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Uni Watch

Monday Morning Uni Watch

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The Texans went mono-blue on Saturday — a combo I believe the wore only once during the regular season (Week 11 vs. the Jags). Interestingly, their web site said they’d be wearing blue jerseys and white pants, but they’ve now changed that text. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you can see they still have the old blue-over-white photo in place.

In other notes from this weekend’s action:

• Of the eight NFL playoff teams that played over the weekend, five of them were still wearing the Sandy Hook Elementary memorial decals (the Bengals, Packers, Vikings, Colts, and Seahawks) and three were not (the Texans, Ravens, and of course Washington, which never wore the decal during the regular season to begin with).

• Manny Lawson of the Bengals was wearing socks emblazoned with the mark of the beast. Let’s hope that doesn’t catch on.

• The Packers stuck with their established protocol of not wearing captaincy patches in the regular season but adding them for the postseason.

• Charles Woodson debuted a new facemask.

•  Another player with a new facemask: Ray Lewis (plus he had a bionic arm!).

• At one point during the Seahawks/’Skins game, Seattle had the ball but Fox mistakenly put the “2nd & 7” graphic in Washington colors.

• Turning to college action, there was a moment in the Telecom Bowl when Texas A&M had quite a few unusual NOBs grouped together on the sidelines. In case you’re curious “De. Harris” is De’Vonte Harris (the roster also includes Dustin Harris), and “Trl. Taylor” is Tyrell Taylor (the roster also includes Tyrone Taylor).

• In that same game, Oklahoma’s Damien Williams had an unusual NOB of his own. The Sooners roster also includes Danzel Williams — anyone know if his NOB includes his middle initial, like Damien’s does?

• One more note from that game: At one point the game and a commercial were being shown simultaneously. Weird.

(My thanks to all contributors, including Clifford Baxter, Chris Falvey, Joshua Pryor, and Dave Rakowski.)

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Membership update: Eight new designs have been added to the membership card design gallery (including Greg Fedio’s Rutgers football design shown at right). The printed/laminated versions of these cards should mail out no later than Wednesday — and possibly as soon as today.

As always, you can sign up to get your own custom-designed membership card here.

Contest reminder: In case you missed it yesterday, Phil is running a contest to design a new Super Bowl logo. For details, look here.

