Panther uniforms won't change in 2012

Now that the Carolina Panthers' logo has changed, what about the team uniforms?

If you're a traditionalist, you'll be happy with the answer to that question. If you're wanting something wild and different from a team that hasn't altered its uniforms since it began play in 1995, you won't.

"I don't anticipate any changes at all in the uniforms," Charlie Dayton, the Panthers' team spokesman, said Tuesday.

The logo will be incorporated into the helmets and jerseys, of course. But that's about it. There had been much speculation to the contrary, prompted partly by the NFL's decision to change uniform makers in 2012 (from Reebok to Nike) and partly (I believe) wishful thinking. Anyway, it's apparently not happening. (And those "new Panther uniforms" that people keep sending me links too? Those are artists' concepts, nothing more. Don't be fooled -- they're fakes).

I asked Dayton several other questions about the logo - whether it will be installed at the 50-yard line instead of the NFL shield, when it will be installed atop Bank of America Stadium and so on - but he said he didn't have those answers yet because much still is to be determined.

• I very much appreciate everyone who reads this blog. A couple of stats: I've been writing the blog since 2008, and I have filed about 1,300 blog posts during the past four years total.

And do you know which of those 1,300 posts ranked No. 1 in clicks - and it's not even close? It was my blog post Sunday night that revealed the Panthers' new logo.

Do that many people really care about the Panthers' logo, which like the uniforms had not been altered since the team started playing in 1995? Apparently so.

• My opinion? I'm cool with this Un-Extreme Makeover. The tweaks are subtle. More blue. More rounded teeth. Slightly different eyes.

But the online comments? Oh my. Many seem to love it or hate it. They either say the panther looks fiercer and more aggressive or that he looks like he has a fat lip and a lazy eye.

"I like the new logo - gives a more 3D look which will bode well for television," one commenter wrote.

Countered someone who hated it: "It looks like Sir Purr went to a Lady Gaga concert."

To me, as another commenter wrote, it matters a lot more who the Panthers put inside those uniforms and helmets than what sort of logos are on them. But it does make for interesting offseason fodder, I guess.



A side-by-side comparison of the Panthers' old (left) and new logos.

It'll be Giants over Patriots in the Super Bowl

My colleague Tom Sorensen says in this column that the favored New England Patriots will indeed beat the N.Y. Giants Sunday in the Super Bowl in Indianapolis.

Sorry, Tom, I don't buy it. Or, to be fair, I buy part of it. We both think the Giants will score 27 points. But you pick them to lose, 33-27. And I pick them to win, 27-23.

Tom's reasoning is that Tom Brady is the better quarterback and will win the game for the Pats, but I don't think he's playing better than Eli Manning right now. For his career, certainly. Brady is a surefire hall of famer. Manning needs to win this game to get into that conversation.

But I believe the Giants' defense is better. They've traveled a tougher road to get to Indianapolis and Tom Coughlin knows how to beat Bill Belichick, as evidenced by the amazing upset four years ago of the 18-0 Pats.

This New England team has a pair of great tight ends and it will score some points, but so will the Giants against that patchwork New England D. I think Green Bay is actually a better team than New England, and the Giants already beat the Packers.

So give me the underdog Giants. Like Tom, I picked both the Giants and New England to win in the championship games on our website. This time, though, we differ -- it's going to be the Giants by four.

New Panther logo revealed

New Logo

New logos with various color combinations

(Guys: here's an excellent video from WCNC about the change to the new logo, which includes a shout-out to the "Scott Says" blog).

The Carolina Panthers have altered their logo for the first time in the franchise's 18-year history, making slight refinements to provide what the team called "a more aggressive, contemporary look."

"We have one of the finest and most recognizable logos in the NFL and wanted to make it as modern as possible without losing the dramatic essence of the mark," Panthers President Danny Morrison said.

Left unsaid is how much - if any - the uniforms will change for the 2012 season other than incorporating the new logo into the helmets and jerseys.

