Notice anything different about the Bucs yesterday? Before you say, “Nah — they looked like shit and played even worse, as usual,” take another look at their socks. First time they’ve worn orange hose with the new unis! They had previously paired the white pants with the dark-pewter socks. In fact, the orange socks weren’t even shown during the unveiling back in March (although it was mentioned that they’d be part of the wardrobe). And keep in mind that there’s also a set of red socks that they wore two weeks ago. Anyway: Lots of additional photos from yesterday’s orange-socked game are available here.
In other news from around the NFL yesterday:
• Speaking of orange, the Bengals wore their orange alternates for the first time this season.
• The Eagles, still waiting for those geniuses at Nike to figure out how to manufacture a fucking green jersey already, made good on their threat to go black over black for the first time in team history. But let the record show it could’ve been worse: Not a Pinktober accessory in sight. Lots of additional photos here.
• In a related item, the Eagles did manage to wear green jerseys for their Sunday Night Football intro shots. Retail replicas, presumably.
• What’s worse that Pinktober or G.I. Joe? Pinktober and G.I. Joe, as exemplified yesterday by Packers cornerback Tramon Williams.
• From that same game: Dolphins linebacker Koa Misi apparently had a helmet-to-helmet hit and ended up with some Packers helmet paint on his own helmet.
• One more from that game: Dolphins free safety Louis Delmas was wearing Nike Magista soccer shoes.
• Looks like Bills running back Fred Jackson’s captaincy patch was coming loose.
• At one point the Cowboys sideline featured a cluster of players wearing three different sideline caps.
• This trend of the Bears’ players modifying their socks so that the stripes end up down at their ankles needs to stop. Like, yesterday. Interestingly, when I tweeted that photo yesterday, a surprising number of people immediately said they liked it. Morons, I tells ya. (Fortunately, some players still wear the stripes at the proper calf level.)
• Speaking of the Bears’ socks, check out how many hosiery layers Martellus Bennett was wearing yesterday.
• Several players were wearing non-Bose headphones during pregame warm-ups. But according to this article, that’s okay. Key quote: “Sources say the league will allow any player to wear headphones during media interviews if the logo of that brand is covered up. The league also will allow players to wear headphones with competing logos off the bus, into the stadium, and on the field for warm-ups before they get into uniform.”
• Speaking of pregame, I’ve never seen a uni-numbered pullover like the one Russell Wilson was wearing yesterday. Maybe they’re common and I just never noticed..?
• Looks like Giants quarterback Eli Manning’s helmet was painted over his neck bumper.
• When Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz was carted off with a leg injury, the trainers examining him cut open his sock.
• Teams wearing white at home (besides the aforementioned Bucs): the Titans and Dolphins.
• And while this isn’t uni-related, it nonetheless feels appropriate to mention that Raiders fans egged the Chargers’ team bus:
Keep it classy Oakland #eggsthrown pic.twitter.com/Jq4Q22I4Ai
— Jennifer (@JMichy) October 12, 2014
(My thanks to all contributors, including Blain Fowler, Stephen Hayes, Craig Justice, Greg Kantor, Matt Larsen, Jeff Moulden, Chris Perrenot, Tommy Turner, and of course Phil.)
ESPN reminder: In case you missed it on Friday afternoon, my annual NHL goalie roundup is now available on ESPN.
Raffle winners: Garrett here. Thank you to everyone who the Nolan Ryan cookbook and bobblehead raffle. Here are our winners, all of whom will be getting a bobblehead, plus the first two people on the list will also be getting a signed cookbook:
Nick Jurista
Robert Erdtmann
Jason Allen
Wilson Moore
Tim Reyes
Chad Cate
Andrew D. Kacvinsky
Jeff Mendenhall
Brian Frasier
Rocky Bonanno
We’ll be mailing out everything soon, so watch your mailboxes.
PermaRec update: Time capsules (like the 100-year-old one shown at right, which was recently unsealed here in NYC) are a very PermaRec-ish topic that I’ve never addressed — until now.
Also: When I launched the PermaRec blog in 2011, I figured it would be mostly — or even completely — about the Manhattan Trade School report cards that inspired the PermaRec project in the first place. So I never created tags or categories for the individual blog posts, because I thought the blog would have a very narrow focus. (Tagging every post as “Report Cards” didn’t seem worthwhile.)