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Uni Watch News Ticker: Lots of readers noticed that Rex Ryan’s much-ballyhooed tattoo looks a lot like the work of longtime Uni Watch favorite Rob Ullman. So did Rex hire Rob to design his tat? That would be a great story, but unfortunately it isn’t true. Details here. … Here’s what the field will look like for tonight’s BCS title game, and here’s the Notre Dame locker room (from Rob Holecko and Warren Junium, respectively). ”¦ Hockey rinks in northern Canada have traditionally been kept frozen by the naturally cold environment. But now, thanks to global climate change, many rinks in the region have been forced to employ artificial refrigeration. ”¦ Friday’s post about colleges wearing mismatched helmet colors prompted lots of additional examples from years past — you can scroll through that day’s comments to see them. But Alex Allen pointed me toward an example on the high school level that’s still ongoing: Capital High in Boise uses a mix of gold and black helmets. According to this message board, the helmet protocol came about as follows: “Capital High School in Boise nicknamed their defense the Gurkhas. The starters earned a black helmet, as opposed to gold for the rest of the team. They also had a black beret to wear around school. When they lost to their rival, they had to sheathe the gurkha sword in the school’s display case, and vice versa if they won. The helmet and beret could be taken away, but I’m not sure the exact reasons why. It was strange to look out and see 8 black helmets and 3 gold ones. The lack of achievement was on display for everyone to see. My buddies from that school told me it was quite the motivating factor for the defense.” ”¦ Friday night’s Tennessee/Memphis hoops game was notable for two reasons: It was a color-vs.-color game, and Tennessee’s uniforms were similar to the NBA’s Xmas Day designs. Nebraska and Wisconsin tried something similar, but without the color-on-color angle, on Sunday. … Check this cool baseball-themed pillow (from my pal Robin Edgerton). … The city of New York is seeking bids on 15,000 to 30,000 clip-on neckties for its police force. That prompted the New York Times to run a very entertaining piece on police neckwear. ”¦ Some sort of alternate uni in the works — maybe a Fab Five throwback — for Michigan hoops. … New logo reportedly in the works for the Pirates (from Chris Weber). … The Omega Pharma/Quick-Step cycling team is going with THOB — that’s Twitter handle on back. “To my knowledge, this is the first time Twitter handles have made it onto a cycling jersey, although I know some other teams in other sports have also done this,” says Rob Danneker). … The Binghamton Senators wore a jersey celebrating 40 years of hockey in Binghamton the other day (from Eric Hawkins). … Reprinted from Friday’s comments: The Toonseum in Pittsburgh is running an exhibit on scoreboard animation. … Elvis Presley’s birthday is tomorrow, and the Mississippi River Kings (SPHL) will be marking the occasion with this uniform (from Ryan Bohannon). … Tom Brady has a big endorsement deal with Under Armour. This presumably explains why the logo creep on his jerseys has been scrubbed clean from all the photos of Brady on his Facebook page (good spot by Charles Noerenberg). ”¦ There’s a high school in Hazel Green, Alabama, called Hazel Green High School. Oddly, their color scheme includes no hazel or green (from Paul Deaver). ”¦ While looking for something else, I came upon a photo of the Rocky Mountain (Idaho) football team, which has come up with a creative new approach to logo poaching: They use an NBA logo! ”¦ Speaking of logo poaching, Arizona State’s current identity has only existed for, what, two seasons? And it’s already being lifted (from James Noone). ”¦ Tons of soccer throwbacks available for purchase here (from Omar A.). ”¦ Here’s a look back at the Sixers uniforms of the 1990s (from Mike McLaughlin). ”¦ Holy moly, look at this absolutely amazing 1970s lacrosse program cover! What a beauty (from Tom Langan). ”¦ There’s been a possible leak of the USA’s World Baseball Classic uniform (from Elliot Teichman). ”¦ Lots of cool NFL/AFL bobbleheads, including a Steelers “Batman” model, here (from Rocky Lum). ”¦ According to this item, our old pal Wayne Hagin is among the front-runners to get the Astros’ vacant radio play-by-play spot. “Is it bad form to start a ‘Fire Wayne Hagin’ movement before Wayne Hagin is actually hired?” asks Cort McMurray. ”¦ See that leather strap being worn by Rocco Gimaldi of the USA World Junior team? Denis Kirstein swears it’s a wristwatch, although you can’t tell from that angle. ”¦ “Joe Cole, playing for West Ham United got hit in the nose by a Manchester United player and it bled onto his jersey,” reports Matthew Solly. “He switched and the blood jersey had no number, name or patches.” … Remember those 1960s polka dot uniforms I showcased last week? You can see how they turned out as throwbacks in this photo gallery. I’ll be writing an ESPN column about this for Wednesday. … Good piece on phantom bowl game merch. ”¦ New cap designs for the Medford Rogues. ”¦ Blues captain David Backes did a PSA for a local spay/neuter operation, and they moved his captain’s “C” so it didn’t overlap on the yoke (from Jonathan Karberg). ”¦ Remember those Tide-sponsored video segments about NFL teams’ color schemes? You can see all of them grouped together on this page. ”¦ Here’s an absolutely bizarre photo of former Blues player Gary Unger playing golf barefoot and super-striped (from Tris Wykes). ”¦ Another color-vs.-color college basketball game from yesterday: Oregon vs. Oregon State (from Mike Lindquist). ”¦ “I was watching the 30 for 30 episode on Loyola Maramount (“Guru of Go”) and noticed that the Lions had three uniforms during the 1989-90 season: home white, road red, and a gray alternate,” writes Matt Dowell. “It seemed, from the video, that the gray was used mostly at home (the games looked color-on-color), but that conclusion is based on a single viewing.” ”¦ The Dallas Stars are working on “drastically different” uniforms for the 2013-14 season (from James T. Paterson). ”¦ The Blue Jays are conducting a series of youth instructional clinics, and their coaches are wearing the Baseball Canada logo on the side of their caps (good spot by Ted Stempak). ”¦ Brendan Hack recently visited the Heard Museum in Arizona, which is devoted to Native American art and history. “One section was dedicated to Indian boarding schools, where Native American children were taken away from home and ‘Americanized,'” he says. “The exhibit covered every aspect of boarding school life, including athletics. They had some uniforms on display from the 1970s and ’80s (yes the schools were still around then). Interesting to see what the team nicknames were.” ”¦ I’ll be busy seeing live music tonight, so I won’t catch the ND/’Bama game. For those of you who’ll be watching, enjoy.

