For San Diegans, it’s an easy picture to conjure in the mind’s eye:

Gray naval ships and yellow sunshine.

Got it?

Now, let’s give this gray-and-yellow vision a name.


The San Diego Fleet.

There you have it.

The San Diego Fleet is the name of the local football team that’ll debut in February with the eight-city Alliance of American Football, said club President Jeff Garner.

The Fleet’s colors are Battleship Gray, Yellow and Silver Gray.


A white chevron in the logo pays tribute to petty officers of the Pacific fleet.

These symbols, chosen recently via surveys of San Diegans and AAF research at the league level, are a tribute to the U.S. Navy and its partnership with San Diego.

Garner, a San Diego newcomer from Pennsylvania who played defensive back in college, said honoring the U.S. Navy-San Diego connection was primary to the choices.

Yet the AAF braintrust likes that the gray-yellow-silver color scheme is unique, relative to just about any other sports team’s palette.


“We want to be unique,” Garner said. “We want to be a little different.”

Did the AAF consider a spinoff on name, logos and colors from the former San Diego Chargers, whose former home stadium in Mission Valley will house five of the Fleet’s 10 games in 2019?

“No, not that I’m aware of,” said Garner, who for the past five years was an assistant athletic director at Penn State.

“We’re going to be a unique brand.”


Games will run some 30 minutes shorter than NFL games due to no breaks for TV commercials and no kickoffs for safety reasons.

Fifty dollars will hold a seat for season-ticket purchases. In San Diego, kickoffs will come on Saturday afternoon or night and also on Sunday afternoon.

An app is planned that will stream the games and enable Fantasy League gaming.

An informal partner to the NFL, the AAF seeks to carve a football niche for 12 weeks between the Super Bowl and the NFL draft.


The Navy has tens of thousands of employees in San Diego, giving the Fleet a potential audience.

Because the Alliance is a start-up league, it stands to reason that San Diegans from other places who follow the team or the league won’t be mooning for the opponent.

“This about using sports to bring the community together,” Garner said.

More information is available on the team’s website.


Tom.Krasovic@SDUnionTribune.com; Twitter: SDUTKrasovic