Less than a week after the San Jose Earthquakes completed a major move to shake up their team logo, it appears an MLS original franchise might be looking at an overhaul of their own.
In an interview with Fox Sports’ Kyle McCarthy posted on Monday, Columbus Crew owner Anthony Precourt made perhaps his most definitive comments yet about his plans to change up his club’s logo, which has remained the same since the league’s inception in 1996.
The team’s current logo features three stoic construction workers shoulder to shoulder with hard hats, a not-so-subtle nod to the city’s working-class roots that Precourt says has become outdated after nearly two decades of existence.
“We want it to represent the Columbus we've come to know. I don't think a construction crew is really representative,” Precourt told FoxSports.com. “[Columbus is] not a blue-collar, manufacturing, industrial town. It's a smart, young, progressive university town with world-class businesses. It's a white-collar town.
“We want to be representative. We don't see Columbus in the crest. There are things we can do to represent the capital city better.”
The Crew are the only original franchise to leave their logo untouched after D.C. United made minor changes ahead of the 1998 season and the New England Revolution dropped the team’s name from the crest in 2008.
The Crew also announced last month that the club will make multimillion-dollar upgrades to Crew Stadium, which became the first soccer-specific stadium in league history when it opened its doors in 1999.
Precourt, a San Francisco-based investment management specialist, bought the club from the Hunt Sports Group last July.
“We're not the Hunts. No one should assume we are the Hunts,” he told FoxSports.com. “I have great respect for the Hunt family and all they have done for Major League Soccer in bringing the first soccer-specific stadium to MLS. But we're going to do things differently and we wanted everyone to know that.
“We're going to be aggressive and hungry. We have high expectations.”
Precourt took to his personal Twitter account on Monday to clarify his comments after the article was posted.