 
  
 
Comments (165)

    Can’t confirm, but it looks like he was wearing bigger pads too. Probably as a result of his broken collarbone, or at least not wanting to re-break it right away!

    Both richard deitsch and john ourand of SBJ wrote about Fox’s new “double box” conmercial idea.

    I’ve seen this approach during Indy Car races for the past couple of years. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was used elsewhere as well.

    I know it’s also been done during NASCAR races by Fox and possibly ESPN. That actually makes sense because unless there is a red flag, the race never truly stops. But why in the world would you do it during a college football game, which actually has timeouts called for the sole purpose of showing commercials???

    Well, since his last job was doing radio in New York, it’s hard to imagine what “a bigger job” would be. Like, TV for the Yankees?

    It wasn’t just “radio in New York.” It was the Mets. So there are plenty of other teams and markets that would have been a step up for Hagin. (Yankees, yes, but also Cardinals, Cubs, Dodgers, Phillies, Sawx, maybe a few others.) As well as a network or MLB job. Astros may not be a step down from the Mets, but it isn’t a step up. So, a victory of sorts in our world, where failing upward really is the norm in so much of our media.

    “Astros may not be a step down from the Mets, but it isn’t a step up.”

    ~~~

    Ouch.

    At least you didn’t include the Nats in those “other teams and markets.”

    IIRC Hagin had been with the Cards between the Rox and the Mets. I’d say that Dodgers, Angels, Cubs, Yanks or a national network gig would be “up” from the Mets.

    Hey, nothing against the Mets. If I were a New Yorker, I’d be a Yankees-hating Mets fan. (Heck, before my town got its very own NL team, I was a Yankees-hating Mets fan!) It’s just that the Mets are a second-fiddle team in their own market, to say nothing of nationwide.

    And yeah, wherever the Mets are in the media universe, the Nats are far, far below them. Pretty good radio team that nobody hears. Though there have been years when the Nats have had a bigger radio audience, small as it was, than their TV audience. Thankfully for me, Hagin hasn’t fallen low enough to be interviewing for a job calling the Natinals.

    Re: the Washington/ Seattle possession mixup:

    The little possession tick mark in yellow is beside WAS on the ticker. I’m guessing that controls what color the field possession marker is?

    I wonder if the change in quarter played a part in the sanfu somehow. ??? This is the first play of the 4th.

    It wasn’t the quarter change, someone just forgot to flip the possession indicator. It still showed Washington ball for the final play of the 3rd quarter (Seattle’s first down play) as well. The indicator finally flipped to Seattle after the play with the incorrect digital field marker.

    Ooh, Phoenix Indian School stuff! I think the “Bravette 55” is from PIS. Colors same as Washington’s football team (of course), Braves as mascot.

    The Indian School closed in 1990 after nearly a century (it’s now a park and historic site) after they got schools on every reservation. Non-rez boarding schools were not so great.

