Last week, there was a tizzy among Auburn Tigers fans as news leaked that the school’s logo would be slightly tweaked. All of the changes made sense. The height discrepancy between the A and the U was rectified, and the white space between the letters was either eliminated or streamlined. The new logo is an objectively better design, but that didn’t stop Auburn fans from disliking it. We like what we know, and change is rarely for the better.

With that in mind, I took it upon myself as a professional graphic designer logo nerd with Photoshop to improve the aesthetics of college football as a whole enrage some fanbases by making small tweaks to some college football logos.

For this concept, I didn’t want to create entirely new or vastly different logos. None of these logos are bad, but each has some small quirks that, when put under the microscope, could be improved.

“The G” is an iconic logo. But it’s not without it’s flaws. The arm of the G sits below horizontal center and also extends past the vertical center (fig. 1). In addition, the widths of the top and bottom portions of the G are inconsistent (fig. 2) and the inner oval of the G is asymmetrical (fig. 3). Correct all of those issues and you get...

Texas Tech has had only two primary logos since 1963, and has featured this beveled Double T logo since 2000. The red and black is balanced well with the white outlines, but there’s just a couple small idiosyncrasies. The most noticeable is on the bottom serif. The bevel lines of the larger T should meet with the outside corners of the smaller T (fig. 1). Outside of this, the only change is to slightly tweak the size of the upper serifs of the smaller T in order to make the horizontal (fig. 2) and vertical (fig. 3) distances on the stairstep down the logo more closely match one another.

Another rock solid logo, with just a couple needed changes. The endpoints on the A are inconsistent. The ones toward the top all come to a point, while the two on the bottom are slightly rounded (fig. 1). On the roundel type, the “B” in Alabama should theoretically be centered at the top of the logo, but because the “M” is wider than the other letters, it throws it off balance (fig. 2).

UCLA went to this revised script font in 1996, and while it seems pretty flawless and first glance, there is room for improvement. First and foremost, the slant of the “L” and the “A” does not match that of the “U” (fig. 1). There are also some small places where the curves are not quite as smooth/symmetrical as they could be.

Another great, instantly identifiable college football logo. But in today’s world of design, here’s a couple changes that could spruce it up. The ear always stuck out to me as out of place. It doesn’t have that rounded, sweeping feel that the rest of the logo has (fig. 1). The logo is also cut off on the left side, making it feel incomplete (fig. 2). Just some small additions really round out the design (pun intended).

This logo probably has the smallest changes of any on this list. OSU just recently ditched the bevel, which is an improvement, but the graphic above illustrates perhaps it’s one flaw. There are three instances where a notch in a letter interrupts the overall silhouette of the logo, and they are handled three different ways. On the bottom left portion of the O, the black outline juts in, but the orange outline doesn’t. On the upper right of the O, neither outline juts in. On the lower left portion of the U, both outlines jut in. Creating consistency in how the logo treats these areas gives a simpler look.

The less notiecable change here will be lessening the outside widths of the serifs on the U (fig. 1) so that they match the inside serifs. The larger change comes on the feathers (fig. 2). The feather design has no doubt been maintained as a nod to past logos, but it’s likely a nightmare to reproduce (especially with embroidery), and simply looks very outdated. You can keep the same feel while updating the design.

You knew I had to take a look at A&M’s logo. Overall the logo tweak that occurred in 2007 created a very clean, balanced logo. Most notably, the “A” and “M” are a uniform height/width, and each in centered under the serifs of the “T.”

While there’s a vocal group who would have me remove the bevel completely, I instead just looked to make it more consistently applied. Most notably, the gap between the two bevels on the upper right portion of the logo (fig. 1) needs to be applied to all of the other bevels. More surprisingly, the top crossbar of the T is not as wide as all of the other portions of the letter, so I rectified that as well. Voila.

Tell me in the comments which logos you think I improved, and which ones I absolutely ruined and should hate myself for changing.