Seal Block Week 14: The Grand Finale

Thanks everyone who voted for the Seal Block Top 25 and for everyone who slogged their way through 14 weeks of exciting academic symbolism! Before revealing the final poll results, I'd like to award a couple of special jury prizes. I looked for 126 seals and some schools make it easy to find and some make it almost impossible. The first special prize goes to Buffalo for the most sensible protection of their graphic identity. The gray stripes mean that an interested party can see it clearly, but can't pass it off as official. Emblematic of the wrong way to protect your identity is South Carolina, who has a great seal but makes it impossible for anyone to appreciate it. SC was disqualified from the Top 32 due to this crappiness. (Penn State was also disqualified from the Top 32 because it was, quite literally, the least I could do.) Penn also deserves mention for their clever bait-and-switch: their shield is based on the Penn and Franklin family coats-of-arms and is used on their merchandise. It's widely considered to be their seal, but their actual seal is the seven books of the liberal arts. The trivium and quadrivium: the original 3-4 defense against ignorance.

The second special prize goes to the most badass seals I found while searching. In third place is the U.S. winner, Davidson College, for featuring the brutal murder of a snake. Second place goes to Sweden's Lund University. It's a lion, wearing a crown, holding a frakkin' longsword. He's reading the Cabela's catalog in order to devise the most up-to-date countersafari techniques. "Do you know what those poachers won't be expecting?" he's thinking to himself. "A pride of lions armed with swords!" The year 1666 was a good year to be founded because years containing "666" are inherently badass.

It may be my Canadian jingoism showing when I declare Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University the winner, but no, that's some serious badassery. Dalhousie's named for its founder George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, and their shield and coronet, consisting of the eagle, crown, and unicorn head, comes from the Ramsay family coat of arms. For the Ramsays, the shield is supported by a gryphon and a greyhound, but, at some point, Dalhousie officials said, "To hell with that! That's not badass enough. We're adding some freakin' dragons." And so they did. They also get bonus points for using the only nonconfusing Latin abbreviation of a placename in North America.

 

And now, the 25 best seals in FBS! After the jump! I have written a haiku to celebrate each one.

Seal Block: Vote for the Worst! Vote for the Best!

So we are all finished ranking the official seals of the school in the so-called Football Bowl Subdivision. You can browse the whole series of posts here.

To finish off the series, we want input as to the best and worst university seals there are. For the best, the Top 32 are available in one image: (click to enlarge)

We're going to whittle that down to a Top 25, so post your Top 25 vote in the comments, or tweet it to me @schnoxl.

But before doing the best, we're going to vote for the worst. For the worst, you can nominate any post-secondary institution you want from anywhere in the world. The categories you can nominate schools in are:

• Worst Concept
• Worst Font
• Most Outdated Design
• Most Needlessly Busy
• Most Boring
• Creepiest
• Worst Use of an Ancient Language
• Most Incongruous Symbol
• Most Unintentionally Hilarious

I will evaluate your nominations based on the strength of your case, so if you really feel a school deserves to win a particular category, write up your case and make it funny.

The worst overall seal will not be a contested category, as we already know which college will be the clear winner in that category, and that college are clearly happy with that outcome.

We'll reveal the worsts next week and the bests the week after that, so submit your nominations asap!