Monday Morning Uni Watch

We already knew Vikings punter Chris Kluwe was in favor of gay rights. Turns out he’s also in favor of Guy rights, at least judging by the “Vote Ray Guy” message that he taped over his Hall of Fame patch yesterday. Yeah, he’ll get fined, but whatever — pretty funny stuff, despite the somewhat sloppy execution. (The cover-up patch isn’t the first time Kluwe has tried to make the case for Guy’s induction, incidentally. Here’s a slightly more detailed piece of advocacy from last month.)

In other developments from yesterday’s NFL action:

• Most teams wore the Hall of Fame patch on the upper-left chest. But teams that already wear a patch in that spot moved the Hall patch over to the right side. Those teams were the Jets, Ravens, Steelers, and Chiefs. (The Texans will presumably do likewise when they play tonight, because they already have a 10th-anniversary patch at upper-left.) Oddly enough, three of these teams — the Jets, Steelers, and Ravens — don’t normally wear captaincy patches, so they didn’t have to worry about a patch overload on the right side. As for the Chiefs, I believe they solved the problem by simply not bothering with captaincy patches yesterday.

• Speaking of the Jets’ upper-left team logo patch, several players were missing theirs, including Tim Tebow, LaRon Landry, and Eric Smith. I believe running back Joe McKnight’s team patch was also AWOL, but I can’t find a photo of him.

• Still with the Jets: Offensive lineman Nick Mangold’s left-sleeve swoosh was facing the wrong way.

• Lots of jersey issues for Tony Romo: First his Hall of Fame patch was peeling off and then was gone altogether, and then he suffered a torn uni number.

• For the second consecutive week, an NFL death went unmemorialized. This time it was the Cowboys’ Jerry Brown, who was killed on Saturday when teammate Josh Brent crashed his car while allegedly driving drunk. No patch or decal yesterday for Brown.

• What Brandon Marshall did to his beautiful striped socks is a crying shame.

• The Bills wore white throwbacks at home. You can see lots of good shots from their locker room here.

• The Bengals wore their orange alts.

• Frank Gore of the 49ers showed up for yesterday’s game against the Dolphins wearing a rather unique sweatshirt.

Meanwhile, in case you missed yesterday, there was a good recap of the Army/Navy game in yesterday’s entry. For what it’s worth, several readers told me they had trouble reading Army’s map-patterned uni numbers during that game. “Looks good up close but not so good from a distance” was the general consensus.

(My thanks to all contributors, including David Bremer, Timothy Burke, Tim Fitzpatrick, Jason Greening, Matt Harris, John Turney, Tony Vendittelli, and Brinke.)

Fleur de lis update: Last week’s installment of Question Time included a query about whether the the Nordiques had included the fleur de lis on their jersey because they’d cut a deal with the Quebec government (which was separatist at the time) to promote the province in return for tax breaks. I said I’d never heard that rumor before. Now reader Jean-Frédérick Legendre has checked in with some additional info:

I now live in Montreal but was born and raised in Quebec City (therefore a Nordiques fan and still a Habs-hater). Please excuse any language mistakes, I’m a franco!

The true story is that the fleur de lis was added to the Nordiques jersey for the 1974-75 season after a sponsorship was given by the Quebec Tourism department. That was, in fact, two years before the province of Québec elected its first sovereigntist government.

For that season, they just kept the same jerseys from the previous season but added fleurs de lis on both shoulders. It was only a year later, in the 1975-76 season, that they started to wear the design with the eight fleurs de lis. This was still one year before the sovereigntist Parti Québécois took office.

I have no clue how much money was given by the Tourism Department, for how many years the “sponsorship” lasted and if they were responsible for the 1975-76 version of the jersey. I seriously doubt that the Nordiques received money from the government up through 1995, though (it probably lasted only for a few seasons, maximum). But the fleur de lis just became an integral part of the Nordiques’ identity and was even to be kept on the shoulders of the prototype that was planned for 1996-97 (but never worn, as we all know). If the franchise is ever revived — which I’m hopeful and confident for! — I can’t see how the new team management could not make the fleur de lis part of the team’s brand, even if Quebec nationalism is unfortunately not rating that high right now.

The story is available, in French, here.

