Houston Gamblers Team Rating
The NFL is SO over. It's time to move on to the real event of the year: spring football via the USFL (part deux)! Sure, these teams existed once in the past before, but now they're back 30 years later with new coaches and a new twist on their logos and uniforms. Plus they all have new coaches. If we're going to figure out which team(s) to root for, we have to rank them somehow!
Scoring
Power rank will be calculated by totaling the team's points for each category. There are eight teams, but we're ranking these on a scale of 1-10. The highest score means that's the team to root for! The categories are as follows:
Coach - Most points for the best coach or most potential coming in. Who knows how these teams will play, but we can at least give them some points for a known commodity.
Name - How cool is the name? Probably not very cool.
Colors - It's important to pick a team that you can wear their gear without looking like a fool. Some uniforms can look great on the field, but if you're wearing that stuff outside of the event, you look like some sort of Harlequin.
Uniforms - How does it all come together on the field? I mean, aside from their play. This is about LOOKS. We're superficial here.
Retro-future - How well did you handle an old brand and bring it into the new era?
Houston Gamblers
Coach - Kevin Sumlin
Sumlin has been around the college game for years, coaching Houston into a 12-1 record before moving on to the Texas A&M Aggies. While he started out hot there, things fizzled out a bit to a bunch of 8-5 seasons before getting canned after going 7-5. He tucked his tail and ran to Arizona where he led the Wildcats to a pretty abysmal effort altogether before getting canned in year 3. Maybe without the recruiting he will do a bit better, but it's tough to say.
Score - 5
Name - Gamblers
The name is awesome, especially considering how big gambling is with the NFL and other sports at this point. Hopefully they lean into it during the season.
Score - 10
Colors - Black, Red, Gray, and Yellow
That's a lot of colors. Thankfully, they mostly feature black. You can probably nab some Gamblers gear that's only black and red.
Score - 7
Uniforms
What is happening with these slate gray pants on the home uniform? It looks.. weird. If they had stuck with the regular light gray it would probably look fine, but the darker/bluer slate gray does NOT fit. Plus the pants striping just looks out of place. The away uniforms are fine, albeit uninspiring.
Score - 3
Retro-Future
Not a huge departure. The obvious things are the helmet and jersey striping totally missing from the new getup. They should really consider going back to the light gray/silver pants with the black uniforms and dropping that awful slate.
Score - 5
Total - 30 out of 50
The name really brings them up, but the uniforms drag them back down.
