GGR Foodball League: Introduction

by Mike Lunsford, Editor-In-Cheese for GGR

Back in 2020, everyone was hunkered down in their homes in hopes to avoid the Covid pandemic. For those fortunate enough to be able to work from home and have an abundance of free time, many of us turned to creative endeavors. I was one of those people as I started teaching myself digital art.

Ever since I was young, I’ve loved sports logos and uniforms. I would buy hats, jerseys, Starter jackets for teams I had no vested interest in because I thought their color schemes or logo looked cool as hell.

Schrödinger's Starter Jacket: everyone and no one was a Charlotte Hornets fan

I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes of the original idea: come up with a new logo/name for Washington’s football team. The old one was super racist and corporate pressure finally forced the former owner, Dan Snyder to change the name after defiantly stated he never would. Man…that is therapeutic to say: former owner Dan Snyder. The team held a contest for a new name/logo and I tried to put myself in the corporate mindset and came up with a patriotic-sounding name: the Justice. And, like most corporate mindsets, my design and name were completely tone deaf to the racist history of the team’s name and logo AND the sexual harassment and assault allegations all in favor of “new branding.” Not my proudest moment. But something good came from this: I started thinking of ways to make a sports team name and logo that everyone from that area would love. And what is something that EVERYONE loves? Food.

On top of the shared love that so many of us have for food, I had a unique opportunity with these new designs. I could make them actually have something to do with the cities they represent! Now, there are some cities whose teams have a tie to the city or region: San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle, New England, Pittsburgh…to name a few. But there are also stupid names for stupid reasons. Cleveland comes to mind, as they are named after their first owner. What do Bears have to do with Chicago? Are there even cardinals in Arizona? Don’t even get me started on the Colts and Indianapolis! My point being: most American cities have an identity that is embodied by their sports teams and their food. Why not combine those things into awesome logos?

So I did that. I spent a ton of time learning how to get good at digital art and I made a TON of logos for every NFL city and even some expansion teams! In studying these cities, as not all of them had obvious choices for iconic foods, I became fascinated with the history. As a kid, history was always one of my favorite subjects, and I still consume as much history-based content as I can. The art project became a written project as well as I shared a few of the cities I had researched. The articles centered around the discussion of how the food scene came to be in each city and region.

And now, here we are: What was originally called the “National Foodball League Project” is now the GGR Foodball League. It has evolved into a much more robust and in depth look into the cities, foods, and sports we love. It won’t just be about football either, it started as that but limiting ourselves to only 32 cities and food scenes when there is so much more out there in this country and the world to discuss. For example, Canada had a lot of fun food stories. Stay tuned :)

A little preview of crazy stories about iconic food: the Hawaiian pizza was invented in Ontario, Canada by a Greek immigrant who was trying to emulate sweet and sour chicken from a local Chinese place.

During the first go-round, I got as far west as Cleveland. I hadn’t hit big midwest cities like Detroit, Chicago, St.Louis…needless to say, I had more adventuring to do. As the articles/podcasts come out, I will be circling back on some cities I’ve touched on before as well as some brand new locations.

As long winded as this may have been, let me formally introduce you to the next incarnation of my multimedia project: The GGR Foodball League. You’ll get some articles like I did previously. There may even be some podcasts to go with it, too. We will be discussing food, sports, history and culture with a rotating panel of guests both familiar and new to GGR listeners. Thank you for your time and I look forward to you joining us on this adventure!