Ranking Utah’s best sports logos and uniforms — from college classics to bold new looks

Don’t want to get too esoteric here, but let’s start with a little side note on the following so very serious and urgent matter. The idea that beauty is subject to opinion has been around in various forms since the days of Greek philosophers, beginning with Plato, careening through later centuries to Shakespeare, and then to Ben Franklin, straight into more modern times. Author Margaret Wolfe Hungerford is credited by way of her book in 1878 with what has turned into the widely-used phrase of today: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

OK, then, with that premise set, we’ll get down to our dirty-but-significant business here of determining, at least through the lens of this beholder, what sports getup, among college and pro, in Utah has the best logo, the best color scheme, the best uniforms, the best look. If you disagree, it’s understandable because we’re all beholders. But one request: Try not to let your rooting interest mess over your objectivity in what is beheld.

We’ll go with just the top five, make that six with one tie, in inverse order, on account of the fact from jump that there aren’t that many to size up and judge. The Monarchs, the Bees, Utah State, Weber State, and a number of others missed the cut. To which comes this counsel: Get your art together. Here’s the ranking:

5) Tie: Utah Royals and Real Salt Lake

The Royals’ shield of a lioness with a crown on top of a circle, bedecked in gold (or yellow), dark blue and dark red, is actually kind of cool. The club went out of its way to find a female-dominant art studio in Philadelphia that would represent female empowerment for a women’s soccer team. And it succeeded. The colors are the same as RSL’s, which is fine, not mind-blowing. The single setback for the Royals is the sponsor name written across the front of the kit, which is the credit union “America First.”

Nothing wrong with the credit union itself, but the name, no matter how patriotic anyone wants to pretend to be, has unfortunate origins, stemming back a hundred years to movements that at best were linked to nationalist ideology and at worst were pro-Nazi. The team and the credit union are neither of those, but the name itself sullies an otherwise Royal effort.

Real Salt Lake has a clean badge with, yeah, “claret red, cobalt blue and real gold” mixed together in its background and its lettering. There’s an artistic circle swooping around the bold letters with a crown at the top and a floral-looking soccer ball at the base. It is sharp and snappy.

And all good, except that the whole of it, while having its own styling away from what gave it birth, it also has the feel — from the name on down — of being lifted from another city’s team. Real Madrid might be one of the most famous football clubs in the world, but it’s a continent and an ocean away from the Major League Soccer franchise in Salt Lake City. Somehow what is ours doesn’t seem so much ours. It seems like it’s theirs.

Understood, when RSL was conceived 21 years ago, it sought a connection to soccer’s legitimacy and legacy, if not an outright partnership with the celebrated team in Spain. All these years later, what’s real — the Spanish word for royal — in Madrid seems somewhat manufactured in Salt Lake. RSL’s shield itself, though, looks bolder and better than what the mothership sports 5,242 miles away in España.

4) University of Utah

Crimson framed in white works for those who like a contrasting bright look. There are a couple of things to take into consideration with Utah’s colors and logos. The first is that of all colors, red stands out in a way that others don’t. It screams, “Hey, hey, lookit here.” As for the logos, we’ll start with the U on top of the U. That’s a decent concept and strategy, considering that some school down in south Florida seems bent on swiping away the moniker “The U.” No, no, Utah owned “The U” first, and should continue to remind everyone of that, as it also does with its hand gesture. Only quibble of a U on top of a U is the fact that that would make it a double U. Ah, we joke. But on the whole, it looks strong, it looks good. The drum and feather, or circle and feather is another matter.

Never been a big fan of using Native American names and imagery as the mark of college sports teams, even if tribe leadership signs off on it. Fact is, some people take pride in it, others, more than a few, do not wish to be lumped in and identified with Tigers and Bears and Bulldogs and Rams and Sun or Blue Devils and Banana Slugs. Another problem through the years for Utah has been a difficulty in matching up, in football at least, its shades of red on its uniforms and its helmets. This has been remedied of late, but for a while it was goofy. At least there was never a bib on the football ensemble. And even now, the red on red football unis look like toddler pajamas.

Conversely, those smooth Utah threads at the Rose Bowl with the rose on them were about as sweet as uniform accoutrements come.

3) BYU

It’s said that the stylized Y that has become the Cougars’ hallmark in all sports and for the school overall, first appearing on BYU’s football helmets, was the idea of a former longtime equipment manager. Original enough, then. While that might be a bit confusing to some folks new to the brand — why a Y, instead of a B? — it’s different enough to stand out — away from, say, Yale — as singular to BYU. The secondary logo of the old-school Cougar head wearing a cap is exactly that — old-school, which is a great antiquated look.

Two downsides: The first is the aforementioned bib on those temporarily updated football unis a couple of decades back. That was a bad idea turned into a calamity. The second is the collision of different blues that lingers still. For a long time, BYU’s primary color was royal blue, Then, all of a sudden, 20-some years ago, around the same time as the bib, some marketing guru decided royal blue wasn’t appealing for BYU fans to wear, so they switched up to Aggie blue … er, what BYU reps comically referred to as “the darkest shade of royal blue.” No, it was Aggie blue, and everyone, especially the people in Cache Valley, knew it. The Cougars seemed to want to take possession of all the blues, singing the blues, and with the way they played sometimes, that was fitting, as well as a mistake.

Even now, Kalani Sitake can be seen on some Saturdays in the fall wearing a navy blue shirt with a royal blue cap. It’s like, huh? And BYU’s array of football uniforms bounces back and forth.

On the plus side, the Cougars’ uniforms, especially in football, and particularly in royal blue, are some of the finest attire anywhere in the college game.

2) Jazz

We’ll keep it simple here. The Jazz note, with a basketball at the bottom, is one of sports’ best logos. It just is. Yes, it’s acknowledged here that complaints above about RSL taking part of the identity of another city’s team is less than ideal, and in the Jazz’s case, the entire franchise, along with its name, was swiped away from New Orleans nearly 50 years ago.

But that note makes forgiveness for the thievery grantable. The Mardi Gras colors were never a great fit in Utah, and then the transition to purple and copper and blue and yellow and black and whatever else it was and is now is enough to make you appreciate the monotonous humdrum and rock-steadiness of Penn State and the Celtics and the Yankees. For the love of all that is sacred, find an identifiable color or colors and stay with them.

But that Jazz note … is there an echo in here? … it’s one of the sweetest bits of art sports has ever seen.

1) Mammoth

That’s right, the newcomer with the new name and new logo wins the day.

It took long enough for Utah’s version of Arizona’s Coyotes to get off the Hockey Club snide, but when it finally did, supposedly relying on a vote from its fans, it put the biscuit in the basket with a unique and stunning symbol added to its already solid team colors.

The combo-pack of that design, with the profile of a fierce-faced mammoth featuring prominent tusks swirling upward and mountains for a head, painted out in “salt white, rock black and mountain blue,” as the team labels its colors, is a hockey palette that’s nothing short of spectacular. The fact that mammoths roamed through many areas of Utah prehistorically makes all of it all the better.

The look is fresh, it’s inventive, it’s audacious, it’s tough, without being so menacing as to frighten young kids, it’s as cold as the ice upon which the Mammoth will skate. And it’s Utah’s own.

You can almost hear Plato and Billy and Ben and Margie and an army of beholders shouting it: “Tusks up.”