    You know, I was wondering about that too, but I didn’t say anything because I thought maybe it’d be going on for a while and I just hadn’t noticed….

    They use both Fighting Irish and Fightin’ Irish and they also both can be found on their logo slick.

    “…They use both Fighting Irish and Fightin’ Irish and they also both can be found on their logo slick…”

    That’s terrible news, MEANS. Since when? Goddam it, bring back the orthographically
    correct participle, please.The Old Man (Joseph Patrick) was ND Class of ’32, and rode the bench for Rockne. He would not like that apostrophe.

    for at least 6 years, i’ve always thought they used it for a bit longer. “Fightin’ Irish” is how it is shown on their slick

    Ray Lewis + new mask + expectoration = dangling spittle.

    Anybody else catch that shot yesterday?

    Anyone see/hear about any leaks about the Dallas Star’s new unis? You’d think with a season starting by the 19th, they have to be designed and manufactured by now.

    HOCKEY IS BACK!!

    “13-14” season. they’re just now kicking off the “fuck you fans, we knew you’d be back anyway, not that you matter-13” season

    I used to go to a bunch of NHL games a year but never to NFL games. Since 2004 I’ve been to zero NHL and more NFL games than I can count, and the nearest NHL/NFL stadiums are about 2 hours away. They lost me and did so even more recently, but I’m sure there’s plenty of folks who don’t care and will be back.

    Being an ex Stars employee, they are making sure its done right. They have to make those 11-14 thousand hockey fans in D/FW happy.

    I get why most of the reaction to these is about the eagle eyes on the front, but I don’t think they’re what makes the helmet look bad. Personally, I think the gold shell doesn’t work and the humongous K on the back is overkill. At least it was the coach’s idea and not Nike’s, but it shows why coaches usually aren’t responsible for designing the helmet.

    When I first saw the eagle eyes, I honestly thought they were eyebrows, and that Kent State has run out onto the field with very surprised-looking helmets.

    Just a note on the side-by-side with the commercial, ESPN developed that for their Indycar broadcasts (and as a tool to lure NASCAR back). They came up with it because the caution flags don’t always fall at nice intervals for commercial breaks.

    They only do the split screen thing during “chase” races during the second half of the race. But getting a commercial break when you want one is no more difficult than NASCAR throwing up a “phantom debris” caution.

    so… birmingham senators… you really want “that” patch, in “that” area?!?! ok. we now have the answer to “what’s worse than a tramp stamp”

    Hell, yes, and it’s those Mississippi Rivers Kings’ uniforms! They don’t make enough eye bleach to unsee those puppies.

    For those that were involved in the discussion about the Billy Mosienko bowling alley in Winnipeg, link. The sad part is that the alley has allowed the distinctive artwork to deteriorate. I asked the employees about getting it redone, and none would confirm that there’s a plan to do so.

    Perhaps the item on Rocco Gimaldi’s wrist is one of those heart rate monitors for conditioning purposes? link

    i wore a heart rate monitor while playing ice hockey about 8 years ago. was just for one game, just out of curiosity. i checked the figures after the game and was surprised that my heart didn’t explode. lol. i forget exactly what my heart rate got up to, but i remember thinking, damn that’s one hell of a muscle!

    I wonder if the commercial shown at the same time as OK-A&M game was something that was being tested out. I have seen the same format used during NASCAR races because the racing seldom stops. The commercials are even synced to the car being shown. (If the Miller Lite car is being shown, they show a Miller Lite commercial) I don’t mind it during races because of continuous action, and the cars are rolling billboards anyway. Football has a great amount of stoppage, so commercials on a split screen would annoy me. I hope this is not going to become a trend.

    But a lot of the extraneous stoppage is because of TV timeouts. If they could run the commercials “just” in a side box, think of how quick the game could be played. But they won’t do that, no it’s more likely, if they started doing that, they’d eventually have commercials on in the side box all of the time.

