Adidas and Washington QB Robert Griffin III unveiled a new logo for the latter’s sportswear line earlier this week, an occasion ESPN football analyst Mark Schlereth found somewhat uninspiring. After no shortage of fallout from RGIII fans, Schlereth took to the radio to elaborate (quotes supplied by DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg) :
“It was kind of a throwaway comment at the end of NFL Live,” Schlereth explained on Mike and Mike this week, when asked how he attracted the ire of #RGIIINation. “Trey [Wingo] asked me and Mark Brunell what we thought. And I’m like I understand if you create a logo for your foundation, or I understand if Adidas creates a logo because they’re releasing your RGIII training shoe or something. But to have your own personal logo, I just thought, was like the cart before the horse.
“You know, are we working on branding ourselves, or are we working on becoming a great football player?” Schlereth went on. “You were benched at the end of last season. And so, to me, [the comment] was not a big deal. Well, apparently he was offended by that.”
“All his legion of fans – and good for them, they support their quarterback – were on me,” Schlereth went on. “Bottom line, what do you do with [a logo]? I don’t know if you know who I am, but here’s my logo. You know, it just seemed goofy to me. Again, it seemed like the cart before the horse to me. And so then I was just getting inundated on Twitter with all these crazy things about me being a ‘hater,’ which is one of the most ridiculous terms ever. I just [thought] the whole aspect of creating your own personal logo is kind of ridiculous. That’s how I look at it….I just thought that whole I’m releasing my personal logo, I mean, what are you, a superhero? I don’t know. It just seemed weird to me.”