As those of you who follow PermaRec are aware, that’s not how it worked out. The blog now covers storylines emerging from all sorts of found objects. With the site’s archive now totaling nearly 200 entries, I’ve often found myself wanting to refer back to an earlier post and realizing it would be much easier to do that if I had tagged each post by category. I assume some of you readers have thought the same thing.
So a few days ago I sat down and added tags to every entry. You can see the breakdown in the site’s right-hand sidebar. I hope this will make the site easier and more enjoyable to explore.
Baseball News: Check out this Dutch artist who carves baseball bats into super-cool spiral shapes (from my pal Friederike Paetzold). ”¦ The Giants normally wear this cap and this jersey for Sunday road games, but they didn’t go with either of those uni elements last night (as noted by Richard Paloma). ”¦ Meanwhile, Fox Sports analyst Harold Reynolds mentioned that the Cardinals’ uniforms looked unusually bright and white, especially compared to the previous night. Someone else in the booth — can’t recall who — explained that they had worn the off-white alternates that night. … Randal Grichuk of the Cardinals was using teammate Matt Adams’s glove last night (thanks, Phil). ”¦ After Kolten Wong’s walk-off home run last night, his teammates tore his jersey off him and ripped it in two, revealing a base-layer shirt that no doubt caused a bit of agita up at Nike HQ (from Seth Moorman).
NFL News: The Rams will be wearing their “Greatest Show on Turf” alternates tonight against the 49ers. ”¦ Funny to see Brett Favre wearing a logo-less Packers uni in this MicroTouch commercial (from Steve Schutt). ”¦ Here’s a helmet logo that’s sort of a Jets/Eagles mash-up (from Jeff Flynn).
College Football News: Not uni-related, but this investigative report on how the Tallahassee police have routinely looked the other way regarding criminal acts conducted by Florida State football players — and not just Jameis Winston — is essential reading. ”¦ Good piece on how the Maryland state flag has become a symbol of Terrapins football. ”¦ Mississippi State is outfitted by Adidas, but DB Justin Cox was wearing Under Armour compression shorts the other day (good spot by Connor Ginos). ”¦ Following up on a prior item: That guy on the UNC sideline wearing NFL jerseys is the team’s self-proclaimed morale officer. “He wears the jerseys of current NFL players who played at UNC,” explains Akshay Bhavsar. ”¦ Whoa, check out what Slippery Rock will be wearing for the Big Game at the Big House. Interestingly, at least one guy there is wearing Nike cleats. Additional info here (from Kevin Olivett).
Hockey News: “Looks like the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins are wearing their regular gold/black pant shells with their new late-’60s-inspired baby blue throwback jerseys,” says Rob Ullman. “I don’t know if they’re waiting on new shells or just hoping no one will notice, but it looks like hot garbage and ruins one of the best looks in hockey history.” ”¦ “Sunday’s Ticker mentions that Union College wore their garnet sweaters for Friday’s home opener,” writes Benjamin Engle. “They probably wore the garnet in celebration of raising the 2014 NCAA Hockey D1 championship banner. That was the jersey they wore in Philadelphia in May to win the championship. Incidentally, the history of Union wearing garnet is very interesting and dates back to the early 1800s.” ”¦ Remember how Chris Kreider of the Rangers was wearing a jersey with an outdated Reebok logo last Thursday? Same thing happened last night for another Ranger, Lee Stempniak (from Justin Foley). ”¦ From that same game: No photo, but Dan LaRose says Rangers goalie Cam Talbot was wearing last year’s Stadium Series mask.
Soccer News: Here’s one designer’s concept for Miami’s upcoming MLS team. “You have to admire the attention to detail he put into this,” says Cort McMurray. “I think the design needs some orange, but it’s still pretty impressive.” … Opposing teams don’t want to swap jerseys with Sierra Leone’s national team because of Ebola fears.
Grab Bag: Someone one there has documented and categorized every tattoo in the NBA (from Ben Fortney). … Pinktober jack-o-lanterns? Jeez (from Keith Goggin). ”¦ The cycling helmet manufacturer Louis Garneau is recalling 2000 helmets after they failed cold-weather impact tests.
FYI: I’m heading out to Long Island today to visit my mom. I’ll be checking in on the site, but only sporadically. Everyone play nice while I’m off the grid, okay? Okay.
