Demise of the Cartoonish Logo on Hoop Courts?

ESPN.com columnist Jim Caple had a piece the other day about how, in baseball, teams have been moving away from "playful cartoon" logos toward "more corporate" alternatives. I haven't done an extensive study of whether the same trend has overtaken NBA and college basketball courts. Yet, one example immediately came to my mind of where playfulness has given way to professionalization: The University of Minnesota's Williams Arena. Whereas center-court used to feature Goldy Gopher dribbling a basketball, it now features a large "M" in the university's official style.

The two court views are from YouTube videos (here and here).

A Little Floor to Enhance the Logo (Florida St.)

Until recent years, it seems, teams' center-court logos were roughly the size of the jump-ball circle (here's one example). To my eyes, that scheme worked well, allowing the logo to enhance the overall look of the court, without overwhelming it. The trend, however, has been toward bigger and bigger logos, as documented in previous postings on this blog (here, here, here, and here).

Tonight, as I watched ESPN's broadcast of Florida State's upset win over defending NCAA champion Duke, I saw yet another example of the outsized emblem, on the Seminoles' court. As shown in the before-and-after photos below, the circular Seminole logo has grown in size (top photo) compared to past years' version, at the expense of the "FLORIDA STATE" and "SEMINOLES" lettering.

(The FSU-Duke screen capture is from ESPN3.com's archived broadcast of tonight's game, whereas the older FSU-Jacksonville footage is something I found on YouTube.)

Not that anyone at Florida State has asked me, but I would suggest something along the lines of the following mock-up I created (with the circular Seminole logo just a little bit bigger than the jump-ball circle).