White Sox New Stadium Logo is Literally an Arrow Pointing Down

It's already been a peculiar offseason for the Chicago White Sox, and nary a transaction has been filed with the league office. Before the crosstown Cubs even took the field for the World Series, the South Side team's very existence had been obscured by media carrying water for Chicago's more lovable losers from the North Side. With the Cubs so close to a championship, the White Sox find their very existence being erased from history like a fading snapshot of Marty McFly's family in Back To The Future.

The Cubs have been stealing the headlines (rightfully) and timelines (less so), but the Sox are set to make news themselves with the renaming of their home ballpark, which since 2003 had been called U.S. Cellular Field. As announced over the summer, and beginning tomorrow, a new partnership with a national mortgage lender will change the stadium's name to Guaranteed Rate Field. It sounds clunky and cheesy and not at all related to baseball, but so do many stadium monikers. At least it's not as preposterous as the NBA's Smoothie King Center.

So, no big deal really, until you get a load of the actual logo that workers are painting all over signage for the park, that is. A brief review of this incredibly depressing logo for a sports team's home stadium:

• Meager
• Aesthetically unattractive
• Fonts do not appear to match
• Includes actual arrow pointing downward, keeping with the White Sox's overall trend

An advertising grand slam! Of course, via Crain's Chicago Business, the boss at Guaranteed Rate doesn't see a problem:

"I know that there are fans that don't like the fact that there's a downward red arrow on the ballpark, but I have a hard time understanding the relevance between our mortgage company's main logo and how that negatively impacts the team or the fans," said Guaranteed Rate CEO Victor Ciardelli.

The relevance?

Because a down arrow on the stadium is a little to on the nose, Victor. pic.twitter.com/QwOO9dq4jO
— Josh Nelson (@SSS_joshnelson) October 31, 2016

The White Sox might be dysfunctional, but they're not deaf, as this second snippet from Crain's shows:

Ciardelli said the design was a joint effort between the company's in-house creative team and the Sox, who suggested replacing the arrow with an image of home plate. "But I told the White Sox that it's our company logo, and they were respectful of the decision" to keep the arrow after all, Ciardelli said.

Buyer's remorse, anyone? The White Sox might have won the 2005 World Series and can't nobody take that away, but they've made the playoffs just once during intervening years, and they frequently seem a few steps slower right now than other AL Central teams like Cleveland, Kansas City, and Detroit. Better hope the Twins don't get a clue soon!

As for the struggle for respect and dollars within their own city, they have a lot of work to do in order to simply keep up with the Cubs, which they've historically had a hard time doing since the 1980s. The arrow isn't exactly pointing up right now.