Abstract:
A team standings marker that indicates the standings of teams in an organized league. The standings marker allows a fan to track and display the standings of the teams during the course of a season. The standings marker has an indicia bearing base with a number of small flagpoles supporting team emblem pennants.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     1. Field of the Invention 
     The present invention relates generally to devices for tracking and displaying the standings of teams in an organized league and more particularly, to a team&#39;s standings marker or display. The team&#39;s standings marker is a base with a number of small flagpoles supporting team emblem pennants. 
     2. Description of the Related Art 
     Every fan is an ardent advocate for his or her team with every fan seeking a way to exhibit his or her enthusiastic support for his or her favorite team. Public displays of team loyalty are commonplace. Sports fan are always looking for new and creative ways to express their devotion to a sport and to a team. The enthusiasm and excitement of following one&#39;s favorite team during the course of a season has each fan anxiously awaiting the arrival of every new season. 
     The prior art describes a variety of devices for displaying the standings of sports teams. For example, U.S. Pat. No. Des. 366,798, issued on Feb. 6, 1996 to R. J. Messersmith, describes an ornamental design for a wall mounted board for a team display of baseball cards. An ornamental design for a data tracking display board is described in U.S. Pat. No. Des. 369,625, issued on May 7, 1996 to L. F. Nevels. 
     U.S. Pat. No. 3,949,506, issued on Apr. 13, 1976 to J. Benkowski, describes a plaque with repositionable ornamental team units. The ornamental team plaque is made of plastic and has a plurality of ornamental team unit members that are repositionably mounted on the face of the plastic body. The plurality of ornamental team unit members are positioned in a numerical sequence to designate team standing and a date indicator shows the time period for which the standings are valid. 
     A device and method for displaying a final gaming result is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,074, issued on Jun. 16, 1998 to L. Cannon, et al. In one embodiment, the device and method for displaying a final gaming result displays on a video monitor the winning results in a complete manner and all non-winning results in a faded manner. In an alternate embodiment, only the winning results of the game are displayed. The gaming device includes input devices, memory devices, and output devices, all of which are connected to a central processor. 
     U.S. Pat. No. 5,819,457, issued on Oct. 13, 1998 to R. J. Parker, describes a sports teams standing apparatus. A support is provided having a generally planar face surface on which a playing field for selected sport is demarked. Respective sets of attachment means, such as a hook members, are placed on loci spaced from one another on the face surface. For each attachment means a team designator is provided for removably mounting on respective attachment means. 
     None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singularly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed. Thus a standings marker solving the aforementioned problems is desired. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     Accordingly, it is a principal object of the invention to provide a team standings marker or display that decoratively and clearly shows the league standings of teams in a league. 
     It is another object of the invention to provide a team standings marker that can be easily rearranged or modified to show changes in the standings of the teams. 
     It is a further object of the invention to provide a team standings marker that can be quickly and easily reduced in size to reflect the withdrawal of a team from the league or increased in size to reflect the addition a new team to the league. 
     Still another object of the invention is to provide a team standings marker that demonstratively shows the outcome or result of a game between two teams. 
     It is an object of the invention to provide improved elements and arrangements thereof for the purposes described which is inexpensive, dependable and fully effective in accomplishing its intended purposes. 
     The foregoing objectives are achieved in accordance with the present invention by providing a modular team standings marker or display that exhibits the standings of teams in an organized league or the outcome of a game between two teams in the league. The team standings marker of the present invention has a two tier base with an indicia bearing lower tier and a team pennant bearing upper tier. The team standings marker can be readily expanded to accommodate new expansion teams. 
     The team standings marker allows the sportsman to share in the glory when his favorite team wins. The team standings marker can be used to show the standings and the outcome of games for any type of team competition. 
     These and other objects of the present invention will become readily apparent upon further review of the following specification and drawings. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
     FIG. 1 is an environmental, perspective view of a teams standings marker according to the present invention. 
     FIG. 2 is an exploded view of a teams standings marker. 
