When we launched our first of collection of shirts back at the end of 2008, we focused on old NASL teams. We wanted to show some of the history of soccer in the US, and highlight some of these vintage teams. Plus the logos on some of them were so fresh. There are plenty of logos these days that are busy. Some of them have so much going on. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes there is nothing better than a clean and minimal logo. And that is what the Atlanta Apollos had. In fact, it is one of my favorites.

As background, the Atlanta Apollos were originally the Atlanta Chiefs, and they were founded in 1967 when the Atlanta Braves, Inc received a franchise in the old NPSL. After the 1967 season, the NPSL merged with the United Soccer Association thus forming the NASL. After a couple of seasons of never really performing well, and barely surviving years that saw many NASL teams fold, the Atlanta Chiefs renamed itself the Atlanta Apollos and were sold to the owners of the Atlanta Hawks. In their one year in the league playing as the Apollos, they finished last in their conference. Not a memorable franchise, but a very memorable logo.

The first version we did of this graphic was on a red shirt. Then we tested out doing it on a blue shirt. we made a few samples and for some reason we never ended up producing them on that blue. There are a couple floating around out there (Sacha Kljestan has one – hit the jump to check it out). But now, we decided to finally produce the Atlanta Apollos on a blue tee. It’s a different blue than the samples we did a couple years ago, but it works really well. We also added a small little hit that reads ATL to give a shout to one of the great cities in the US.

The Atlanta Apollos shirt is now available in the Bumpy Pitch online store.

And if you feel like it, check out Sacha in that mysterious blue Apollos shirt and Ryan Seacrest in the OG red after the jump.