Ags freely hand over moral high ground. Native American sale of Manhattan recalled.

UPDATE: Hours after publication the A&M Marketing office reversed their decision to send a letter to RivalWear.com. Apparently, Mike Huddleston reads this blog.

"The call was made late Wednesday night because the T-shirts did not meet the criteria necessary to pursue the letter. The shirts did not feature "University colors, an accurate depiction of Reveille as a mascot, and didn't contain any other identifying marks," Huddleston said."

In what is quickly devolving into a contest of which school can out-gay the other, A&M is threatening to sue a Longhorn t-shirt website, RivalWear, for it's t-shirt mocking/imitating Aggieland Outfitter's 'Saw 'em Off' shirt.



While Texas' case against Aggieland Outfitters is weak, atleast the logo being parodied is clearly identifiable as theirs. According to the article, A&M claims it has copyrighted the image of an American Collie wearing an A&M blanket...

1. No where on the RivalWear collie silhouette is there anything that identifies A&M.


2. The collie featured in the image isn't even wearing a blanket


3. Why did we even copyright the image of an insane inbred collie to begin with?

stranger things have happened.. right?

so i'm drifting off to sleep in my STAT class this morning when I start getting texts saying "dude, your name's in the paper" and "hey, nice picture". While having my work published in the paper is not unusual, what made these texts different is that they were from friends.. at UT. Apparently the Daily Texan ran a story on the Logo Lawsuit today, and used my photo from yesterday's Battalion.

I almost consider it an honor to have something featured in the Daily Texan, a student paper so good, that in my opinion, they covered the dedication of Bonfire Memorial (Nov. 2004) better than The Battalion did.

UT QBs in short supply. UT Lawyers not so much

The University of Texas is suing Aggieland Outfitters, alleging that AO's "Saw 'em Off" logo "..is likely to cause confusion, to cause mistake, or to deceive customers".

While it's debatable who first (and when) visually depicted what "Saw Varsity's Horns Off.." would look like, Aggieland Outfitters was the first to standardize the image and sell it on t-shirts back in 1997. Since then, the logo's popularity has exploded and is almost considered a secondary logo for Texas A&M:


the image is so popular that even the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band will bust it out every once in a while.





a lot of people from other schools think that's a "horns down", it's actually the horns sawed off.


Both my favorite Texas shirt and proof that not only has UT been keenly aware of the logo, they've been playing along too.

The lawsuit against the decade old logo was filed Dec. 4th, 2006. That's right, a week after the Aggies beat the Longhorns 12-7 in Austin.

You decided what's worse:

Late Hit on McCoy

Or

Trying to put a family out of business because your team got embarassed by the school you like to pretend isn't a rival anymore


If UT was truly interested in protecting its trademark, it would be filing lawsuits against the likes of:




the city of Fort Worth



Microsoft





OU shirt vendors




hundreds of schools around the state of Texas




While Seattle fans may be taking much pleasure from this debacle, I think most reasonable sports fans see this action as fairly childish and to be honest, very opposite of the carefully constructed image of We're Texas (and stupidly arrogant).

Whether you hate Texas, support A&M, or just can't stand bullies, stop by AggielandOutfitters.com and buy one of their new shirts (below) inspired by the lawsuit OR tell everyone you know about the story. The more negative publicity for UT that is generated, the less inclined they'll be to continue with the lawsuit.

The shirt says it all:


update (10:34PM): to all the anonymous horns comparing this case to the Ft. Worth case or the Seattle/12th Man case. What Aggieland Outfitters is doing is called Parody and has been upheld by the Supreme Court for the past two decades. As a Professor of Trademark Law, Louis T. Pirkey (UT's lawyer) should know better. Either Pirkey shouldn't be teaching at such a prestigious law school, or UT was counting on hollow intimidation to get what it wanted.

HT: The Battalion

come again?

so someone, who was clearly off their meds, nominated us for "Best Big XII Blog" over at MGoBlog's annual CFB Blog Awards

go here to vote (must have a CFB blog).


Votes we feel strongly about:

• "Best Pac-10 Blog"
  
  Tightwad Hill
  hands down the best team blog we've come across.


• "Best National Blog"
  
  The Wizard of Odds
  it's exactly what a national blog should be


• "The Brady Quinn Award" (prettiest blog)
  
  Bevo Sports
  the best layout and design in the college football blogosphere


• "Best Big XII Blog"
  
  Double Extra Point or CrossCyed
  basically, vote for anyone that's not a member of the lame SB Nation syndicate, especially BON. and hey, if you're feelin crazy, toss us a vote too so we don't end up last.