    Me, I want the football game on the whole screen.

    I think, while it probably has to do with for the most part continuous action sports like auto racing and soccer, the fact the people are Tivo’ing and DVR’ing and recording and then fast forwarding through commercials, has led them to think a little “outside the box” (no pun intended) for ways to protect their advertising revenue.

    Maybe they’ll start playing commercials in a virtual screen superimposed on the field — when the wide receiver comes across the middle, he’ll be doing so right on top of a guy standing at a gas pump telling you how he get 1% cash back on his purchases with the new Discover Cash Back card.

    Actually… commercials really don’t add *that* much time to NFL games. A typical game, with commercials and halftime completely cut out (which is really cheating) still runs around 2:15 or so. Given that halftime is a guaranteed 15 minutes… without commercials of any kind, you’re looking at at least 2:30 for a game. Sure, watching cheerleaders for 2 minutes is better than watching 4 ads, but it’s still 2 minutes of wasted time while the teams are changing possession or dealing with an injury or whatever.

    NFL games have 21 breaks (including two-minute warnings) that last 1:50 each. It doesn’t take that long to get the players on the field after change of possession, so the commercials do slow things down.

    From what I understand the “never leave commercial” is how FOX Sports One will be doing their live broadcasts when they launch later this year or next year. Fox is flipping the SPEED net to a full sports network.

    The jersey David Backes is wearing in that video actually looks a lot like a knock-off, doesn’t it? The Blues logo is drastically off-center (and tilted?) and the numbers don’t look quite right.

    If you read the SBJ about the double box, its definitely a trial balloon by Fox.

    See also this article

    link

    I noticed during postgame news coverage here in Pittsburgh of the BBVA Compass Bowl that Legion Field is ripping off the Super Bowl XLIII logo.

    The local reporter was standing in front of a banner like this:

    link

    The nice thing is that the company that produced the banners did it shamelessly:

    link

    SB XLIII logo for comparison:

    link

    Re: Philadelphia 76ers’ uniforms in the 1990’s. Sometimes I feel like the patron of the homely, ill-concieved, and ugly in sports apparel. But there’s no love here for those bad boys. About the best defense I can summon is they demonstrate what you can do with the ink-sublimation process.

    I actually kind of liked the Sixers’ uniforms right after the ones in question (and preceding the insanely ’90s black and gold and blue and red ones).

    The whole design looks to me like it would’ve worked much better in the late 1970s instead of the early 1990s, especially with the use of a form of Helvetica.

    I definitely did not like their black-and-gold era.

    In regards to the Michigan alternate jerseys, it seems to make sense that they will wear some color of jersey (probably the maize one) with the same color numbers. It seems that every adidas school is doing it this season, especially with the above comment about Cinnci. My best guess would be for @OSU next week or when the come to Ann Arbor in February. Just a guess, but that seems to be the way adidas is trending this year.

    I really hope they don’t go that route… but if they must, I’d rather they go with “maize” yellow unis with thick blue outlines.

    It’ll be interesting to see what the Stars do. Hopefully their new unis won’t be as bland as their current ones.

    Still, I’ve always liked the logo, which dates back to the Minnesota North Stars in 1991. On the other hand, since that logo was brought in under Norm Green’s ownership, it could be considered surprising that the logo wasn’t changed sooner, following his sale of the team to Tom Hicks in 1996.

    It’s kind of funny to think that Green was part of two franchise moves that saw their teams’ identities remain largely intact. He was part of the group that bought the Altanta Flames and moved them to Calgary; aside from the logo and slight tweaks to the stripes and collar trim, they kept the same basic uni design until 1994. The Stars’ only uni change after the move was to add the Texas patch to the shoulders; it wasn’t until that same 1994 offseason that they added the “Dallas” to the uniform logo, widened the stripes, and darkened the green.

