1957 Design Changes

After paying tribute to his father for one more season by wearing the uniforms most associated with the team, Detroit Knights owner Florian Riddle decided that a new era was needed for Detroit football.  Their main logo got rid of the interlocking swords in favor of the shield alone. Riddle had wanted the logo to be representative of Detroit as a whole, integrating the design of the city’s flag into the four quarters of the shield with a D in the center. There were a few alterations from flag to logo, mainly reducing the number of Normal lions and fleurs-de-lis to better fit within the shield. However, they did increase the number of stars by 1 to 14 to represent the total number of championships they had won across all the leagues they played in. Their shades of red and blue were altered slightly, though that could be attributed to the new supplier for their uniforms.  


Controversially, the team deviated from their shoulder yoke for the first time in their history. “[The yoke] was a bit outdated so to say,” said Riddle on its removal. “Its legacy lies with my father, but now we’re trying to make a new legacy in today’s game.” The Knights did bring something new, adding a unique striping design to their once plain red helmets, making the middle blue stripe taper off to look like a sword. Riddle had wanted to keep some of the same style with the now-removed shoulder yoke, which resulted in the home uniform lacking any striping while the away gets a blue-white-red triple stripe on the sleeves. The socks now have stripes, getting a similar style to the away uniform striping. 

Players shown: WR Paul Kent (14) and S Charlie Fischer (26)

The Rivermen also made some minor adjustments to their uniforms. Owner Dennis Delaney got complaints from fans who were watching the Rivermen play the Stallions on TV

AFL Spring Meetings 1957

LEAGUE NARROWS DOWN EXPANSION CITIES
The first two teams that will be joining for the 1961 season seem to be all but guaranteed to be Los Angeles and San Francisco. The owners met with a handful of prospective ownership groups over the past year, and managed to narrow down the groups to a single owner from Los Angeles and two potential owners from San Francisco. The Los Angeles owner impressed the AFL owners, as hotel chain heir Barron Forbes made his case for ownership and won over all of the AFL owners. On the other hand, the AFL owners had to choose between two prospective bids for San Francisco. The first group was expected, as the duo that tried to buy the Knights this past offseason, former ACAA councilman and lawyer Allen Penoyer and lumber magnate Ernest Barlowe, got another, slightly more favorable chance to prove why they deserved a team. The other bid was a complete surprise: Victor Culpeper, a minority owner of the PAFC’s Kansas City Cowboys. Culpeper had wanted to bring a team to San Francisco one way or another, and bought a minority stake in the Cowboys in an attempt to move them westward. Realizing that the PAFC is more than likely going under at some point, he pivoted his focus to the more stable AFL for a team. The two parties are set to make another round of bids before the owners choose the winner, which will likely be completed before the end of next season. The league has also welcomed bids from 9 other metropolitan areas, with prospective owners from Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Portland, and Seattle making bids. The owners are expected to narrow down their final choices by at least 1960, since two of these bids are expected to join for the 1962 season. At least from a media perspective, they believe that placing teams in Dallas and Denver would be beneficial to reduce air travel from the west coast.

[b]NEUTRAL SITE CHAMPIONSHIP BID FAILS

To put it simply, we did not have a good game against Independencia. We're in a bit of a pinch trying to defend our GEO Cup title, so we'll have to play lights out for the remainder of our games and have a little help along the way. We'll attempt to rebound against Federal, who had an even worse game against Sydney. Unfortunately for us, injuries to two of our defenders made us to make some changes, going in a 3-4-3 formation while we figure out their timetables. Featured for this week is goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, who (ironically) was lights out defending the goal, getting 5 saves and a clean sheet in a dominant performance.

We missed out on the playoffs the past two years on points, but this time we easily won our way in. After a rocky beginning of the year, we went on a 7 game winning streak to end the regular season and locked up the 3 seed with a final win at Minnesota. Our opponent for this hard effort? Oh, you know, one of the best teams in the modern era in the New York Emperors. They easily defeated us in week 3 when we were still figuring out our identity, but now we're both different teams and we're hoping for a close one. Leading the way for the Cyclones is rookie QB Caleb Williams, who put up a solid first campaign with over 2700 yards and 16 passing TD's, and nearly 400 yards on the ground. We'll be wearing the typical home set of red helmets, red jerseys, and tan pants to kick off the postseason. #BlownAway #WAFC

Slapshot Kirby wrote:

1. What are basketball and hockey like in this universe?

I'm not going to touch on either basketball nor hockey since they're outside of the scope of the world (though if there is something notable I will touch on it). Hockey is slightly larger than it was in OTL, finding opportunities to expand after WWII and is relatively stable in terms of membership. I don't have specifics on the cities, but it does span most of the big cities in the Rust Belt and northeast. Basketball has been struggling as of late, but seems to be rebounding (pun intended). The league has seen a number of teams join and leave, and is just now beginning to stabilize at 8 teams across the northeast and midwest. It's clearly at the bottom of the American sports totem pole, firmly behind hockey, football, and baseball in that order.

Slapshot Kirby wrote:

2. The answer is probably no given gender roles back in the 1950s, but there is chance a woman could potentially own an AFL team down the line?

I actually looked into this because I thought Georgia Frontiere was the first majority female owner in the NFL in the 70's, but actually she was only the second - Violet Bidwell owned the Cardinals from 1947-1962. There isn't anything set up yet regarding that, but I'm never going to rule it out as a possibilty. The closest we can get to a female owner is with the Chicago Hogs, where Donovan Hasenkamp runs it with his family, meaning his wife Gloria is technically a partial owner.


I should have the football world update up soon!