Intro hey everybody welcome back to the channel hope everyone at home had a great Thanksgiving it's getting ready for the FCS playoffs here we've got our bracket officially set as we've got some pretty exciting matchups ahead as we see who is going to be Crown the 2023 FCS football champion we continue our string today of highlighting some pretty awesome FCS conferences as we take a look at the Pioneer Football League is a very interesting conference here because they are just football only with schools like all over the country we've got schools here in California New York Florida Minnesota like it really does kind of Encompass the entire United States here so there's kind of a lot of travel going on in this league you know we did just celebrate Thanksgiving so I just want to give a big thank you to everyone who tunes into these videos and all of my subscribers both current and future I just uh really appreciate you guys these videos are a lot of fun to put together and I'm really happy to see some of the engagement that we've been getting on these uh because they're a blast I really enjoy doing these and I love highlighting these schools and these conferences and these logos I just am truly sincerely appreciative and grateful um for all of you guys watching this and uh hanging out and enjoying some of these videos here so I invite you to sit back relax and enjoy some Pioneer League football action let's go Valpo and kicking off here at number 11 uh with Val perzo uh commonly just referred to as Valpo shortened up uh this is home of the beacons many of you probably know the school a long long time as the Crusaders but they have recently rebranded uh into the beacons to kind of step away from you know any sort of like negative connotation with uh with the name of Crusaders and you know I get it whatever um I'm I'm cool with beacons I'm I'm pure for it I'm down but I just feel that this logo that we're looking at here and some of the logos that they've kind of been using since that uh Rebrand in 2019 just feel a little misguided there's not really a clear Direction on uh on what Valpo wants to do with their logo and where they want to take it we're talking about the colors of this logo brown and yellow can work and uh and there are some schools that that definitely uh works pretty well for um but with Val pooke here it just has not not really fully hit the mark with me ever even when they were the Crusaders we do see some pretty cool old logos you know I hope that in the future Valpo can kind of steer this in a uh in just a better Direction because what we're looking at now is not totally interesting and there's a lot of pretty cool directions that they can take this but for right now it's just not quite nearly as strong as some of these loo other logos that we're going to that we're going to talk about here uh which leads us into number 10 the red foxes of Davidson meist this fox feels pretty Sly and mischievous and you know he's got personality and I like that but uh he also kind of does look a little a little Derpy kind of making sort of like a neutral expression like his eyes look mischievous but his mouth and the rest of his face is kind of whatever not very tough especially considering some of these other logos that we're going to be looking at uh which is another good segue here let's go uh to number nine this is Davidson home of the wild cats which uh right away you can see a big difference from uh you know what we just saw with Maris to Davidson here looks a lot tougher a lot more aggressive a lot more intimidating recent Rebrand a lot of you might be more familiar with this logo here the Steph Curry days this might just uh look a lot more familiar this is was the longtime logo for Davidson College here maybe they could have used this current version as like an alternate sort of branding but to use it as the primary you know full replacement for what we had previously I think it really is a step backwards here one of the things that I really liked about that old logo was that red diamond in the background because it really kind of made the wild cat pop out and added like a a really great spash of color there that red uh looks really really nice as a geography geek uh I don't know if this was super intentional but I always liked this H bonus here because the North Carolina Highway Shields are that diamond design which is the exact Diamond that's in the background of the Davis and wild cat for their old logo and I thought that was just an excellent way to tie in the fact that this college here is in North Carolina again whether that was intentional or not if it was it's genius if it wasn't uh it's just a happy coincidence I do like that the current version does still have that nice splash of red that pops really nicely with his nose and his tongue and it kind of has this aggressive energy sort of charging forward and yeah overall this is very nice but again Davidson I just I don't think you needed to do this it was a step in a backwards Direction and I'm just I'm bummed out I I miss this old logo at number eight UCSD let's go ahead and look at the University of San Diego the terreros this is actually Spanish for bull fighters which is why we can see in some of these like alternate or even like some older logos we can actually see a bull fighter kind of ties everything together and shows us a mascot or a logo that's more reflective of the namesake I do think that when they uh use this logo or show it in an alternate or a throwback fashion it it does kind of just add too much busyness it just feels a little cluttered and some of these are really text Heavy too so I like that the primary Mark is just an SD and I also appreciate that that SD kind of has like a flowy sort of like waviness to it I could