Texas/Southwest

12/21/2007

Associated Press

Cooper High School has complied with orders to change its cougar logo, which was almost identical to Washington State University's trademarked image.

Collegiate Licensing Co., which represents 200 colleges, asked the high school to change its red cougar head logo because of the similarities.

The logo was created for the Abilene school in the 1960s after Washington State's head football coach, the late Bert Clark, sent then-Cooper coach Merrill Green a copy of his university's cougar logo. Clark and Green served in the U.S. Army together during the 1950s.

"I liked it," Green recently told the Abilene Reporter-News. "It was very simple to draw. I think that's when we began using it."

Cooper's new logo unveiled Thursday is a crimson cougar, lined in blue with white fangs, designed by a local graphic artist.

"We're calling this a new legacy, a new beginning," football coach Mike Spradlin said.

A detailed search of more than 20,000 decals and logos has shown that the new image of the fierce cougar, its mouth poised to form the "C" in "Cooper" or "Coogs," is unique to the high school, Spradlin said. The image is already trademarked and eventually will be copyrighted, he said.

The high-profile logo displays will be changed first. Big challenges include the logo on the Cooper gym floor and on the stadium scoreboard.

School officials estimated it would cost $40,000 to $50,000 over five years to make all the necessary changes, depending on their time limit to eliminate the old logo.