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Logo of a college football team, the Northwestern Wildcats, used from 1959 until 1967. The team was a charter member of the Big Ten conference, beginning play there in 1896, and despite being part of one of the country’s top gridiron leagues, has never been considered a football powerhouse. The fact that the school has always had high academic standards has surely hurt their chances of recruiting top prospects over the years, but despite that many former Wildcat alumni have gone on to play in the NFL, including Otto Graham, Chris Hinton, Ray Wietecha, Irv Cross, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson and Steve Tasker.

Logo of a college football program, the University of Idaho Vandals. The school has played in several conferences over the years, and recently joined the Sun Belt Conference. During the era that this logo was used, from  1966 until 1972, they played in the Big Sky Conference.  The Vandals played 32 seasons in that conference, and won 9 conference titles. Players from Idaho who went on to play in the pros include Jerry Kramer, Wayne Walker, Mark Schlereth, Jim Norton and Marvin Washington.

Here is a logo of a mid-major college football program, the Marshall University Thundering Herd, used from 1985 until 1989, when the school was a Division 1-AA team playing in the Southern Conference. They upgraded to Division 1-A when they joined the Mid-American Conference. The school suffered a major tragedy in 1970, when a plane crash killed 37 members of the football team. Thundering Herd players who have gone on to play in the NFL include Randy Moss, Ahmad Bradshaw, Byron Leftwich, Chad Pennington and Hall of Famer Frank Gatski.

Logo of the El Paso Generals, who played one season, in 2009, in the Indoor Football League. They were a successful club, posting a 12-2 win/loss record and advancing to the league’s conference title game, where they lost to the Billings Outlaws. Unfortunately, the team disbanded after the one year despite being successful on the field and with fans, as owner Brandon Smith refused to sell the franchise, forcing the IFL to drop the team.

This is the helmet logo of the University of Buffalo Bulls, a Division I college football program that plays in the Mid-American Conference. The school has fielded a football team since 1894, although football was shut down for a seven year period in the 1970s. Although not considered much of a college powerhouse program, UB has sent several players on to the NFL, including Willie Evans, John Stofa, Gerry Philbin, Drew Haddad, Naaman Roosevelt and current players James Starks, Khalil Mack and Branden Oliver.

The 2014 NFL season begins tonight with a match between the Green Bay Packers and defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. Today’s featured team logo is of a previous pro football team from the Emerald City, the Seattle Rangers of the old Continental Football League. The league began play in 1965 to compete with the NFL, and Seattle joined it in 1967 when a “Western Division” was added. The Rangers were one of the first pro teams to play their games on artificial turf, which was installed in Seattle’s Memorial Stadium in the late ’60s.

This is the current logo of the Buffalo Bills football team, which is definitely a classic since it has been used since 1974, a year after the team moved into its’ “new” stadium in 1973. Designed by aerospace designer Stephens Wright, the new “charging buffalo” logo was supposed to signify a dynamic franchise moving forward, as opposed to the stationary, standing red bison used earlier.

This logo proved to be very difficult to find. It’s the original logo from the 1960s of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. After a lengthy search online, the only picture of this original logo that I could find is this one, cropped from the cardboard box of an old electric football game sold in the ’60s, and now available as a collector’s item on Ebay.

Although not technically a team logo, this is the logo of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. This year, Ray Guy became the first punter inducted into the Hall, and as he noted in his induction speech, for the first time the Hall has a complete “team”, so the timing to post this logo is just right. The Hall opened in 1963, when it inducted 17 charter members, and celebrated its’ 50th Anniversary last year. The football Hall is unique among sports halls of fame in that it has never included game officials among its’ inductees.

Logo of a former Arena Football League team, the Houston Thunderbears. The franchise existed from 1996 until 2001, starting out as the Texas Terror before changing names to the Thunderbears in 1998. The team was never a success, on the field or attendance-wise, and its’ owner, Leslie Alexander (who also owned the NBA Rockets) threw in the towel and sold the club back to the Arena League in 2001. They disbanded, along with three other teams, a year later.