These two logos now rep the most historic cities of the American Revolution — Boston and Philadelphia — and recall the battle between who’s remembered best, as humorously depicted in an SNL skit from Super Bowl 52.
The New England Patriots NFL franchise, whose stadium now sits just outside Boston, has one of the few logos that represents an entire geographic region: Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine. Originally founded as the Boston Patriots, the team never really found a home there and broadened its name to unite the New England region after moving to Foxborough in 1971.
This story bears some strange similarities to Benjamin Franklin’s revolutionary-era “Join or Die” marketing strategy.
Much of the Patriots early history also was a hot mess (literally) as a popcorn machine once set their old stadium on fire and the toilets barely passed a significant “flush test.” While it might be tempting to compare Drew Bledsoe to George Washington or Tom Brady to Abraham Lincoln, the rise of one of the winningest organizations in sports history from fires off the field reflects the rise of the United States from scrappy colonial backwater to world superpower.
No other revolution in world history was as successful in establishing a representative government. And no other NFL team has achieved more wins the last decade than the New England Patriots.
In the NBA, the Philadelphia 76ers’ logo couldn’t be more American. The 13 stars represent the 13 colonies, and the “76” represents the year 1776 that the Declaration of Independence proclaimed it was “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them” and that “all men are created equal.”
Philadelphia was the early capital of the United States before it moved to Washington, D.C., in 1790, thanks in part to some rowdy actions by Continental soldiers in Philadelphia.
Philly fans still embody this revolutionary rowdiness today.
