Soon after my wife and I moved into the same house I was watching an NFL game in front of the basement television when she sat down beside me. She watched silently for a few minutes, then said “Who designed those terrible outfits?”
I don’t remember who was playing during that game. It might have been Detroit and Tampa Bay or some other out-of-market game I had on after watching the Vikings complete their game for the day.
With Nike taking over NFL uniforms sometime during the next couple seasons, there is a good chance any time she sits down with me to watch a game (a rare occurrence) that she’ll be saying the same thing more emphatically.
I found out recently that Nike was to soon take over the production of NFL jerseys from a post on the website for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, which indicated that the company planned to “dramatically” change the Vikings’ jerseys – and likely those of the other NFL teams.
This scared me a bit because Nike is responsible for the yellow/green/checkerboard hideous things resembling jerseys that the Oregon Ducks wear for their NCAA games. The different combinations could not possibly be more disgusting, ranging in ridiculousness from banana yellow to something (I think) slightly darker than baby poop green, some of which have checkerboard designs on the shoulder pads and knees. I think the Ducks are the best team in college football this season. I think their uniforms are the worst college football has seen since I’ve been watching football.
Well, something called BusinessInsider.com has published potential uniforms for each of the NFL’s 32 teams. Reportedly they are fake, according to sports business reporting guru Darren Rovell’s twitter status.
But they looked about like I expected the Nike team designs to look. And if this is what Nike proposes for the majority of the NFL teams, the league needs to run as fast as humanly possible in the opposite direction. A couple of teams’ jerseys would stay roughly how they look now. Seattle’s drab-on-drab gray and dark blue wouldn’t change much and Detroit would look roughly as they do now.
On the other hand, Cincinnati would look like some poor diarrhea-stricken fool on an acid trip took a crap and then vomited on a helmet that no longer has any resemblance to that of a Bengal tiger. Furthermore, I count at least three colors on a pair of pants that looks just short of obscene — can we at least keep the pants to one color? Almost every team in the league looks ridiculous based on the gross designs that showed up on this site.
Pittsburgh, a blue collar city perfect for the black jerseys and minimalist logo-on-one-side-of-the-helmet logo the team has sported for years, would switch to some kind of gross flourescent yellow helmet with the logo on the front of the jersey.
Jacksonville’s relatively recognizable Jaguar logo would become some outline of something that looks more like a cloud than a large cat. Kansas City and San Francisco look to have switched colors.
And the Vikings, who have always sported purple helmets with a white horn in some way, shape or form since the day I grew up, suddenly resemble Cretin-Derham Hall High School, a private, metropolitan high school in the area that has helmets only slightly more yellow than this site projects the modern Vikes will have.
Among the oddest looking designs was that of the New England Patriots, who, yes, would actually be sporting the stripes of the American flag on their shoulders and the stars above their left hips.And then the Kansas City Chiefs, who would sport at least a second uniform with a bunch of feathers on their shoulders. Are they going to fly away if games start going badly?
Please. These prototypes are hideous. I am not the only person in fear of what NFL teams could look like in the next couple years. If Nike goes to the hilt, as rumors say they want to, they will turn the NFL into a joke.
Please, NFL, please stop this from happening. Not all of today’s uniforms are great. There are some duds. But these examples of potential new ones — yes, I acknowledge they have been called fakes, but I believe there is some truth to rumors that Nike is floating them to see what fans would think — are absolutely an abomination. This is not college football. More importantly, this is not Arena football. Or the developmental league that used to play in Europe.
This is NFL football. It’s not about designing ridiculous uniforms that have to stand out by themselves. It’s about the game. Leave the uniforms as they are. Tweaks? Maybe. But if the choice is not changing at all or forcing teams to don duds that make them look as though the pregame meal caused them to mess themselves on the bus to the stadium, I hope you know the right choice to make.
I don’t have a lot of faith that you do, given the ridiculous state of fines for uniform violations or the failed efforts to arrive at a collective bargaining agreement that satisfies billionaire owners and millionaire players while the folks making $40,000-a-year or less struggle to find a way to pay for their season tickets.
But I hope that you do. And if you do, you’ll grab someone at Nike by the lapels, whether these designs are real or not, shake them hard and say “if our teams end up looking like the assclowns in these drawings, this will be the shortest contract in league history.”
I shudder to think what this league is going to look like if you don’t come to this realization. I’m dizzy just looking at the possibilities.
Andy writes, “It’s not about designing ridiculous uniforms that have to stand out by themselves. It’s about the game.” Which is think is a hopelessly optimistic assessment. Uniforms mean merchandise sales. Every throwback, third-alternate home uniform, and Nike abomination means another $200 ‘authentic’ jersey to push into the market.
Without a doubt, you’re right, and I should have commented on that trend in the post (it was 2 a.m., cut me some slack).
But where does it end? These uniforms are gross. They’re a joke. They aren’t fit for an arena league team. And if this is anything like what Nike comes up with for the substantial changes they plan, I hope the fans revolt and leave these abominations on shelves everywhere.
I agree with how absurd they are, but it isn’t about whether some married guy in his 30s will buy and wear them. It’s about whether some 15-year-old will want it. In fact, if our demographic hates them, Nike may consider that a success.
I don’t think that even 15-year-olds like them. Lets be serious, I like some of the things Nike sells, but those uniforms are horrible. They have to think about the fact that we are watching the game not listening to it and it’s important for them to actually be easy on the eyes. I don’t wanna stop watching the games because my eyes hurt from trying to follow some checker florescent uniforms running around!