So Nike couldn’t get the midnight green jerseys to the Iggles, but they could get them black jerseys with midnight green collars? Is there some special freaking collar fairy on their speed dial?
It was established weeks ago that the green trim on all the other uniform elements isn’t quite accurate.
Don’t teams have to tell the NFL before the season starts which jersey they will wear each game? Did the Eagles get some kind of exception, or are they wearing black instead of green until the green jerseys are ready?
Is it possible NBC reused last years graphics for player intros? I noticed and submitted a Darren Sproles graphic after his TD that he had a green non-Elite51 jersey on.
From the Elite 51 retail replicas I’ve seen, they look like their on the field counterparts.
My guess is the Eagles were wearing last year’s jerseys for the intros.
The collar is a single piece of green fabric. With only black surrounding it, it doesn’t clash with any other green element. But when that collar is paired with another type of fabric for the yoke, and another type for the body, and another type for the mesh panels, and another type for the number details, and another type for the pants, it’s going to get messy. It’s likely why they went with black pants – beside the “blackout” effect there was minimal green on the uniform outside of the helmet.
Also – that Jets/Eagles hybrid helmet looks like one used by a school here in South Jersey. For years they have ripped off the Philadelphia Eagles’ logo and colors. But when I played them in high school, they had a green/white version of the Michigan helmet.
Note to Tampa Bay: Your uniform doesn’t have enough orange on it for those socks to make any sense. Don’t wear those again.
Note to Philadelphia: If you’re going to wear mono-black again, please wear green socks. Also, lighten the green on the helmet so it actually matches the green on the rest of the uniform and doesn’t look black from a distance.
I hate the stripes on those black pants as much as I hate the black pants themselves.
The stripes were far better than no stripes. Without stripes they look like a low budget high school team.
True, but with the stripes they just looked like a high-budget high school team. You know, a program with enough funds to buy several sets of alternates, but not enough creativity to do anything better than just turn the white pants black and leave everything else untouched.
The whole thing speaks to a disturbing change in the relationship between teams, leagues, and uniform manufacturers. Up until the 1990s, if a manufacturer failed to deliver a team’s jerseys as ordered, you’d expect the team to just go buy jerseys from someone else. In the modern era of league-wide supply contracts, if this were any other industry and the vendor failed to deliver goods to spec, the contract would include a clause penalizing the vendor for non-delivery, and the contract would not require exclusivity, so the company would be free to go back on the market and buy the non-delivered goods from someone else. In these league-wide exclusive deals, leagues are signing away too much control over their own product and business. I mean, sure, I get it, Nike is a big-boy company that plays hardball and also doesn’t care about the brand integrity of any of its clients. But the NFL is possibly the biggest of all big-boy, hardball corporate entities in the entertainment or cultural space. You have to look to industries like global energy or discount big-box retail to find corporate entities with better or more ruthless in-house legal counsel than the NFL. Something is structurally wrong if the NFL feels that it has to sign away control of such a major portion of its brand identity to a brand parasite like Nike. (Or MLB to Majestic, which also failed to deliver basic uniform elements a couple of years ago.)
Sign the league-wide supply contract, by all means, since that’s where the money is, but include an out-clause that lets you outfit a team from a third-party manufacturer if the exclusive supplier fails to deliver. If the NFL lacks the leverage to negotiate that clause in the contract talks, then at the most fundamental level the relationship is not that Nike is supplying uniforms to outfit NFL teams. The basic economic reality is that the NFL is supplying models to wear Nike jerseys.
The stripes on the black britches were too wide. Should have been stripeless. I agree with the previous poster, green stockings would have been awesome.
I’m color-blind, so no amount of squinting would reveal this telling detail: did they include that skinny stripe of anthracite between the white and teal?
I don’t think they did. It looked like it was just green & white to my eyes, but I only caught a few minutes of the game and haven’t really looked at any additional photos yet.
(Corrected) Note to Tampa Bay: Wear the orange socks all you want. Just don’t wear it with the pink crap.
And play better. Much better.
Pink and orange have to be the worst color combination resulting from the pinktober accessories. Just awful.
Note to guy who doesn’t live anywhere near Tampa Bay: We don’t care what you think. We have bigger problems. But even if we didn’t, we’d still not care what you think, because you’re just a contrarian for contrarianism’s sake. It’s kind of your oeuvre, I get that, but it’s enough already.