Nike has taken over from Reebok as the NFL's official uniform provider for 2012. In conjunction with that move, there have been rumors the Panthers' uniforms will be tweaked by the NFL.

A team spokesman declined comment Sunday night on whether the uniforms would change. But a source close to the team said the uniforms were not expected to be altered dramatically.

The Panthers had not planned to release their new logo Sunday night during the NFL's Pro Bowl game as they ultimately did. But their hand was forced by a picture posted on Facebook by Nike Football and some resulting questions from the Observer.

The Nike Football Facebook page showed 32 pictures of different versions of a new NFL glove produced by Nike, each with an NFL team logo. Instead of the logo the Panthers have used since they began play in 1995, the Nike Panthers gloves carried a logo close to - but not identical - to the new logo the Panthers were getting ready to unveil within the next few days or weeks. To avoid confusion, the Panthers sped up their internal timetable.

The NFL's creative department was responsible for tinkering with the Panthers' logo. The primary changes are in the eyes, whisker and mouth area. The presence of the Panthers' blue color also has become more striking in the logo.

The Panthers plan to transition to the new logo throughout 2012. They also have changed their primary logo typeface.

"It is a cleaner style that is easier to read and should be more applicable to different uses," Morrison said.

(If you want to see a picture of the gloves that started this whole thing, look at the post directly below this one in "Scott Says").

A side-by-side look at the new Carolina Panthers logo (right) and the old one.

Is this the Panthers' new logo?

7:45 p.m. update: Panthers reveal new logo




This is a picture, taken from the Nike Football Facebook page this weekend, of a pair of Panthers' gloves with what looks like the team's new logo. Here also is the old logo, for comparison. Note that the new one -- if it's real, and it appears to be --- has more electric blue on eyes, teeth and whiskers. Otherwise the changes seem subtle except for that blue lip.


Whenever there's a Throwback Uniform day in the NFL, the Panthers never can participate. They have never really altered their uniforms or their logo in any real sense.

That, however, may be about to change. Nike is replacing Reebok as the maker of NFL uniforms this season -- that may be one reason why it was so hard to find a Cam Newton jersey around Christmas, since Reebok apparently wasn't interested in making a lot more of them.

But Nike is apparently going to tinker with the Panthers' uniform (with the Panthers' and the NFL's permission, of course). And perhaps this is a sneak peek of the new logo part of that tinkering. The changes are fairly subtle if this is not just a stylistic "gloves-only" kind of thing -- the whiskers used to be gray and now are blue, for instance, and the teeth and eyes look a bit different.

Alert reader Stephen R. spotted this link and sent it along to me, and it looks legit. So I'm going to change an "off day" into a workday and start asking some questions. When you go to the Nike Football Facebook page, the other teams' logos basically look the same on their gloves -- the Panthers is the only one at first glance that looks obviously different.

Want to know more about Biyombo?

Bismack Biyombo stands beside the homemade goal and backboard where he learned to play basketball in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Biyombo is standing on top of a car in this picture -- the goal still stands. His father, Francois Biyombo, made the goal and said the neighbors thought he was "crazy" for doing so. (Photo courtesy of Bismack Biyombo)

The Charlotte Bobcats are in the midst of an awful season, one that may set historic lows in a lot of categories.

But one player I find fascinating is rookie Bismack Biyombo, the 19-year-old from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) who has traveled an unusual and circuitous path to become a Bobcat. I wrote a long profile column of him that can be found here.

The Bobcats are risking a lot on Biyombo -- they made a three-way trade to get him in June with the No.7 overall pick in the draft, giving up leading scorer Stephen Jackson in the process.

But Biyombo is very intriguing, not only for his 7-foot-7 wingspan but for his language fluency (he speaks four of them fluently), his family history (he is the eldest of seven children) and his basketball upside (Michael Jordan has compared him to a young, raw Hakeem Olajuwon).

