Is That Star Doing What I Think It's Doing? New S.F.-Based Football League's Logo Rather Sexual.

As someone who insists that Coit Tower resembles a fire hose -- and nothing else -- I don't think I'm the type to see innuendos where they're not. And yet, glancing at the logo for the fledgling, San Francisco-based United Football League, I can't not see it. Bluntly, this appears to be a well-endowed star fornicating with a rather vaginal football.

Hoping to gauge a professional's opinion -- and see if it was just me -- I dialed Mike Monteiro, the design director at San Francisco's Mule Design Studio. His first reaction was to laugh and then note that "It's certainly a very penetrating design."

How could this happen? Monteiro speculates that not enough eyes scanned the logo before it was released to the general public -- "I would be amazed if a woman looked at this logo before it was approved."

Well, be amazed. Mindy Romero, the public relations director at Landor, the firm that created the logo, said women were involved in its design and on the client side as well. She also didn't see any sexual imagery in the logo -- forcing SF Weekly, embarrassingly, to use the term "vaginal football" while on the phone with a total stranger.

Romero added that no one else has yet commented to the company on the logo's appearance in this manner. "That's the thing with identities. Anything new is open to be dissected when it's introduced. We didn't get that feedback from any of our research or presentations." (As to who was on the receiving end of these presentations or how many of them took place, Romero was uncertain).

While the UFL's logo is something of a visual double entendre, it certainly isn't the worst you can find. Take Japanese pharmacy Kudawara:


Or the cringe-worthy Arlington Pediatric Center (oh, the humanity!):


Or, the absolute best of the worst, the Instituto de Estudios Orientais in Brazil.

I wonder how their research and presentations went?