If you read a lot of uniform-related articles like I do (or maybe not, I might have a slight problem), you'd know that spoilers are a common plight of teams and leagues hoping to hold a surprise uniform unveiling until a specific date. What often happens is, for example, an NBA team will want to surprise the public with new uniforms around the start of the season, only to be spoiled by screen shots of NBA-related video games hitting the internet a month in advance.
We may have seen a similar situation happen in college football on Wednesday.
Florida State has announced plans to update its iconic Seminole head logo, which the school has used since at least 1976.
“The changes are very minor and the primary thing people will see is consistency in the garnet,” Florida State vice president for university relations Liz Maryanski told ESPN.com. “If you go into a sports store and look across the store, you’ll see as many shades of garnet as there are T-shirts, and we’re trying to get consistency in our colors. We’ll still have what we call ‘the head’ with the Seminole [Tribe’s] blessing.”
But on Wednesday, the Florida State blog Tomahawk Nation posted a photo of this T-shirt on sale at Wal-Mart.
On the surface, this definitely passes the smell test. It's a tweak of the basic template that Florida State already uses, with a slight change of the facial expression and the "Seminoles" script exchanged for "FSU". It's the type of change that would sail right over the heads of casual fans.
To be clear, this is far from official confirmation. But it's a situation where you wonder, with a new logo on the way, why would that shirt be available for retail if it wasn't the new official logo?
Anyway, this mystery will be solved on April 11, when the 'Noles will unveil their new logo in advance of the spring football game the following day.
Here's a short video Florida State released in advance of the release. Let the amateur detectives in our audience have at it.
(HT SB Nation)