News came today of Cardiff City changing their primary color from blue to red, after over 100 years of being blue. This has, predictably, angered a lot of fans - a team's colors are part of that team's identity, and if those colors are fungible, what's to stop them from changing every couple of years, at the whim of a bored chairman or an overly aggressive shirt maker?

Of course, soccer is not the only sport in which this happens - American sports teams have been known to change their logos and colors occasionally. Usually it's an evolution, not a revolution - but every now and again, a team totally re-brands itself, keeping a team name but totally changing its colors and logo, usually due to an ownership change, as is the case with Cardiff City.

I'm fairly traditional about these things - I don't really see a need for a team to always be tweaking or changing their logo. If you design a logo to be timeless, it doesn't need to be drastically changed.

The other manifestation of a fungible club identity that bugs me is the endless array of "alternate" hats that every team seems to have these days, to accommodate people's fashion choices. To me, and I realize this makes me sound like a cranky person, if I like Arsenal, I like Arsenal shirts to be red and white, or to be yellow with maybe some blue, and that's really about it. If I like the Red Sox, I like my Red Sox hat to be dark blue with a red logo. I don't want to be able to buy a team hat in a bunch of colors that have nothing to do with the team - it just seems odd to me that someone would say "Hey I like this team, but I'd like this team's hat better if it were totally different colors that had nothing to do with the team!"

What about you? Are you attached to the logos and colors of your favorite teams, or do you not mind if team gear is available in a billion different color combinations? Are you less willing to buy a shirt/hat for a team you like if it's not available in a color you like?

Bonus question: What are some of your favorite sports team logos?