Saints' fleur de lis

Admittedly, I’ve never paid much attention to the Saints. They’re a small-market team from a city I’ve never been to in a geographical region I tend to loathe. Honestly, I often forget that they’re even in the same conference as the Redskins. But as logos go, this is pretty solid. It’s a single graphic element that immediately associates the team’s location with its French roots. There’s a bit more universal iconography at play here than in most other sports logos, which is probably a good thing, as that off-sets the regionalism of the franchise. Not the most original logo in the world, but it’s still a powerful symbol that is instantly recognizable.

This is the first entry in what I like to refer to as the “muddled middle”, a grouping of logos that are clearly good, but the relative merits of each are so negligible that they make actual numeric ranking a tricky proposition. It doesn’t get really great again until the top two. Also, I realize that the AFC is very under-represented on this list, appearing only four times, and in the case of numbers 9 and 10, representing only three different franchises. Part of the problem is that a lot of AFC teams are just “newer” in the grand scheme of things and don’t have the same storied history as older NFC franchises that were established, in some cases, back in the ‘teens of the 20th century. Also, AFC teams just seem to re-design their logos with a lot more frequency, which makes it difficult for an icon to establish any sort of identity.