Utterly Underwhelming

Things have been moving down in the SPHL ranks as the Vermilion County Bobcats prepare for their first season of play after being granted an expansion franchise earlier this year. They've hired front office staff, they've hired a head coach, they've done an expansion draft, and they're out signing players, so the Bobcats are certainly putting rubber to road when it comes to being ready for the season-opening game. They have a logo and the alternate logo seen above, so they're almost ready to ice a team. All they need to do is come up with an exciting uniform set, and the Vermilion County Bobcats would be an official team!

To unveil their road uniforms, the Bobcats decided to engage another local professional team on July 30 as the Danville Dans, a Prospect League baseball team, welcomed the Bobcats in a special doubleheader night! During the first game, Bobcats owner Ellen Tully unveiled the uniforms as shown to the right, and they're very plain? What exactly happened here that caused the Bobcats to abandon all logos, specifically the one above, for two letters of the county where they play? Why do teams insist on not using their logos aftet they've spent money to have design teams come up with logos that are supposed to be the image and branding of the team? Why do these jerseys suck entirely and look better suited for a Sunday night beer league team than a professional hockey team?

In a quest for an explanation, I discovered the following graphic.

I'll break down each point here because it feels like the Vermilion County Bobcats are trying way too hard to make these jerseys sound special. Newsflash to those who have read this far: they're not.

The tri-coloured collar is a very 1990s-era idea as most NHL teams wore the tri-coloured colours. Just on the jerseys in my closet alone, I count the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Boston Bruins using three colours on their v-neck jerseys, so let's not go bananas over a hockey fashion trend that lived and died once already.

The "alternate VC logo" could have been infinitely better by using the alternate logo above where the scratch marks form the "VC" for Vermilion County. Instead, we get a cheap block letter "VC" that doesn't even suggest that this team is the "Bobcats". For all I know, VC could stand for Ventura County, Vatican City, or Very Confusing. The last one seems to fit best for this jersey.

They point out that the stripes form a "V" for Vermilion County, but this seems like an awfully big stretch for a jersey design when you have the "VC" above it signifying Vermilion County. We get it - this team plays in Vermilion County. You have that on the front of the jersey twice now. All you're missing is the fully written-out Vermilion County. Here's an idea: what is the team name because I see that nowhere?

The stripe colours being "a nod to both modern Illiana area pro hockey and the proud history of manufacturing in Vermilion County" is entirely confusing. The cloest major center to Danville is Indianapolis, Indiana, and the Indianapolis Ice of the IHL wore blue and black while the Indiana Ice of the USHL wore various shades of blue. The Danville Dashers played in the Frontier Prospects Hockey League, but they wore orange and black. There are no other professional hockey that come close to straddling the Illinois-Indiana border, so the red-white-and-black seems like a desperate play to ride the coattails of the Blackhawks and IceHogs. I should point out that the Bobcats have no affiliation with those teams.

The manufacturing portion of the colour scheme seems to be pointing directly at Danville Manufacturing which makes sheet metal aerospace components. There are other manufacturing businesses in and around Danville, Illinois, but the silver colour would be directly related to the colour of sheet metal when most people think of sheet metal. I'm not sure why silver gets more prominence than red on these jerseys, but I didn't design them. If I had, they'd be better.

The dual-colour block font numbers do match the "VC" on the front, I was hoping to see something unique on the back to give the jersey a little life. Like the Moncton Wildcats who use the cat scratch on the back of the jersey, could the Bobcats not have done something like that? Something to make this jersey more fun? Do something to stand out, Vermilion County, because these jerseys are rather boring.

Perhaps the Vermilion County Bobcats aren't interested in selling many jerseys as part of their merchandise because if I wouldn't want to wear one of these in the stands if they had these in their shop. This jersey is the most "vanilla ice cream" of any of the jerseys I've seen in the SPHL, and I can't think of another team who didn't at least to attempt to make a splash with their jerseys in Season One of their existence. If the Bobcats aren't going to be the best team on the ice, they should at least be fun. That would include a fun set of jerseys, and this road jersey is anything but fun when you look at it. Worse yet, they made the Danville Dans wear a baseball-esque version of their jersey in Game Two of the doubleheader which looks just as boring as the hockey version. At least we know that the Bobcats will be consistent when it comes to bad road jersey designs no matter what sport with which they're involved.

If there's one bright spot to these jerseys, it's that the Danville Dans won their game while wearing the Bobcats-themed jerseys by a score of 3-1 over the Illinois Valley Pistol Shrimp - that's a heckuva name! - that night. I guess the Bobcats can claim a win thanks to a Jonathan Thomas three-run homerun in the bottom of the sixth inning that gave the Dans the lead and, eventually, the win!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!