With spring football behind us, we are firmly into the college football offseason, which means only one thing: Photoshop time! In 2019, I attempted to fix small idiosyncracies in college football logos and see if I could correct them (to middling success). I did the same again in 2020, and I’m back at it again, ruining your favorite team’s iconic logos all in the name of symmetry.

To be honest, most of these logos are just fine as is. The small asymmetrical aspects are hardly noticeable and probably not worth fixing. But here I am nonetheless, spending hours fixing them, because sometimes once even the smallest of errors appears on your radar, it’s impossible to ignore it. I hope this provides you a small bit of satisfaction in seeing slight errors corrected, but more than anything I’ll probably just point out something you can never unsee or ruin a beloved logo from your childhood.

Enjoy.

Boise State Broncos

I’m not going to delve too deeply into analyzing this one, because it’s one problem that’s easily fixable, but it’s still bothered me for years: Why is the logo so stretched? It looks like an intern accidentally unlocked the aspect ratio, stretched it horizontally and nobody noticed. Ah, yes, that’s better.

Penn State Nittany Lions

I fully expect to get some hate mail on this one, simply because Penn State has a large fanbase and has had this logo for almost 40 years. And it’s not a bad logo by any means. The simplified cat logo using swooping lines was way ahead of it’s time and still works today, but the shape of the cat’s face has always struck me as off. There’s virtually no space between the cat’s nose and mouth (fig. 1) compared to a real mountain lion, and the mouth seems to extend a bit too far down the face (fig. 2). Also it’s overall expression gives me a kind of Surprised Koala vibe. So I tweaked some lines, changed some angles and hopefully I’m not roasted too much for the result.

Wake Forest Demon Deacons

Wake Forest’s logo seems simple enough. It’s a serifed W and an F. But the serif widths between the W and the F are inconsistent (fig. 1), as are the widths of the letters (fig. 2). Most importantly, what’s with that curve in the upper left corner of the F (fig. 3)? Some might say that’s just a stylization but once I saw it it looked ridiculous and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, so it had to g o.

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

A classic college logo, no doubt. But when you really look at it, it has a lot of problems. The G is way taller than the T (fig. 1), the G itself is oblong (fig. 2), and the T is wider on the left side than it is on the right (fig. 3). I will admit that trying to “fix” this logo while maintaining the current orientation of the letters proved difficult, so I actually moved the T over further to the left so that the vertical bar of the T merges with the right side of the G. A change some will hate, but I think it maintains the essence of hte logo while giving a simpler look.

Illinois Fighting Illini

OK this one is super small but the bottom serif on the I wasn’t the same size as the top. C’mon Illinois, you’re better than that.

Colorado Buffaloes

Another classic logo that needed just a few small tweaks, all to the lettering. Personally I preferred the old non-italic CU, but that isn’t my decision, so all I did was make the heights of the letters the same and make sure they were evenly spaces. Subtle changes that are honestly barely even noticeable.

Tulane Green Wave

I love Tulane’s logo set. Their primary is great, and the angry wave is even better. However the T logo did need just a couple tweaks. The curvature on the bottom serifs of the T didn’t seem to match up, and also the widths of the crossbar of the T at the top were slightly uneven.

That’s all I’ve got for you this time. I hope you enjoyed these changes to these college logos, even if some of them are incredibly minute. If you’d like to see more, be sure to click the links to my previous editions in the opening paragraph, and if you have suggestions of other college logos that need fixing, let me know in the comments.