What the new logo symbolizes to a lot of us

Great post, but still a small subset of the FSU leadership misfires.  The latest situation, the new FSU logo, had FSU spend two years on an effort where it seems countless mistakes were made.  Most amazing, after a national title, they didn't have to do a thing, just cash checks.  Now they have divided the fan base and brought into question how much the fan base can trust the FSU leadership.

Put into a picture:



What the new logo symbolizes to a lot of us

Mark Rudd
4/10/2014

"Whether you like the new logo or not, it's pretty clear that most FSU fans do not like it.  A poll on the WC came up with 83% against with about 600 responses.  There is a petiton to stop the new logo out there with about 15,000 signatures, and I understand that facebook has something with even more signed up against it.

  That said, I don't think people are that worked up just about the logo.  I think they're taking a stand.

  Over the past few years, and unquestioning faith I've had in FSU's administration for more than 40 years has been shaken.  Let's look at some of the issues:

  Conference Realignment:  All President Barron had to tell me was that he thought the ACC was the best place for us and he thought we either didn't need the extra money or that we would more than make up the difference in conference payouts in the long run. That would have been fine by me and I suspect many of us.

 What he told us was that his faculty wanted to stay in the ACC and then he trotted out some talking points that were flat out inaccurate.  Bottom line is that we don't make more money in the ACC in the short term and trying to tell us we would was either oddly naive for a man in his position, or an attempt to obfuscate.  I couldn't help but thinking he must not have thought we were very smart--not that I think I am.

  Budget - Remember the e-mail asking for money because we weren't going to meet budget?  Of course the conference realignment advocates got their hackles up immediately.  Then it was "oh yea, forgot about that bowl money, we're going to meet budget after all."  I knew about the bowl money and most of the folks on this board did too.  Kinda hard to believe they didn't.

  How about the ACC Title game money loss?  We're going to get that fixed--well not exactly--but that's just the cost of doing business.  Did you notice that Dot had to do a sunshine law request to get the information?

  Scheduling -  We had to play Savannah State because WVU pulled out and we couldn't get anyone else on short notice.
Only they failed to tell us that they didn't try to schedule a home and away.  The big boys don't come without a return trip so we eliminated anything but a cupcake for two years before we started looking.  No need to tell the fans and boosters that though, I guess.

  When it became obvious (empty seats) that we weren't going to sell out the cupcake games no matter how good our team was, they were going to try to fix the home schedule.  We got a home and away with USF and a matchup five years down the road with Boise State.

  Then we got Monk Bonasorte making a video giving an explanation of why we had to have seven home games (read, UF and patsies only for OCC games at Doak) because of the money.  Problem was, he forgot to mention that the cupcake games are half priced tickets that don't sell out, that you have to pay those teams to come, and that just about every other top 20 program has been aggressively scheduling OOC.  Looks to me like we lose millions to play seven home games a year.

  All he had to tell me was that we had erred in scheduling in the past and we were actively trying to fix it.  Maybe he could have explained it was a hard problem to fix because while we were lining up games with Chattanooga and Texas State, teams like Ohio State and Texas were lining up with each other.  Most of the big boys have full dance cards for the next few years.

  It seemed like they figured we couldn't look at the prices on our season tickets and do the math.  Or maybe they thought we couldn't google future schedules for other teams to find out that other people were trying to boost their OOC schedules in anticipation of the playoff system.

  New logo.  This gets murky because it's hard to tell what the administration put out there from what the Nike reps told us.  We do know we were told the change was subtle by our admin.  We were also led to believe this was instigated by the Seminole Tribe (it wasn't) and that it was too hard to embroider the old logo.  Not many people are buying that, and I'm afraid not many are going to buy anything with this new logo.

  Then we hear that our admin is mad because it got released before they could present it the way they wanted to.  Sounds to me like they didn't want us to see it until it was too late to turn back.  Why would you do that to your fanbase?  What would have been so hard about just sending an e-mail out to your boosters and asking them to vote on possible logo choices?  Most people see their exclusion as disdain for their opinions.

  I think the new logo flap is just as much about people beginning to believe that they can't trust what our admin is saying as their dislike for the logo.  The new logo is a symbol of arrogance to them and I'm beginning to feel the same way.  I really hate to feel that way. "