And wouldn't you like to shoot a few on that basketball goal? I'd like to see how a bank shot works on it.

Stephen Curry going to be a dad and is back to playing

A short Stephen Curry update for all you fans of the former Davidson Wildcat star:

-- Curry is back to playing after his frustrating ankle injury reared its head earlier this month, which didn't allow him to play Golden State's lone game in Charlotte.

Curry has now been back for two games. He played 36 minutes Monday night in Golden State's one-point loss to Memphis and scored 18 points. His father Dell said today at the Bobcats' pregame shootaround that Curry isn't experiencing any pain with the ankle.

-- Curry and his wife Ayesha have tweeted that they are expecting their first child.

"It's gonna be the husband, me and little Curry next fall -- I can't wait," Ayesha Curry tweeted last week. Stephen added in a tweet of his own: "We didn't waste any time LOL." The two were married in Charlotte in the summer of 2011.

-- Curry won't be on the 2012 U.S. Olympic team -- he didn't make the most recent cut to 20 finalists for what will ultimately be 12 spots -- but holds out hope he might be able to play on the 2016 U.S. team. Curry did play on the 2010 U.S. team that won a world championship.

An early Super Bowl prediction and other championship game notes

A special "Super Bowl edition" of Scott Says following Sunday's NFC and AFC championsip games, with my prediction at the end (not saying I'll get it right, but I did pick both New England the N.Y. Giants to win Sunday -- see the blog post right below this one).

-- It was great to see both championship games stay worthy of that title, with each of them not decided until the final possession and one going into overtime.

-- Well, Cam Newton just won a trip to Hawaii and should now play in the Pro Bowl. As the first alternate at QB for the NFC Pro Bowl team, he will go in place of Eli Manning, who now has a Super Bowl to play and can't make the Jan.29th game. Newton was in danger of missing out had the 49ers won, for the other two quarterbacks picked before him (Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees) have both said in the past week they plan to play in the NFL's all-star game after losing earlier in the playoffs.

-- Had to feel for Billy Cundiff, the Baltimore kicker who missed the 32-yarder with 11 seconds left that would have forced overtime in New England's 23-20 win. Olindo Mare missed a similar field goal under almost the exact same circumstances against Minnesota this past season and the Panthers lost instead of going into OT. But although that was painful for Panther fans, the stakes were very low compared to this. The game was great, and I had no rooting interest, but I wish it had ended with someone doing something good instead of something bad.

-- Same thing regarding San Francisco punt returner Kyle Williams, who muffed one punt and then fumbled another, leading to 10 of the Giants' 20 points. Amazing the Giants never turned the ball over in that steady rain at Candlestick Park and with Eli Manning getting sacked a half-dozen times.

-- Random Panther connection: Serious Carolina fans may remember that in his 15th and final NFL season as a quarterback, current San Francisco 49er coach Jim Harbaugh was a backup to Chris Weinke for the Panthers’ 1-15 season of 2001 when George Seifert was the coach.

I talked to Harbaugh about that a year ago, days before the 49ers hired him away from Stanford.
“I didn't get in any games that year,” Harbaugh said of his season with Carolina. “I signed late, and they had eight games to go. I loved it – loved the coaches that were there and the organization. I especially loved throwing to Steve Smith. We were both on the scout team at that time. It didn't take me long to realize that he was really good. I just kept throwing the ball to him and we were making plays and having fun.”

Harbaugh, who never threw an official pass as a Panther, knew he was going to coach even then. In 2001, shortly after signing as a Panther, he said: “I think you play as long as you can, and then you coach, and then you die.”

-- OK, my Super Bowl prediction. This feels to me like a repeat of four years ago -- the Patriots will be favored (although not as heavily as they were when they entered that game 18-0) but the Giants traveled the tougher playoff road to get there. I like the Giants on Feb.5th in Indianapolis in a mild upset: New York 27, New England 23.