The Brand, The Brand, The Brand

With college football only days away, I thought it would be fitting to evoke the mantra of the late, great Bo Schembechler (albeit altered ever so slightly.) Yes, your friends over here at TPL also enjoy the college football from time to time, unless of course said team smokes wears Green and snorts White and whose players beat up defenseless women and hockey players and go to jail, only to be welcomed back to the football team with open arms  hails from East Lansing (Go Blue!) I digress…

Despite the new site being extra spiffy and awesome, there’s still some empty walls that need filling and some final touches to be incorporated before we can finally call this thing “home”. And who better to make this thing a home than you, the readers. Allow me to present a couple of ways that you can leave your imprint on the new TPL:

• Banners: As you can see, our new banner is ridiculously awesome (Thanks Sara!) and there is another one that we are holding on to that is just as cool. That said, we know we have alot of talented and artistic friends and readers out there, so we want to open it up to all of you as well. Have a cool design for a banner for the site? Send it to us and we’ll toss it up on the site throughout the season, while also giving you props and a link in one of the posts. Seriously, send us whatever you come up with and it may wind up on top of the site.
• TP:60 Logo: This one’s a double dip for you guys, but don’t feel like you have to do both. As we prepare to launch the TP:60 podcast this season, we want you guys to submit logo drafts and then ultimately decide which logo will end up representing the show. That’s right, YOU will decide the winning logo for the show. We’ll be collecting submissions all the way up until September 24th, at which point we’ll head into a tournament style competition for the winning design to be chosen. The winning logo will be debuted in time for the regular season opener in October. Again, get those submissions in.
• TP:60 Music: In addition, for our musically inclined friends, we are looking for some new theme music for the show and would love to hear what you can do. Feel free to send us a track that is at least a minute long, and you may find yourself being broadcast to all of our listeners on a weekly basis. We’ll also give you a shout out on the show and will link to your band info/record info on the TP:60 site.

Pretty cool stuff, no? BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

As Petrella and I have been sorting through the mailbox over the first weekend of TPLUS existence, we’ve received a ton of e-mails asking us if we are going to do shirts or other kinds or TPL apparel. Honestly, we had no intention of doing anything of the sort, but it looks like some of the other Wings blogs are offering up some gear which in turn has our inbox flooded with “OMGSHIRTUZZIPLZKTHXBAI” mails. So Petrella, Rob and myself gathered ’round the campfire to discuss and decided that, while we won’t be doing a full store or anything, we’d be willing to design up a “replica” Shirtuzzi for you guys to order. It probably won’t look anything like the original Shirtuzzi that debuted at H2H, but it’ll be complete with the Shetuzzi and other pieces of TPL awesomeness that’ll be worthy of the Shirtuzzi moniker. We don’t have a timeframe in place just yet, but stay tuned to the main page and we’ll let you know when it’s ready to go.

So there you go. Get the creative juices flowing and get those submissions in, while simultaneously preparing to clothe yourself in pure TPL awesomeness.