In the past couple of weeks the GSL has welcomed four new expansion franchises: the Birmingham Owls, Boston Bobcats, New York CityHawks, and the Chicago Maroons. The Maroons name certainly stands out as a team name we might hear from a bygone era. The last Maroons team to play professional football were founded in 1902 as the Toledo Maroons of the Ohio League, before joining the NFL in 1922, and played their last season in Wisconsin as the Kenosha Maroons in 1923.

After nearly 100 years, the Maroons name is making a comeback, with the Chicago Maroons of the GSL. The team has taken a classic approach to the team designs, using a basic block font for the team logo and wordmark, and using old school colors of maroon, cream, and white.



The Maroons have also gone for some early 20th century uniforms designs as well. The thin sleeve stripes are a tribute back to the 1911 Toledo Maroons jerseys (as seen in the title image). The numbers are a standard font of the era. The team also opted to add TV numbers to the helmets, as opposed to the jerseys, which keeps in line with the overall uniforms theme, as TV numbers didn’t become standard on jersey sleeves until television actually became a popular household staple in the 1950’s. Also of note, the Maroons have opted to field just two uniform combinations, which would make them the only GSL team to have just a single color, and white jersey uniform. You could almost image that if the Kenosha Maroons had stuck around the NFL until today, these could very well be the uniforms they could be wearing today.



Also following the throwback theme is the Maroons field. Chicago is going with a classic diamond endzone design with block lettering (7 letters in both Chicago and Maroons certainly works to the team’s advantage), and their block letter ‘C’ logo at midfield.



The Maroons will be playing at Soldier Field in Chicago for the 2022 season, which is now about five more months from kickoff.

Austin Snelick
September 17, 2021