Southern Miss vs. Iowa

After losing the 520 Eagle here in Seattle, I did not think I could bear to lose another eagle in such close proximity but it looks I am set to do just that.

When Southern Miss set out to re-image themselves, they could have guessed that it would erupt into the conflagration that it has become. In 2003, they chose a brand new mascot and logo for their school: Then, they proceeded to plaster it everywhere around campus including the middle of the football field and even on the pants of all their football players. However, they have been struck a massive blow just today by Trademark Trial and Appeal Board when it ruled against them saying that “the overall similarity in appearance of the marks on the goods, particularly in light of the use of identical color schemes, creates virtually identical commercial impressions.” They additionally shot down Southern Miss’s argument that the use of birds of prey mascot is common but this argument was shot down as well with the Justice Bucher saying:

When making a visual comparison between Iowa’s Hawkeyes marks and each of these designs, we find that none of these Division I third-party marks remotely resembles Iowa’s Hawkeyes designs. Certainly, none is as similar to Iowa’s marks as is (USM’s) mark. Moreover, whether some of these third-party marks (e.g., those having commercial impressions quite distinct from the marks of Iowa and USM) are similar to each other is not relevant to our analysis, and has no bearing on the question of whether the marks in this case are likely to cause confusion.

For comparison, here is the University of Iowa‘s logo: This continues a long history of epic levels of trademarking by the University of Iowa. Fun Fact: The University of Iowa is considered a Public Ivy school. This long history even contains adventures to foreign lands with the college having a registered trademark in Germany. They have also trademarked this logo for woman’s sporting events that incorporates Roman symbol for women which I think is rather clever.

And I like this one, it exudes dignity, distinction, and being founded in 1847.

Southern Miss on the other has a relatively paltry repertoire. My solution is that we should put their mascots in a ring and let them fight it out:

      vs.   

I think Southern Miss would win. Their mascot looks a bit like the Hulk with feathers.