    Noticed the other night that some of the Vikings players were wearing the NFL issue striped touques with pompom on top, but others had cut their pompoms off. Never noticed before if certain players cut theirs off or not, I didn’t pay attention to them till I got one for Christmas.

    Not the same spelling, but I find it funny that the bit about possible Fab Five-tribute 4th uniforms for Michigan basketball is followed by an observation from “Chris Weber”

    two things, my 6 year old caught the washington color on the seahawk down and yardage ticker, he says “hey! that isn’t right!” then starts blaming me, as I was explaining what it meant. two: charles woodson has no collar on his jersey, the shield is right on the green of the jersey. is that new and only for him?

    charles woodson has no collar on his jersey, the shield is right on the green of the jersey. is that new and only for him?

    The Packers have been using multiple collar styles for several years now.

    A few other teams had players using the truncated collar during the Reebok era (the 49ers and Vikings come to mind), so since Green Bay opted not to adopt any of Nike’s “improvements” at all, it’s not surprising that some players managed to keep their altered collars as well.

    MetsBlog has a screen shot of a Mets cap in Yankees colors.

    INTENTIONALLY.

    Is it time to DITCH THE NAVY BLUE?

    link

    WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?

    What kind of mixed-up person would buy those hats? That’s beyond Frankenjersey bad, since usually Frankenjerseys are just the result of one individual’s insanity. This…

    What a shitload of fuck!

    Those hats are for people that buy them for fashion, not because they’re fans of a given team.

    I do find it a little odd that they only seem to do the color swap thing for MLB teams. You’ll never see a blue & orange Raiders hat (which is good, because if such a thing existed it would need to be burned), but you can get the Yankees in every color combination under the sun.

    It isn’t available commercially, but a guy I worked with in the early nineties had a relative knit him a blue and orange toque that said “Raiders” so he could wear the gear incognito in Denver.

    The Mets cap is one of the best-looking caps in baseball. Could just be my opinion, but the same colors with the Yankees logo looks terrible.

    Damn, I used to live a few minutes away from the Manhattan Inn a decade ago, guess it wasn’t open then but it looks like a fantastic little place. Unfortunately Paul, their website states that Brooklyn hipsters now have a place to go…

    two more things, ONE: I despise the endzones of for the national championship game, the giant BCS logo shoving the school names off center. BCS reminding everyone of the hierarchy much?

    and two: My high school did something similar to alternate helmets, everyone got a Bearcat logo on one site and only the defensive starters got a skull and crossbones for the other. so the majority of the players had one blank side to their helmet, and anyone who had been a starter on defense had decals on both sides.

    I had the same thought about the BCS end zones. I get that they have to brand themselves in today’s world, but it just looks awful.

    Alan ashby is leaving the blue jays broadcast team to go to houston. but he also.played for them and he lives there.

    I’m thinking 55. A 2 probably wouldn’t have that gap on the right side above his bat, unless the jersey is wrinkled really weirdly.

    Damn, even this Gunners fan thinks the Liverpool link is a buet!

    Which brings me to a question: Any DIYers know where I might be able to order elastic for the cuffs, hem of a track jacket?

    I’ve had a cheapo England sweatshirt for years. The elastic is all but useless and the cuffs have frayed but I like it too much to toss. Would love to “restore” it a bit.

    On her return to duty as secretary of state after a fall and concussion, Hillary Clinton’s staff gave her this custom football helmet:

    link

    But a white helmet. Blech! On the plus side, it’s not a gray facemask.

    (Hard to tell from the photo, so I’m pleading with the universe to let that be a navy facemask, not black.)

    On my lunch hour, I saw a guy wearing a California Surf (NASL) jacket. Sorry, no pictures.

    Well I for one am glad the Pirates are getting a new logo. I never liked that 1997-13 logo. The 1990s trendy goatee & crossed bats that a few other teams were using, the use of red, the odd teeth grit that looks like somebody drilled a hole in it. The 1968-86 Long John Silvers one is still my favorite.

