo for each Super Bowl. Our local game is the first to use a generic logo that will simply be tailored slightly to each city each year. So Super Bowl XLV’s logo will have an outline of Cowboys Stadium, while Super Bowl XLVI will use essentially the same logo design but with some element from Indianapolis in place of our stadium.
FORT LAUDERDALE — With the North Texas Super Bowl just over a year to go, the NFL unveiled its official logo in a mid-morning press conference Thursday at the North Texas Super Bowl Committee booth.
Actually, NFL Chief Marketing Officer Mark Waller unveiled two logos, one that is specific to the first North Texas Super Bowl next February, and a second, a corporate logo, to be usually every year only changing the city name and year.
The local NFL logo is vertically shaped with the outline of the huge Cowboys Stadium in the background and the NFL Vince Lombardi trophy in the foreground.
The Roman numbers XLV for Super Bowl 45 is at the bottom with the title North Texas 2011 below that.
The new corporate NFL logo drops the outline of the Cowboys Stadium and just has the trophy, Roman numbers and North Texas 2011 at the bottom.
“After this (week’s) game, we are officially on the clock and this new logo gets us closer in the process,” said North Texas Host Committee Chairman Roger Staubach.
Waller said the local XLV Super Bowl logo will be featured on the thousands of hats, shirts and other items which will be for sale next year. The corporate logo will be used in all TV ads and NFL functions, but will likely not be for sale.
“We expect some people to like it and some not, but our research shows people want a consistent logo,” Waller said.
Officials were unsure when the new logoed North Texas Super Bowl items would be available for sale, but possible in the fall or before Christmas.
Interestingly, the North Texas committee or any local organizers has no input at all in their game logo supplied by the NFL, which led one previous host committee executive to complain their logo looked like the tailfin of a 1959 Chevy.
North Texas committee members said they have seen the logo in advance and were pleased, but didn’t know about the two different logos that will be used.