Actually, as a contrast, it’s fine, because the pewter sock tops result in too much pewter on the uniform as a whole (which doesn’t look like pewter, it looks like brown). And the orange trim on the upper front of the jerseys is a fine accent tied together by the sock tops.
I don’t know what “enough orange” would be to satisfy you…but, quite frankly, I don’t care.
So, what, no one who lives outside of the Tampa area can have an opinion on the team’s uniform?
Don’t you live in Arizona now, KT?
I’m not taking sides, nor do I have an opinion about the Bucs…just sayin’. ;)
You’re both right, Jeff.
KT is correct in saying your contrarian schtick is forced and played out.
You are correct in saying KT’s position is that the only valid opinion of a uniform is that of the team’s fanbase. “We don’t care what you think” is his go-to response when he feels his teams’ uniforms are being attacked by OUTSIDERS.
“BOLTS” sucks too.
But the whole fan base is made up of outsiders. They root for the Bucs, Rays and Lightning all the time, except when ‘their Packers’, ‘their Yankees’ or ‘their Flyers’ come to town.
Except for the Rays. It’s too far to drive.
RE: Brett Favre commercial.
I was expecting to see a logoless still shot–not actual moving pictures!
They spent more on removing the logos/stripes than they did on the rest of the commercial!
I noticed the John Deere logo was NOT removed.
Aren’t most NFL helmets molded in the color of the shell–not painted? Makes me wonder how Dolphin Koa Misi got Packer “paint” on his helmet.
Helmets are routinely repainted to cover up nicks, chips, etc.
I guess that goes back to my questions, if the helmets are molded in the color, why would they need painting?
I guess someone on the packers has a non-yellow shell that was painted yellow?? Seems stupid.
The Packers helmets have sort of a sparkly/metallic finish to them… I’m guessing you can’t do with that with just molded plastic. They probably have a molded yellow helmet which then gets a coat of paint on top of it.
Maybe it’s not paint; maybe it’s plastic. That rubs off too in football-helmet collisions.
Since we’ve now gone ten comments without mentioning the Redskins or Dan Snyder… oh wait, I just did.
To include useful information, the pullover Russell Wilson was wearing isn’t even close to unique, I’ve seen several Seahawks players wearing them.
Disappointed that the “attention to detail” in the Miami MLS concept referred less to the actual design and more to the thoroughness with which the guy was willing to ape design industry rituals and ideas. Whenever there are concepts like this where seemingly as much work has gone into over-designed secondary material and utterly pretentious backdrops as the actual concept it always reeks of professional design guy cosplay.
The ball panels are off center within the circle as well. :-)
Eh, I think the whole use case example thing is fine.
I just wish the supporter logo wasn’t essentially a rip-off of the Michigan State Spartans logo and any uniform deaign based on current templates will be outdated by the end of the process.
Can we have orange-colored Pinktober accessories for Halloween?
Why? Out of place orange looks just as bad as out of place pink. I guess the Broncos & Bengals are improved slightly, but c’mon now.
Pretty disappointed the Jets/Eagles mashup logo helmet didn’t have airplane wings coming from the front of the shell.
I noticed Joe Flaco didn’t have the Nike flywire collar yesterday. Is that normal for him or the Ravens?
“Interestingly, when I tweeted that photo yesterday, a surprising number of people immediately said they liked it. Morons, I tells ya.”
I really like your site, and I agree with most of your opinions on uniforms. I even agree with your opinion on the Bears’ socks. But the name-calling seems beneath you. Someone isn’t a moron merely because they disagree with one of your points of view. You’re better than that.
When I qualify something with “I tells ya,” that should tell(s) ya that I’m kinda joking.
“That boy, I say that boy’s about as sharp as a bowling ball.” ~F. Leghorn
It was nice of Dan Snyder to invite the outgoing Navajo president to the owner’s suite for an early Columbus Day celebration.
Good analysis here:
link
But did he call him a redskin?
I forgot about the Slippery Rock/Mercyhurst game in Ann Arbor. Had me excited for a second; an opponent that Michigan could (probably) put a real beat down on (maybe). That team is awful, and no amount of Adidas crap can cover it up. Blue pants? Somewhere, Bo Schembechler is rolling in his grave.
Watching Norfleet dance on the field while wearing that get up while waiting for the punt return my first thought was “This wouldn’t happen in a million years with Schembechler.”