    Paul, I know the “P” logo bothers you, maybe this tickles your fancy:

    link

    I also hope the Pirates don’t go with an angry, heavy & multiple outlined pirate with zig-zags & metallic colors or the current trendy “cap logo inside circles with full team name” logo. That would be quite lame.

    Personally, the P only looks off-balanced to me when it’s outlined (or, worse, as the Pirates do, double-outlined).

    Agreed. Yellow on black it looks just fine.

    The tri-cornered hat has been a part of the logo since the 30s, I could see them going back to that – especially because of the popularity brought by Cpt. Sparrow. The 90s pirate never really worked for me, and as an alum neither did link once the “novelty” of a new logo wore off.

    Look no further than M. Willis’ analogy: It looks like the type of fiberglass pirate you’d see at a glitzy mini-golf facility.

    I know it was a week ago, but did anybody mention the captains’ patches for Oklahoma State in their bowl game?

    I really like the sheriff’s star at the collar (see #99 and #80)

    link

    OK, anyone who thinks Paul’s crusade against the militarization of sports uni marketing, dig this tweet from Robert Griffin III today:

    “Many may question, criticize & think they have all the right answers. But few have been in the line of fire in battle”

    Quick list of people who have never been in the line of fire in battle: 1. Robert Griffin III. I honestly can’t see a moral difference between a man who never served his country calling his own experience playing a children’s game for money “in the line of fire in battle” and someone falsely claiming to have won, say, a bronze star for combat valor.

    It’s just a metaphor — obviously he’s just talking about people that have never played QB in the NFL, and not talking about actual warfare. It’s like when Hank Jr. was trying to use a metaphor about Obama and Hitler.

    Oh wait, that didn’t work out too good for him either.

    Griffin was talking about football as equivalent to combat service. To repeat what the man said: “in the line of fire in battle.”

    He said this in Washington, DC, where a large number of his fans, including some I know personally who were critical of him staying in the game yesterday and thus to whom he was addressing his tweet, have in fact been in the line of fire in battle.

    And look, I’m from a military family. I’m named for an ancestor who fought in the French and Indian War. Another ancestor died in the War of 1812. (How unlucky do you have to be to die in that war?) A great-great-etc took a minnie ball in the buttcheek at Shiloh, the first day, while serving on Gen Grant’s staff. I could go on. And while I’ve personally had a few intense experiences in my life, my family’s history of service doesn’t give me a special right to speak cavalierly about having “been on the line of fire in battle” when I have not.

    RG3 was claiming that being reinjured during a game and staying in it only to get hurt worse on a play that put the game out of reach and that a non-hobbling QB might have saved to keep his team in the game was just like a wounded soldier standing by his comrades in the midst of a desperate firefight. Even granting a wide degree of poetic license, that is still an abhorrent thing to assert.

    Let’s grant that it’s an innocent metaphor, and translate RG3’s tweet:

    Many may question, criticize & think they have all the right answers. But few have been [at the line of scrimmage in a football game]

    I like RG3, I really do, but if this is what the man meant, it would be one of the most ignorant things a pro athlete has ever said about his fans. “Few” Americans know what it’s like to play football on a team? Is this a joke? As a matter of simple fact, few Americans know what it’s like to be under fire in combat. RG3 is not one of those few. But most American men know exactly what it’s like to play football with the game on the line.

    I don’t have the stats, but I’d guess that a majority of American men have never played organized tackle football.

    Part of what Nike touted with the new Seahawks unis was the mix and match approach that they have used with several of their college programs. I did some research and this is what I found. This includes preseason and the Seahawks only have one helmet and one set of socks so these are jersey/pants stats. The Seahawks have worn:
    Navy/Navy: 10 times
    Navy/Gray: 2 times
    Navy/White: 0 times
    White/Navy: 2 times
    White/Gray: 4 times
    White/White: 2 times
    Gray/Navy: 0 times
    Gray/Gray: 1 time
    Gray/White: 0 times

    We shall see what the rest of the playoffs hold for them.