kind of see a call towards like ocean waves especially going with the coloring in there of having a lot of like blue with a tiny little bit of black and white it kind of looks um a little oceany and so overall this works for me I just you know again I'd like to see a little bit more of a Terrero kind of thrown in there for for for fun at Presbyterian number seven we've got Presbyterian College home of the blue hose one of the most unique names in college football this is like a fun sort of trivia if you're trying to do like a a Mascot Challenge and you just name a division one school at random a Presbyterian College is going to sump a lot of people not not a lot of people know that this is home to the blue hose which is kind of a reference to um sort of the Scottish Heritage of the school and uh and most of its students so we can see a little bit of that with some uh old logos including the Scottish gentleman over here looking very uh stately and official this is a very vintage classic Collegiate look to it with that PC this uh could would look great on a football helmet and it does I could also really see this rocking really hard on a baseball cap and it totally does as well so I appreciate uh Presbyterian College for you know kind of keeping that sort of like time honored Vint vintage look and not super needing to change or do anything crazy reinvent the wheel it is a little tough with the name like blue hose to do anything Super Creative so Simplicity really works in its favor here especially with the colors of you know having that nice little red trim and just being primarily blue and white uh kind of reflects both the name and sort of the Scottish look to uh to some of like the marketing and branding you know everything kind of ties together really nicely and so this doesn't have to get too creative or too crazy it does a great job about being simple and sort of honored so uh Presbyterian College nothing too crazy but doing something simple very well so big shout out to Drake that but let's kind of turn to number six here with the Drake Bulldogs this is the first of two bulldogs in this conference that we're going to be looking at here we'll see how they play today they're in the first round of the FCS playoffs here so Drake big shout out I really like this logo quite a bit it kind of has the best of both worlds in having a pretty unique looking D for the school U with Drake University and then the actual Bulldog the mascot in the background it doesn't truly feel like those two elements are fighting for space with that D and the bulldog putting the D in the foreground is kind of a nice choice because it's showing like okay this is the name of the school first and then the mascot second kind of in the background in a really cool like running sort of charging position the only downside to doing something like this is if you look at this logo from far away when it's really small it's really hard to kind of tell what you're looking at this looks best when it's bigger and it's kind of more on your face so you can see the Best of Both Worlds again with the D and the bulldog I really love the face that the Bulldog is making and the attitude that he has has we've seen too many Bulldogs that are just kind of taking themselves too seriously and I'm foreshadowing myself a little bit but let's just focus for a moment uh on this on this logo here um some great Throwbacks just focusing on the D and the bulldog classic it's simple it works really well just great overall but there is another Bulldog that I like a little bit more in this league and we're going to look at it right now at number five with the Butler Bulldogs a very recognizable brand for College athletics especially college basketball fans sort of a time honored logo that has been around for a long time hasn't super needed to change although we can see some old logos up here because Butler's been around for quite a while this guy up here is freaking hilarious to me he is just an absolute unit I think what's giving me the nod well there's a few things uh giving the nod over Drake University here for Bulldog vers Bulldog matchup this has a beautiful symmetry to it you know you can take this and fold it right in half and so this is is going to give it that sort of Nod in the idea that you look at this really small and dialed back you can still tell what you're looking at and it still looks very good as it does when it's big and Bolden in your face and when it is big and Bolden in your face it's scary this has the perfect blend of intensity and aggressiveness uh without being boring with a name like Bulldog it's easy to get boring because there a diamond dozen but this one works this great Butler Bulldogs iconic logo let's turn our Stetson attention now as we get into the top four with uh what I feels one of the most interesting um universities in this conference here this is the Stetson Hatters for those that may not be aware a Stetson is a hat it's is is a type of hat but it is also a specific brand of hat Stetson has its own unique logos here it's a beautiful kind of Tim honored historic hat and historic hat company so tying that back to Stetson University this gets its name from uh this guy John B Stetson he was a massive donor to the university which at the time was called the land University just a very giving uh philanthropic man who happened to own a uh an impressive hat company so after a while D land University kind of honored him in the highest way that you can by renaming their University in his likeness and then also changing the name of their Athletics to what he did best which was making hats he was a Hatter so we can see that obviously on some of their older logos that they've used here the Hat was on full display like very much front and center