Category Archives: New York Jets

I posted several designs for a Pat Tillman Tribute Decal/Patch for the 10 year anniversary of his passing. Those two posts got 40-50 retweets which is shocking since most cat videos get 60. I sent my post with ideas to my cousin Sam who is stationed over in Germany. He told me to write another post and tell everyone what I told him.

April 22, 2014 marked the 10 year anniversary of the death of Pat  Tillman. The act of patriotism that Tillman showed leaving his NFL career to become an Army Ranger is something that no one should ever forget. Tillman should have a statue at every NFL stadium as far as I am concerned. (He has one in Arizona FYI)

I am guessing that for the 10 year anniversary of Tillman’s death the Arizona Cardinals and Arizona State would both have some kind of helmet decal honoring   this anniversary. I personally dislike the way that sports teams try to honor a fallen teammate or owner. The traditional logo/sticker is a black circle with the persons number or initials inside the circle in white. I would like to a honor logo/sticker that has a little more thought put into it. My thought is that if someone is important enough to honor shouldn’t we do something more fitting of that honor? The black sticker takes all of two seconds to make. We spend millions of dollars designing uniforms, shirts, hats, etc.. to sell but to honor someone a black circle with a white letter is just fine. Well that is bullshit in my book and just pisses me off. Since I design stuff. I came up with a few version of a decal/patch.

These designs cost basically nothing to make. The average helmet decal runs about 10-20 bucks a pair for the large main decal. I know this because I design football helmets. That is retail FYI. I will give my Pat Tillman Tribute decal to anyone wanting to wear it so there goes that cost. I am sure there is a decal company out there that will pony up the cash to make the decals that just leaves the Arizona Cardinals and NFL to OK it. I have personally tweeted the Cardinals and their Coach, the Arizona State Coach with no reply. I have also tweeted the NFL and Commissioner  Goodell  offering my design. They too have not replied. I tweeted the Arizona Super Bowl Committee the idea of adding the logo to the field for the Pro Bowl and Super Bowl. They fav’d my tweet and told me that the NFL would have to approve anything that went on the field.

@nflcommish this needs to happen to honor 10yr anniv. of the passing of #PatTillman will you allow the @AZCardinals pic.twitter.com/TKCBpm1WDu

— Charles Sollars (@CharlesSollars) April 25, 2014

 The only person to get back to me was Jake Plummer a former college teammate of Pat Tillman & NFL QB.

I wanted to have all 3 badges Cardinals, ASU, & Army Rangers plus the 10 and Tillman in the logo. Below is my Fav version.

I really like the idea of using the military name badge on this logo. I played around with a couple different versions of the 10 and added some yellow for ASU in a couple but the above logo is the best in my mind. The logo uses a Ranger badge I pulled from a military badge site. If it is not correct please let me know. I replaced the sides with both his college and pro team logos off to each side. The camo 10 represents the 10th Anniversary and finally I made a military name badge like he would have worn to rest below the logo. The 40 and 42 are the numbers he wore on the field. The logo as a whole represents all 3 of Pat Tillman’s teams. I really think that all NFL teams should wear the sticker on their helmet the week ASU and the Cards wear it as the main logo if that ever happens. All season would be better but I don’t know if you can get that to happen. I am guessing a full decal on all teams would never be OK’s but a back logo like this shouldn’t be a problem for other teams

I would also like to see all of the service academies wear this sticker on their helmet too. If the Cardinals, ASU, any NFL team, any service school, or any school for that matter wants to use my logo creation they can free of charge just contact sollars85@gmail.com

The Total cost to make this happen if the Arizona Cardinals Only wear the decal and have to pay the top end price of $20 per set a team of 53 is only $1,060. I know that NFL teams never pay full retail they pay more like material cost plus a little so lets say it is $10 a pair that $530 for a pair. If the Cardinals decide not use the digital camo team logo that price drops to $265 to honor Pat Tillman doesn’t sound like a number a Billion Dollar company would flinch at if they wanted to do it.

Ok, the Cardinals wise up say we want to do it but can’t. Why can’t you? The NFL says we can’t. What will make the NFL say yes you can? Public support that is where you come in. Tell the Cardinals, Arizona State and the NFL you want to honor a true American Hero on the 10 year Anniversary of his passing defending our freedom. We should honor all fallen troops but honoring Pat Tillman I believe honors every solider that has fallen because we all know Pat Tillman did not think of himself but was a team player thinking of everyone else first in everything he did in his life. His choice to give up the fame and money of the NFL to become a Ranger is something everyone should be reminded of this year 10 year late.  

#NFLDraft is great but lets not forget the highest character player ever drafted #pattillman Lets make this happen AZ pic.twitter.com/6aeuN5Ssgb — Charles Sollars (@CharlesSollars) May 10, 2014

Let the NFL & the Cardinals know you want this to happen. Stop tweeting out cat videos and retweet this.