Hello Veras. I remember your AFA fan fiction in the CCSLC forums. So it looks like you're doing a reboot of sorts here on this forum. Hopefully, we get to see the return of the New York Imperials.

Bay City Bulldogs
 
History: The team was founded in 1906 by Harry Defoe of the Defoe Shipbuilding Company. For the first two years, it was nothing more than a club in which his employees would face off against workers from other companies in the area. However, in 1908, he offered a management job to William O’Malley, who had been a star wingback at Notre Dame. With a ringer on his hands, the Bulldogs wiped out the rec league competition. By 1912, the entire squad (while still technically employed at the shipyard), was hired specifically to play football. The team doesn’t have a home stadium, and instead brings in money only through the gate revenue at road games.
 
Leadership: Defoe is heavily involved in recruiting and signing new players, with mixed results.
 
Key Players: Bay City’s has three star players who are good enough to start on almost any team, and their skills complement one another well. August Owens (tailback – Nebraska), Noah Strickland (wingback – Ohio State), and Denis Azzopardi (end/coach – Indiana) combine Owens’s quickness, Strickland’s raw speed, and Azzopardi’s power to overwhelm opponents, particularly on the offensive side of the ball.
 
Outlook: Unfortunately, outside of their big three, the team has very little talent. A lack of depth combined with the fact that they will have to travel for every game means that their ceiling is probably the middle of the pack.
 
Nickname: The first ship that Defoe ever built for the Navy was called the U.S.S. Bulldog. He liked the name, and gave it to the team.
 
Logo: The Bulldogs are one of the only teams to have a logo. It’s unusual in that it isn’t just an advertisement for the shipbuilding company.



Uniforms: There are brown canvas strips sewn onto the front and sides of the gold jerseys. Bulldogs players do not have numbers.

Where is Bay City?

It's in Northern Michigan, about 100 miles north of Ann Arbor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_City,_Michigan

Thehealthiestscratch wrote:

Ooooohhhhhhhh man those white stripes are getting to me on the bulldogs set. I know it is old school, but you get what I mean? Everything is brown and yellow then there's that white!

Happy to see you Veras. Your original project gives me mad flashbacks to my freshman year of college. Good times... bad times.... real confusing times.... your work was great though!

Thanks for the compliment.

As for the socks... I'm not going to say that I was trying to annoy you with that specifically, but I know that it would bother some people (it bothers me). There didn't seem to be much concept of brand identity in 1919, so they're the one team where I threw in a random color for no apparent reason.

Last edited by Veras (5/11/2020 2:52 pm)

Liking the first couple of teams so far!

Ann Arbor Gladiators:  Well I'm definitely going to be rooting for these guys as they basically are a professional Michigan Wolverines team.  I'm guessing this team is what eventually would have become the Detroit Gladiators from the AFA days, (that had been my favorite team from the AFA days).

Bay City Bulldogs: I REALLY like this team a lot!  Brown and yellow are such an underrated color scheme, perfect for a team called the Bulldogs IMO.  Yeah, the random white stripes is a bit goofy, but jerseys really were goofy back then, nobody thought about this stuff in the late 1910s.   Cool to see 2 teams from Michigan right off the bat, even though we'll be lucky if they both survive even 5 years.