By that logic, no "team" ever has a repeat championship, since in every case the team that wins the championship one year is different from the "same" team that won the year before. You are suffering from an extreme case of excessive nominalism and excessive literalism. It's the same entity. Maybe not the same legal entity, but the same mental entity, which is all that counts. It has the same name, the same identity. It has many of the same people involved in it now as then. The old owners have passed the identity on to the new owners. So, there's about a sixteen year gap when this entity known as the Rowdies was dormant. Big deal; this kind of thing happens all the time to non-living entities that humans create. One might just as well claim that the Polish people ceased to exist when the Polish state ceased to exist; the entity that lives in the minds of the people (be it a nation or a mere sports club) does not cease to exist simply because the legal entity corresponding to that mental construct ceased to exist. And you are on slippery ground with the "we" argument, since we know perfectly well that "we" are not scoring goals and winning games but we still say "we are winning" and not "our team is winning" and we are perfectly correct in doing so. Hair splitters who don't understand this really don't understand sports fandom, or human nature. No one is saying "hooray, there is a new team called the Rowdies, that is totally different and unrelated to the old team called the Rowdies". Everyone is saying "the Rowdies are back" and they are perfectly right to do so. I believe the 1975 trophy is currently being used as a trophy for the annual soccer matches between USF and UT. I assume the other trophies and memorabilia is still owned by the Corbetts and will be handed over to the new Rowdies ownership once they have a place to put it. I also assume that the Rowdies will take possession of the 1975 NASL Championship trophy, and give a new trophy to USF and UT to compete for; that would be the logical thing to do. But nothing has been announced yet, AFAIK. Also there's more than just the championship trophies. We got 2nd place trophies for the 1978 and 1979 Soccer Bowls. I believe we might also have gotten various trophies for NASL divisional and conference championships, but that's just my assumption, which may be wrong. We might have also gotten "presentational" trophies for various international friendies over the years; not sure. Notice how I said "we" there?
The "new" Vancouver Whitecaps have the "old" Vancouver Whitecaps 1979 NASL championship trophy in their trophy case, right next to all of their USL trophies. They obviously don't agree with your "logic". Pepe Pinton has the Cosmos trophies and if he agrees to help revive the Cosmos as MLS NYC2 with a new ownership group, you can be sure those "old" Cosmos trophies will make their way to the "new" Cosmos trophy room. Face facts, no one cares about your technicalities. You are missing the point about what this is all about. But "we" did have a hand in creating this history. That's the point. Why are you a sports fan to begin with, if you don't grasp this? Also the overlap in personnel between the new Rowdies and the old Rowdies is a fact, as is the handoff between the old owners and the new owners. That's more than enough continuity. I'm sick and tired of this mentality that insists that we have to deny our own past over some blasted technicality that frankly only makes sense to aspies who don't understand human nature or what this entire sports fandom thing is all about to begin with. We've done enough burying of our own past in American soccer. It needs to be kept alive; enough with this constant reinventing of the wheel. Insisting that the new Rowdies are unconnected to the old Rowdies is just one more example of the American tendency to bulldoze our own past and pretend that we are "starting afresh". It's a kind of amnesia or alzheimer's: no connection between past and present. We know perfectly well that there is a large gap in time between the old Rowdies and the new, but to pretend that this invalidates any connection between old and new Rowdies is just wrong. It misses the whole point of what a pro sports club is supposed to be about. It misses the point of sports fandom. Any defunct club that still has supporters deserves to be revived, if it can be, because it obviously still lives on in the minds of its supporters - which is the only kind of continuity that counts, in the end. Without that kind of continuity in the minds of supporters, there would be no fans and no professional sports.
I've seen the Whitecaps trophy case (I don't recall where; might have been on FIFA Futbol Mundial) and they have their 1979 NASL Soccer Bowl trophy in their trophy case, right next to their USL trophies. Case closed!
That just gets me going on average American sports fan ignorance. The telstar black and white soccer ball is a comparatively recent invention (1970 World Cup, IIRC?). Ok, maybe not "recent" to you young folk, but recent in terms of soccer history. The telstar ball was the first soccer ball most Americans ever saw, so it has become "the" soccer ball in the minds of most Americans who don't know anything about soccer history pre-Pele. The "volleyball" soccer ball has been in use just as long as, or probably longer than, the "volleyball" volleyball. But then your average American sports fan is ignorant of that fact. Just like they are ignorant of the fact that before the "volleyball" soccer ball existed, most soccer balls looked like old fashioned basketballs with external stiching. "Why does Tottenham Hotspur have an old fashioned basketball in their logo?" average American sports fans often ask me. They forget or don't know that the original basketballs were in fact soccer balls (ie, footballs). Just like they conveniently forget or don't know that the first college football game (ie, in the USA) was actually a soccer match (ie loosely based on FA laws) and that American football is modified rugby and that baseball comes from England (where it was first called baseball, not rounders). But I digress. What I don't like about the logo (apart from not including the original Rowdies wordmark) isn't that the ball "looks like" a volleyball, but that the Rowdies never (AFAIK) played using such a ball. If we want to acknowledge our history, include the NASL "star" soccer ball instead.
Re: 2008 Rowdies Colors/Jersey/Logo thread I've long thought that teams should just "wikipedia" or "open source" there logo and jersey development by starting a thread here on big soccer rather than paying some expensive marketing company. Not only would this approach be way cheaper, but I honestly think they would receive better designs than they often seem to get from these "professional" outfits.
I think these look amazing! Perfect balance. Clearly alludes to the past, while still looking modern. Someone needs to send these to the Rowdies front office!