NFL
Indianapolis Colts’ New Logo: Coincidence or Stolen?
Mike Thomas spent 23 years on staff and 16 years as the sports editor at The Herald News in Fall River, Mass., before joining Sportscasting in 2020. Mike has a deep knowledge of and passion for the NFL and NBA, and he excels at interviewing sports celebrities to find out their Super Bowl picks. A New England Newspaper and Press Association award-winning columnist and an avid sports memorabilia collector, Mike enjoys keeping up with all the sports news and the works of former Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly. You can find more of Mike's work on Muck Rack.
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The Indianapolis Colts should’ve just stuck with their simple horseshoe logo. On Monday, the team unveiled a new secondary logo and it’s not sitting well with a former Indiana high school coach who says the design looks a little too familiar to him. He took to Twitter this week to voice his displeasure with the NFL team.
Colts unveil uniform tweaks
On Monday, the Indianapolis Colts showed off some minor tweaks to their uniform and added a secondary logo in addition to their classic horseshoe look. The secondary logo has is a block ‘C’ that cleverly has the shape of the state of Indiana where the opening of the letter is.
The team proudly announced the new look on social media Monday and it generated a few different responses, ranging from hot to cold. One commenter asked if the secondary logo had the chicken pox as there are seven dots inside the thick block outline of the ‘C’ that are evenly spread apart.
Others embraced the simplicity of the secondary logo, while some weren’t impressed, writing “Having issues with that secondary logo mark, doesn’t feel necessary, trying a little too hard to make it work.”
Colts get called out with new design
Jere Kubuske, a former Indiana high school football coach who recently moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin, tweeted a very similar-looking logo, one he created when he was coaching at Catholic High School in Indianapolis. In his Twitter post, Kubuske showed a copy of his logo and sarcastically wrote, “Good to know that even though I’m in WI now, I can still contribute to life in Indy. Thank you Colts for ripping off my logo for Cathedral Football.”
In an interview with Paul Lukas of the website Uni Watch, Kubuske said how he originally created the logo of the state of Indiana inside the block ‘C’ back when he was coaching at Cathedral around 2015 or 2016. “So, real quick, the marketing team came up with this kind of block-C, and then in the bottom-left corner there’s a shamrock. So I was doing some sketches and doodling, and I was trying to come up with something that I thought would be kind of an interesting take on things, so I came up with that design with the shape of Indiana inside the C. I just tried to come up with something that was a little bit more unique, that stood out.”
When asked what his initial thought was when he saw the Colts’ post on Monday, Kubuske said he kind of laughed out loud to my wife. Then he showed it to her and asked her if it looks familiar. “And she’s like, ‘Didn’t you do something like that?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s essentially my logo.’” I mean, the fact that it even has the little notch near the top of the C — I mean, it could be a coincidence, I suppose, but it has to be a pretty big coincidence.”
Colts issue a statement
In the interview with Paul Lukas, Jere Kubuske said he did get in contact with a lawyer just to see what steps could be taken. “So I actually reached out to a lawyer first, just to see what steps, if any, I can take. I don’t want them to actually stop using the logo — I mean, it’s a great logo, it definitely speaks to their connection to the state and the city. But at the same time, it’d be nice to be recognized for it or, you know, be compensated for it if there was some type of infringement.”
The Indianapolis Colts did respond to a request from Lukas and said they were unaware of any previous logo. Steve Campbell, VP of Communications from the Colts issued the following statement:
“We have great respect for our friends at Cathedral, and we would never purposefully take an idea from them to use as our own. That’s just not how the Colts do business. The new Colts Indiana logo was an independent creation that was designed by the NFL, as are most team marks and logos, and was not designed locally. The Colts and the league were unaware of the other logo, and we wouldn’t have moved forward otherwise. But we will look into the matter. Nonetheless, both the Colts and Coach Kubuske had the same goals at heart – promoting athletics and paying tribute to our home state.”
Steve Campbell, Colts VP of Communications
