The Sport of Cartooning Sports

Fox Sports NASCAR coverage will have one thing in common with their NFL games.

If you view your favorite race car driver as a superhero, you’re in luck.

So does Fox Sports.

When the network begins its live coverage of the new NASCAR season, its program design will incorporate graphics that will cast drivers as bigger-than-life superheroes, similar to the effect Fox has used in broadcasting other sports.

The “comic book” look is part of a new graphic design that will change the screen “face” of NASCAR broadcasts on Fox, which will broadcast the first half of the season.

Read more at Autoweek.

 

How White supremacy changed Herbie Husker

For nearly 50 years, fans have loved the burly Husker mascot who wears blue overalls, sports a big red cowboy hat and keeps an ear of corn in his pocket. The depiction of the blond-haired, blue-eyed farmer with a barrel chest and chiseled chin is, for many Nebraskans, a representation of the state itself.

The reason for that slight switch: White supremacists.

Internet trolls and White supremacy groups have tried to turn the OK sign into a symbol of White power, claiming the three fingers up form a W and the circle and wrist form a P.

That, in turn, gave Herbie’s OK sign a potential meaning his creators never intended.

 

Dick West, a longtime cartoonist from Lubbock, Texas, was presumably thinking about none of this when he drew what became Herbie for the 1974 Cotton Bowl pitting Nebraska against Texas.

The cartoon, posted in the press box, caught the eye of Don Bryant, then sports information director. West created a slightly refined, less hokey version of Herbie for a permanent logo.

Later that fall, the Herbie logo showed up on the media guide, his first official appearance. He replaced a tall, lanky logo and mascot known as Harry Husker.

Nebraska’s Norfolk Daily News carries the story.

 

Does Missouri have no sporting cartoonists?

Do you believe in the Bengals?

The pride of Cincinnati has given fans much to cheer about as it roars its way closer and closer towards Super Bowl glory.

The team takes on the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship game 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 30.

Kevin Necessary, an editorial cartoonist for the Cincinnati Enquirer/ USA TODAY Network,  has chronicled the team’s journey.

The Columbus Dispatch has a gallery of the 2021/2022 National Football League’s Bengals season
as seen by cartoonist Kevin Necessary.

And then another Kevin gallery of some past years.

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