Hull City AFC Cannot Change Name, So They Change Crest Instead

A while back, we covered the saga surrounding England’s Hull City AFC and the efforts of their owner to change the name of the club to Hull Tigers. The move was extremely unpopular with their fans, and the fans got their way when the name change was rejected by The Football Association, the governing body of soccer in England.

Well, it appears that Hull City owner Assem Allam has not taken this defeat laying down. This past weekend, he pulled the trigger on unveiling a new, simplified crest for the club.

Conspicuously, the name of the club is nowhere to be found on the logo, and instead all we see here is the same rough drawing of a tiger’s head in the center of the crest, with “1904” (the year of the club’s founding) centered below the tiger’s head in a plain orange badge with a black outline.

Anyone with a working set of eyes and a brain can see that there’s absolutely no coincidence that the new crest doesn’t have the name “Hull City AFC” on it, which was proudly emblazoned on the previous crest. If the owner wasn’t going to get the name changed, then a nice consolation prize for him would be to remove the name from the symbol that marks the club. It appears that Allam has decided to graciously accept what was behind Door #3 since he couldn’t get what was behind Door #1 (a name change), and the prize behind Door #2 (keeping things the status quo) wasn’t appealing enough to him.

Just as they weren’t happy with the idea of the name change, Hull City’s supporters aren’t exactly enthralled with the new crest. If you don’t believe me, then just take a look at the responses that they received to the tweet that unveiled the crest. If you clicked either of the links in this paragraph, then you can tell from the fan reaction that the club hasn’t exactly received a glowing recommendation from their own supporters.

However, what do you think? Do you think that the new, simplified crest is better than their old crest? Or, do you think that this is just a case of an owner whining and stomping his feet because he didn’t get his way?