The Definitive Ranking of PUL and WUL Teams ... By Logo

Bertas Thomtrand
Feb 4, 2020
5 min read

The Premier Ultimate League and the Western Ultimate League both burst unto the scene with resounding success. They had invigorating games and generated enough fan support to fund an entire year of operations which--considering they had a team that played in Medellin, Columbia--is pretty remarkable. There should be a plethora of interesting content about the different teams, their strengths and weaknesses, the roster decisions, the coaching turnover, etc. etc. But I don't have access to any of the rosters and if you wanted quality reporting you should go to our affiliate: ESPN.

Heck, I'm not sure I even have the qualifications to analyze the play of these ultimate teams: I'm a color specialist at Home Depot. You know, the person in the paint section who tells you which paint buckets most closely match the one specific gray in the booklet your interior decorator gave you that has 100000 grays in it and they all look the same to you but your mom said this is the gray you need so this is the gray your asking for. So I'm going to break down the league the only way I know how... by logo design.

Tier 6: New York Gridlock, Atlanta Soul, and San Diego Super Bloom*

Soul and Gridlock were both good teams last year, and I guess Gridlock's logo kind of looks like a traffic jam. But both basically just wrote their names out in different fonts and stuck them on a website. The quality of the league logos is so high that this isn't going to cut it. It's not a 1900s baseball team!

The Super Bloom logo is dope. It's actually too dope for a frisbee team. It looks like a patch you get sewn on your leather jacket when you plant flowers in the engines of cop cars and they make the cop cars explode but with plants and stuff. It looks like the insignia of a group of vigilante hydrangeas. I'd watch the shit out of "Super Bloom: Plants for Justice".

Tier 5: Nashville Nightshade, Medellin Revolution, Seattle Cascades

This is the very next group, but its way better than the last group

This bunch demonstrated effort, putting them well ahead of that last bunch of chumps, but in the end it was they were either too simple or too confusing to rank higher on the list. The Revolution do get credit for having a frisbee in the design, but it's just so simple. It looks almost like a community center advertising for rec league frisbee.

Nightshade was not too simple at all. It is actually a cool design, and the way it incorporates the Batman Building really should have bumped it up a few notches. But I wrote this whole thing without realizing that the three stars were a reference to the flag of Tennessee and I didn't want to rewrite the article to correct my mistake. You know what, bump the Nightshade all the way up to second place, that logo rocks.

Now about the yeti... I don't get it. Sure there are mountains in Seattle and yetis live in mountains but that's weak sauce. It isn't close enough to hills or to ultimate to draw the connection between either, and the closest thing I could find that relates it to the city was the NHL team, the Seattle Sasquatch', which is a bad thing. When Miami finally gets a PUL team, I very much hope they don't name it "Deep Blue" and have a logo that looks like a dolphin.

Tier Torch: Austin Torch, Indianapolis Red

Since there can only be one torch team, let's take this time to determine who gets to keep their flame kindled, and who must douse it in tears. Austin's torch flame makes an "a" for Austin, so that is cool design, and the name is torch, so if anyone should have a torch in their logo it should be Austin. Plus the logo is cleaner and the black lettering on white background is much easier to read.

But torches don't have anything to do with Austin and Indianapolis actually had some sort of torch relay race for the bicentennial of the state. And the torch hand combo is smashing. Verdict: Indy keeps the logo and wins the name as damages, so they're now the "Indianapolis Red Torches". I suggest Austin rebrands to: "Austin Aristocrats", and have a frisbee in a top hat as the logo.

Tier 4: Minnesota Strike, Milwaukee Monarchs, Portland Rising, Portland Swifts

I feel like they lumped these together cause they thought they were all the same place

The Strike have a cool logo but everything about the name and the design remind me of a bowling team so they don't advance past here. Milwaukee made a dragonfly which hurts cause if that crown had been on a butterfly it would have really been stupendous. The Portland Rising logo does look like they have a sun rising over Maine, but it also looks like a coffee company from a dystopian reality where coffee company's take over the world. In order to prevent that particular hell, I've relegated them towards the back half of the competition. The Swifts have a unique design. Simple and effective and it almost looks like a frisbee so it works on a number of levels. But it's lacking the last little bit of oomph to vault them ahead of the competition, so I'm sticking it here with these other neredowells; a group that could have been awesome but missed out by a smidgen.

Tier 3: DC Shadow, San Francisco Falcons, Arizona Sidewinders

They're so effusive in praise here you'd think these teams were higher ranked

I mean wowee, look at these things, they're stunning. Let's start with DC, the superior "darkness" team, which has literally cast the capitol into darkness. What a well made image, bravo!

Then the Falcons are just... well every good sport needs a stern bird face logo and this one is strong contender for best in sports. Also the San Francisco flag is a Phoenix, so there's a bird brained connection there that I very much appreciate.

And that Sidewinders logo is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. It's a rattlesnake wrapped around the Arizona state flag. That's well, conceived and well put together all in one. Plus I'm a huge sucker for orange things so even if it weren't such an amazing piece of art It'd be up here just for the beautiful burnt hues. Fantastic job!

(Editor's note: If Bertas had made the suggested edits I think the Nightshade end up here. They seem to really like flag based logos and once they figured out that the three stars were supposed to be for the flag Bertas wouldn't shut up about it.)

Tier 2: Raleigh Radiance, Los Angeles Ad Astra, Utah Wild

I'm just now noticing that all the Western Ultimate League teams put their logos in neat little disc shapes

It's a shame that Raleigh has to fit the logo into little box icons on the internet because seeing that R with the full wings is nigh breathtaking. It is majestic in its power and is both inviting and intimidating.

LA spells the "Ad" with a space ship. WITH A SPACE SHIP. That's so cool! They're taking off into space and into frisbee title town with that thing. Maybe I'm just a sucker for sports logos that fly, but I think these two are something special.

Now the Wild... look I know I said it before but orange is my favorite color and if you think I'm not buying every bit of gear they have available the second it's put up on the site you have another thing coming. The way the sun stains the sky and washes the butte in the background with illustrious hues ooooooooooh... I'm getting sweaty just thinking about it.

Tier 1: Columbus Pride

This thing slaps (get it, cause it's a paw)

Wow. Just Wow. First of all it's pride on two levels right: pride flag and pride of lions. That is so well executed. Also the talons line up so well with the curvature of the state it looks like a perfect paw. Who even knew Ohio looked like a paw? Not me. And the colors. I mean, I know that rainbows have colors but the team put it in the logo so well that it doesn't feel smushed, even with the added super blue all the way at the end. It's state pride and self pride, pride in your identity and in the sport. It is just. So. Good. Well done. Columbus Pride is the best Pro Ultimate team of 2020.