UTRGV Vaqueros Logo
UTRGV Vaqueros is an abbreviation standing for the UT Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros, a sports program of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, which was established in 1930 as Texas Southmost College. It is now one of the largest educational institutions in the country serving Latin-American students.
Meaning and history
UT Rio Grande Valley Vaqueros competes in the first Division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, with most of the teams being members of the Western Athletic Conference, which was established in 1962 and today consists of eleven teams and covers twenty sports disciplines.
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley has a long and interesting history. Even though everything started in 1930, UTRGV in its current state appeared in 2013, after a complete reorganization, following the consolidation of the University of Texas at Brownsville / Texas Southern College and the University of Texas-Pan American. Nearly 90 percent of the UTRGV students are Latino, almost all of them Mexican-Americans.
The strongest sports discipline of UTRGV Vaqueros is basketball. Historically success in this sport is connected to the team from UTPA (the former name of the Pan American College), which won its first championship in 1963. Vaqueros are also very strong in men’s soccer and have a very decent women’s team in the same discipline.
What is UTRGV Vaqueros?
UTRGV Vaqueros is the name of an athletic program from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. The program is composed of eight men’s and eight women’s teams, which compete in various sports disciplines, including Baseball, Basketball, Tennis, and several others.
In terms of visual identity, UTRGV Vaqueros got their first official logo in 2015, after the reorganization of the university, however, we want to trace its history from a bit earlier, to see what affected the current design of the Vaqueros badge.
1984 – 2009
The predecessor of the UTRGV Vaqueros athletic program was Texas-Pan American Broncs, and the logo, used by the teams from the middle of the 1980s featured a solid orange image of a graceful bronco horse, drawn as a silhouette on a plain white background. There was no lettering or small details on the logo, which made it look very stylish and progressive.
2009 – 2014
The Broncs logo was redesigned in 2009 introducing the last UTPA Broncs badge in history. It was a voluminous green lettering in a white outline with the slanted mixed-case characters on a green background, accompanied by an orange geometric “UTPA” abbreviation on top of the banner. The elongated bars of some characters and the inclination of the inscription reflected the determination and strength of the program’s teams.
2015 – 2022
After the merger of the universities into UTRGV in 2013, the new athletic program, the Vaqueros, was created and its first logo was introduced in 2015. The designers decided to unite the last two Broncs badges, making up a modern and sharp badge with the voluminous “V” in two shades of orange and a thick blue outline, decorated by a green star in the middle. Star is a tribute to Texas, the Lone Star State, while orange resembles an elegant bronco from the 1980s, and the shape of the characters reminds of the green “Broncs” lettering from the 2010s.
2022 – Today
In 2022 the Vaqueros badge was redesigned, keeping the recognizable style and color palette from the version created in 2015. Now it is the “UTRGV” lettering in voluminous orange characters with a solid blue outline and the green star on the “V”, drawn across the contour of the Texas state, executed in thick blue lines, and decorated by a laconic orange star at the very bottom of the badge.
Font and color
The designer “UTRGV” lettering from the primary logo of the Vaqueros teams is drawn in a custom font with massive voluminous characters italicized. The square serifs of the bars add confidence and stability to the heavy inscription, making it look unique and stylish.
As for the color palette of the UTRGV Vaqueros’ visual identity, it is based on the combination of two shades of orange, deep and dark shades of blue, green, and white, which add freshness and brightness to the composition.