    
    
     Similar reference characters denote corresponding features consistently throughout the attached drawings. 
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     The present invention, as depicted in FIGS. 1 and 2, is a team standings marker or display  100  for designating the standings of teams in an organized league or the outcome of a game between two teams in an organized league. The team standings marker  100  has an innovative modular construction that allows the marker or display  100  to be expanded when a new team is added to the league and to be condensed when a team withdraws from the league. FIG. 2 is an exploded view of a teams standings marker  100  showing the component parts of the marker  100 . Modular base units  102  serve both a support function and a display function. The modular base units  102  when connected form a support platform  144 . 
     The individual base units  102  have a two tier  120 , 122  arrangement with the lower tier  120  displaying the logo  118  of a team and with the upper tier  122  supporting a small flag pole or staff  128  that flies a team emblem pennant  116  bearing a team&#39;s name and/or logo  118 . The flag pole  128  is disposed within an opening  134  in the upper tier&#39;s top surface  130 . The lower tier  120  has a rectangular shape while the upper tier  122  has a square shape. Furthermore, the surface of the upper tier  122  is the same color as the team&#39;s color or colors, for example, the upper tier top surface  130  of one base unit  102  is green while the upper tier top surface  130  for another base unit  102  is purple. 
     FIG. 1 shows an environmental, perspective view of a fully assembled teams standings marker  100  bearing the team logos  118  and flying the team emblem pennants  116  of several teams. When fully assembled the team standings marker  100  stands approximately 9 inches from the bottom  140  of the platform  144  to the top  142  of the flag pole  128 . The relative position of the pennant or flag  116  is changed by means of a pulley arrangement  112 , 114 , 126  as shown in FIG.  1 . Therefore, a jubilant fan is able to fly his team&#39;s pennant  116  at full mast after a win and flies the defeated team&#39;s pennant  116  at half mast. 
     Referring to FIG. 2, spacers  104  with the same two tier  120 , 122  design as the base units  102  are disposed between the base units  102  to provide spacing between two adjacent base units  102 . A pair of end caps  106  also having a two tier arrangement are disposed at each end  132  of the standings marker  100 . The base units  102 , the spacers  104 , and the end caps  106  are connected to each other by inserting T-shaped pins  108  disposed on the sides of the spacers  104  and the end caps  106  into slots  110  disposed on the sides of the base units  102 . The end caps  106  have pins  108  disposed only on one side as shown in FIG.  2 . Each base unit  102  is 2 inches in width and 6 inches in length, each spacer  104  is ½ inch in width and 6 inches in length, and each end cap  106  is ½ inch in width and 6 inches in length. The base units  102 , the spacers  104 , and the end caps  106  can be made of any suitable material, such as wood or plastic. 
     A standings indicator  124  is disposed at the front surface  134  of the upper tier  122  and indicates the standing of the team in the league. The standings indicator  124  can be a dial with numerals  136 , a cube with numerals (not shown), an octagon with numerals (not shown), or individual plastic encapsulated paper numerals  138 . The team standings marker  100  is also used to show the outcome or result of a game between two teams, for example, the team pennant  116  for the victorious team is flown at full mast while the team pennant  116  for the losing team is flown at half mass with the team pennants  116  for teams that did not play located at the base of the flag pole  128 . 
     The team standings marker of the present invention allows the avid sports fan to savor every minute of a victory with a constant reminder of that joyous moment and to relish in frequently seeing his or her favorite team&#39;s standings in the league. The team standings marker can be scaled up or down in size to accommodate the needs of the user, for example, a scaled down team standings marker can easily reside on a sports fan&#39;s desk. Thus, the sports enthusiast can have an “at a glance” update of league standings and game results. 
     The preferred embodiments of the present invention disclosed herein are intended to be illustrative only and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention. It should be understood by those skilled in the art that various modifications and adaptations of the present invention as well as alternative embodiments of the present invention may be contemplated. 
     It is to be understood that the present invention is not limited to the embodiments described above, but encompasses any and all embodiments within the scope of the following claims.