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The NFL shield on the cover is very different from the standard NFL logo that was being used at the time:
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It appears the NFL created a separate logo for their publishing division which was called National Football League Illustrated, and handled the production of game programs. In addition to the 1966 programs, the logo can be found on programs from 1967 though 1969 as well (programs from 1965 and earlier have the regular NFL logo):
1967:
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1968:
1969:
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After the merger in 1970, it appears that the NFL Illustrated logo disappeared from game programs as the NFL started publishing PRO! magazine which was essentially the same program for all the games in every city each week with some team specific pages included for the two teams that were playing in that week's games:
Unfortunately, that meant no more programs with covers where you could definitely tell who the home team was like this:
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After the merger, the program covers for PRO! magazine were much more generic, and not team specific.
Getting back to the NFL logo, given the attention that has been paid to the NFL logo after its change this year to this:
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I thought it was interesting to see a variation of the logo that rarely gets mentioned:
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1 comment:
The alternate logo leaded to the right in the '60s?
Well, so did the NFL's owners and management.
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