Uni Watch News Ticker: You know what football players don’t wear? A cup! Highly entertaining reading, and I’m a little pissed off that I never thought to write my own article on that topic. ”¦ Fairly uncommonly seen Orioles logo shown on this 1965 preseason series program cover (from Ray Barrington). … The Texans have gone old-school and ordered themselves a set of varsity-style jackets. … When Ray Lewis returns to the Ravens in Week 15, he’ll have a new facemask. … Here’s something you won’t often see: color photos from a 1960 Packers/Lions game (from Don Schauf). ”¦ Mark Coale spotted this MLB cap ad in a 1970 comic book. “Note that it has the Pilots, not the Brewers,” he adds. ”¦ “I just picked up this book Barely Audible: A History of the Denver Broncos, which was written in 1975,” says Broncos scholar Tom Jacobsen. “It has photos of the team in a look I’d never seen before: the 1962-64 orange style, but with no decals on the helmets. No credits or captions with the photos, unfortunately.” Hmmm — preseason, perhaps? ”¦ Tim Burke spotted a guy wearing a jersey that was half Mike Alstott, half Kordell Stewart. Slash, indeed! ”¦ New Hispanic alternate jersey for the Reds. “Couldn’t hate it more,” says Cincy’s own David Sonny. “Take an ugly softball top in solid red, replace the classic wishbone-C with a generic chest-wide wordmark completely devoid of any ties to the Reds history, and you get the ugliest uniform the Reds have had since the vests with black sleeves.” … Here’s everything you need to know about why “New Orleans Pelicans” is an awesome team name. ”¦ New logo for the University of California (from Jen McGovern). ”¦ Jeff Seals notes that Liz Brenner of the Oregon women’s volleyball team had an upside-down 9 on the front of her jersey, instead of a proper 6, while playing against Nebraska at the NCAA Tournament Regional Final. You can see the correct 6 on her sleeve. ”¦ Here’s some great color footage of a 1940 Duke/UNC football game (from Jeff Flynn, Jr.). ”¦ Ansonia High School in Connecticut added a rather massive memorial decal for former coach Jack Hunt, who passed away on Thanksgiving. I’m told that the ribbon is a “Stand up to cancer” gesture (from Matthew Edwards). ”¦ Dennis Healy is sick of hearing people say NIU doesn’t belong in the Orange Bowl, so he made this graphic. ”¦ New alternate uniform for George Washington hoops. “First time I’ve ever seen a logo on their chest, instead of the script of the university name,” says Richard Howard. ”¦ In a related item, have you ever noticed that the negative space in the “W” of that GW logo is shaped like the Washington Monument? ”¦ Utah State basketball wore “12” patches on Saturday night in honor of freshman guard Danny Berger, who collapsed due to a heart condition during practice last Tuesday and had to be revived by an assistant trainer. Nice gesture, but that looks disturbingly close to a memorial patch, no? ”¦ The trend toward gray has now spread to big-time boxing, as Manny Pacquiao wore gray trunks and gray shoes for Saturday night’s bout against Juan Manuel Marquez. ”¦ Pretty funny EPL T-shirt here (from Max Weintraub). ”¦ Steve Santillo notes that the Ohio State hockey team sure does like that “Columbus Stripe” pattern. ”¦ Look at Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry — both then assistant coaches with the Giants — wearing completely different “NY” logos (from Fran Fried). ”¦ Saturday Night Live used a really old Michigan State logo the other night. “The top ‘head’ part is correct, but the bottom part hasn’t been used since before 2001,” says Kyle Munro. ”¦ Paul Deaver notes that all three of this year’s Heisman finalists wore single-digit uni numbers. Has that ever happened before? ”¦ Also from Paul: The Monmouth basketball team has one of history’s more unique annoying uni number fonts. ”¦ I’m not sure where you can get this T-shirt, but it’s perfect for your next Bills tailgate (from Tony Caliguiri). ”¦ For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, Jason Kidd was clowning around in a Rangers helmet (from Chris Flinn). ”¦ The Royals just traded pitching prospect Mike Montgomery to the Rays, where he’s expected to split time between AA and AAA. The Rays’ AA club is the Montgomery Biscuits, so at some point we’ll probably have Montgomery playing for Montgomery. Unfortunately, the Biscuits don’t have a jersey with their city name on the front (understandable, given that “Biscuits” is one of the best words in the English language), so we won’t have a jersey situation akin to Curtis Pride playing for the Nashua Pride. ”¦ New logo for the Korean Baseball Organization (from Dan Kurtz). ”¦ New G.I. Joe uniforms for the College of Southern Idaho (from Ryan Arave).