they wanted to make sure that they were emphasizing that hat and they absolutely have throughout their history the current version I think is the most creative use of that because you can kind of see that sure enough there is a hat in sort of a negative white space in the very center of the logo and it's one of those like if you're looking too quickly probably miss it but if you take more than just a couple seconds to look at this logo you can see that hat that's in there you can see both the hat in the negative space and the green s for setson University it's just so so creative and so unique and it is just doing an incredible job at something that is made to look simple at first but the more time you spend looking at this you realize just how creative and unique this logo is and the more I looked at this the more I was like yeah this is an all-time logo so Stetson University yeah go Hatters at St Thomas number three here's a logo that some of y'all might be seeing for the first time as well this is the St Thomas tomies again it's maybe no secret now that like purple and white uh I feel are just so strong and underrepresented and underutilized in college athletics this is a beautiful white sort of inner stroke that's kind of circling around the shield that's that's holding the Ts for St Thomas and I think overall this just just just so so so beautiful that Shield logo is awesome I have no complaints about this overall this is a very welcome addition to both this conference and uh NCAA division 1 as a whole because uh up until just a couple years ago this team was playing all the way down in NCAA division 3 where they were very very very successful there and they are just continuing to show incredible success already in that jump up to FCS a lot of that can be attributed to their current coach Glen Caruso who after taking over in 2008 when the school was still division 3 turned it from a good storied Pro progr into uh just an absolute Beast a Powerhouse at the division 3 level and then now at the FCS level St Thomas University at number three go tomies love this logo at number two we've got Dayton another logo that is probably going to be very familiar and welcome to college basketball fans we've got the Dayton Flyers an alltime logo this has uh been one of my favorites for a very long time and the longer I look at it the more I'm just sort of cemented to the idea that this is one of the greatest Locos in uh in all of uh colle Athletics this is just it's it's beautiful it's a very difficult thing to do but this logo carries that perfect weight of being something that's like both modern and Sleek but also has a very kind of vintage classic look to it like this looks like something you might see off of like a pair of shoes from like the 1950s like it looks sleek and it just holds a lot of energy to it we can kind of see some of that energy that's uh sort of held and um some alternate logos that we see where we just see it's very text based this logo but what's always held true is that any version of this uh Team or the logos holds weight to it and it holds energy to it and it holds emotion to it you know this is a team that's sort of named uh after pilots and airplanes that's a whole Motif throughout some of these logos that we're looking at so this primary logo here is no different like it holds that sort of swiftness that motion to it again it's going somewhere and it's getting there fast it has held the test of time and it will continue to do so for a long time again you talk about doing something uh very well with very little the Dayton Flyers kind of nails that right on the head this is a alltime classic logo one of my favorites let's Morehead State go and take a look now at my number one choice my favorite logo in the Pioneer League one of the most aggressive logos that I've ever seen it's the Morehead State Eagles so much energy so much aggression to it uh with a beautiful bold use of colors like the blue and the white and the yellow my God the yellow for his beak man this is like this is one of the coolest logos that we've ever talked about on this channel I really feel like this beak is sort of coming out at me uh like I'm looking at this thing face first head on and I'm I'm shaking man this is like it's a scary logo this eagle has uh historically carried this aggression for quite a while we can look at some of the logos that they've used historically and like yeah that eagle has always just kind of been popping out of some of the text for Morehead State and I really like that they have stripped all that away and just focused on what works best get rid of the MSU the Morehead the text the M all that get rid of it and left with just an all-time classic a beauty of a logo you know the more I look at it the the the more frightened I am now but seriously this is an all-time classic logo and Morehead State out of Morehead Kentucky should be uh very very proud and y'all that is going to do it for another FCS video talking about the Pioneer League I hope everyone enjoyed again I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and I'm just very thankful for all of you guys uh who have supported this Channel and continue to do so you know this is uh to my subscribers currently and uh and any future subscribers if you enjoyed this content encourage you to go ahead and hit that subscribe button go ahead and give this a thumbs up and let me know what logos you'd like to see next again I have a list if you haven't seen your conference yet if you haven't seen your school rest assured it's coming go ahead and hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any future uploads and again I just sincerely appreciate you guys thanks for hanging out thanks for clicking we will see you guys in a future video