    I know I’m in the minority, but I wish they used more of the “snot green.” I know they’re trying to reflect the climate or something, but the navy and gray just seem too muted.

    (and there are too many superfluous elements, but we’ve discussed that before)

    And the two Navy/Gray games were on the road, at Carolina and Miami (two teams known for wearing white at home in day games). How disappointing.

    Just curious, how is that disappointing? They wanted to keep the navy/navy look as their “home” look, so when they had to wear navy on the road due to the home team wearing white, they chose to pair it with their “road” gray pants.

    Personally I like the white/navy look for the road, and wouldn’t mind if they wore navy/white at home (I mean, if they “had” to choose a particular combo, but all in all I like the mixing-and-matching, and wouldn’t mind if they did mix in some neon green pants, as long as it wasn’t too often.)

    But white/navy they wore at Detroit looked best, and I would’ve liked seeing navy-over-white.

    ” I’ll be busy seeing live music tonight, so I won’t catch the ND/’Bama game. ” Wait . . . . WHAT?!

    Paul, I understand the words but not necessarily the sentiment. Unless it was four lads from Liverpool, I’d prefer to watch the National Championship Game. But to each their own. Enjoy the show.

    Somewhere, on some local live music blog, a guy who (allegedly) makes a living writing about local live music wrote “I’ll be busy watching the ND/’Bama game at home on TV tonight, so I won’t catch the (insert trendy live act performing in his neighborhood) show.”

    I assure you there’s nothing “trendy” about the music I’ll be seeing. For one thing, all the participants are over 50 years old!

    So…Paul MUST watch the BCS game as a qualification to write about the obsessive study of athletic aesthetics?

    Easy, Phil. Nobody was accusing me of anything. For some of them, it just doesn’t compute, which is fine.

    For those who are wondering:

    1) You probably care more about college football than I do.

    2) I probably care more about live music than you do.

    3) I work at home by myself all day, so when given the choice between sitting by myself on the sofa all night or going out to see a live performance where I can also reliably expect to see a bunch of my friends, it’s pretty much a no-brainer. (I care a LOT about baseball, but I’d make the same choice — indeed, I have made the same choice — involving non-elimination World Series games.)

    I only mentioned it in the Ticker as a way of (a) acknowledging those for whom the game is a big deal, and (b) pre-emptively explaining why I’ll probably have little or no coverage of the game in tomorrow’s entry.

    re: Brady scrubbing. I find it interesting that whomever it is responsible for uploading images to his Facebook page only wiped the swooshes off of Brady, and not of any of the other players.

    So according to the gridiron uniform database the Jags (whose official uniform is (was) White/Black and Teal/White) wore them 3 times this season and the balance of the time wore monochrome black (5 times) monochrome white (6 times) and black over white (2 times). And a 2-14 record to show for it.

    Well I don’t think the NFL has official uniform (combos) — just official jerseys … and their official jersey was teal up through Week 4, and then black from Week 5 forward.

    I don’t have a picture, but did anyone else see the Kent State’s helmets for the godaddy.com bowl? It looked like they had eyes in the front, and joined Oregon’s trend of a big letter in the back.

    The only drama left at this point is how much Brent Musburger continues to drool over AJ McCarron’s girlfriend. If this game gets to be too much of a blowout in the second half, and they have time to fill with a lot of chit-chat, I hope he doesn’t veer too far into Dirty Old Man inappropriateness.

    Yeah I thought that sounded a bit bizarre. I almost thought he had a pulled a page from Pat and Tom playbook, and had had a few drinks in the booth.

    “Over by half-time?”

    ~~~

    “If this was a prize fight, they’d call it off.”

    Uni-relevant? — Nick Saban wearing red tonight instead of white. (Presumably, so as to not look like a hot mess after the Gatorade bath like he did in 2010/2012).

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