What better way for the City of Memphis to celebrate “901 Day” than to reveal the name of their brand new professional soccer team?
This morning on September 1st (9/01) at precisely 9:01am local time, the name and logo of the newest United Soccer League soccer team was unveiled, introducing Memphis 901 FC.
“The name evolved the more we talked to people around the city, those who have been around soccer, we had a few different ideas but it always came back to this,” team president Craig Unger told SportsLogos.Net. “‘The 901’ is our area code and it speaks to everyone in the community, it really is a rallying cry. Everyone in Memphis can relate to this name because of how much ‘the 901’ is a part of daily life.”
‘901 Day’ is an annual celebration of all things Memphis held throughout the city every September 1st, a good rundown of all the events going on here.
A traditional shield shape, the logo features a crown at the top of the logo with an “M” – the crown is a reference to BB King and Elvis Presley. Moving down the design we see an LP record behind the team name, all of which designed to fit in with the famous neon signs of Beale Street.
The logo was designed by Dan Simon of Studio Simon, who had also designed the Memphis Redbirds logo in 2016.
“With Dan Simon, it was a process, and that’s what we love about Dan”, Unger said. “He understood what we wanted to do when he worked on our Memphis Redbirds logos and was able to work with our visions to create a series of different elements for the 901 that we could pull out and use as standalone logos.”
It’s not the first soccer team to call the city home, currently there’s Memphis City FC who play in the Professional Development League; in the past there were the Memphis Rogues, who spent three seasons in the North American Soccer League in the late 1970s, and more recently the Memphis Express in the USL Development League from 2002 to 2005.
“We really believe that Memphis is a soccer town, we could see the support on the youth side of things and the growth of soccer in the market”, said Peter Freund, Principal Owner of Memphis 901 FC. “The incredible following from supporters groups and fans of other professional soccer clubs either here or overseas, and with a venue like Autozone Park downtown that Memphis was a great market to do this in.”
No uniforms were unveiled along with the name and logo today, Unger told us he hopes to have the kits ready to go before the end of the calendar year. Memphis 901 FC will kick off their inaugural season in March of 2019.