When did this become acceptable behavior in NCAA football? Especially a U-Mich team?
link
You’re right… he should just stand there with his hands on his hips during the commercial timeout. How dare he has a bit of fun while playing a game.
There’s a documentary in the works on guitarist (the late) Terry Kath of the band Chicago – who was known for wearing hockey jerseys on stage back in the 70’s. In this short preview, there are already shots of him wearing a Blackhawks and WHA Cougars jersey.
link
-Jet
Jeezus christ, the Eagles have some spectacularly awful uniforms. From colors, to fonts, to execution… awful awful awful.
Lee
Yeah, what the hell is so wrong with this look that they can’t go back to it???
link
-Jet
I’d be down for these… maybe make the pants silver & the face mask green.
link
Lee
Well, for one they don’t have enough sleeve left to duplicate that look today.
Plus, Nike probably can’t match that color either.
Eagles took a team photo this morning in the NEW nike green jerseys… link
I’ve never paid much attention to football team pictures, but is it standard to line the players up in numerical order like that? It’s pretty neat.
-Jet
Well isn’t that convenient. The Eagles “have to” wear Nike brand signature all-black uniforms because gosh darn it Nike just can’t quite get the green right on Eagles jerseys. Until literally the day after the Eagles dress as all-black Nike manquins and bam! Green uniforms delivered.
I kind of meant it as a hyperbole when I called Nike a “brand parasite” above, but holy cow Nike sure is a brand parasite. Also, Nike sure does think the public is stupid. Unless Nike factories were still stitching the uniforms at 3:00 pm on Sunday, these jerseys were ready in time to have been delivered for use in the game. For (typically much) less than $10k, you can have a box of cargo delivered anywhere in the United States in six hours, even on a Sunday. You don’t even have to have, you know, worked in a business to know this: You just have to have watched an NFL game, where you’ll have seen at least two different supply-chain providers advertise their enterprise delivery services.
I don’t think those are “Pinktober” jack-o-lanterns, per se, just pink jack-o-lanterns because little girls like pink. My daughter had one of those when she was little, just like my son had a blue plastic jack-o-lantern (which likewise had nothing to do with prostate cancer awareness).
That is definitely the case. My daughter loves her colored pumpkin buckets and at 50c-$1.00 I’m guessing there are plenty of parents other than myself that let their kid(s) get a new one every year.
What’s a pumpkin buckets? I thought a bucket was something you wore on your head while wearing britches.
I caught this joke yesterday too. Hilarious.
Well if he was paying so much attention to detail he would know that not only does MLS have an exclusive contract with Adidas to manufacture uniforms, but Beckham is an Adidas athlete.
He mentioned Beckham’s connection, but not the league’s (not sure if he knew of it). He purposely used Nike due to personal preference.
Why is an opinion piece from the NY Times “must read” material on a uniform website?
1) It’s not an opinion piece. It’s an investigative piece full of hard reporting.
2) Any piece (opinion, investigative, or otherwise) from any media outlet (NY Times or otherwise) can be a “must read” on any site (Uni Watch or otherwise) if it’s really good. And this one happens to be really good.
Maybe it’s me, but I don’t see any NY Times opinion piece referred to anywhere in today’s blog, let alone as a “must read.”
I only see a link to an article by an ex-NFL ball boy in yesterday’s> blog, which is (1) not really an opinion piece even though it’s on the Op-Ed page, and (2) described in the blog as “interesting,” not as a “must read.”
Am I missing something?
I don’t think Eli has a painted neck bumper. It’s just the helmet’s shell, which has a molded design that looks like that.
link
correct, the bumper is actually just tucked inside the helmet. the schutt vengeance has a mold like that so it looks like its painted over.
Tangential to the uniform discussion, I saw that one of the Bengals did the Ickey Woods touchdown dance yesterday, and the commentator said “He’s either really happy about scoring or he got some cold cuts”, in reference to the Ickey Woods Geico commercial…
The whole Bucs uniform is a mess. They can’t seem to decide what role each color plays in their scheme.
Predominantly red? Predominantly pewter? More orange? Less Orange?
Of course the helmet logo and numbers are out of whack, they can’t even get the colors straight.
And so, it begins…
Nothing’s begun yet.
There’s simply a mechanism that would allow ads to appear. But the mechanism isn’t even finalized yet, much less activated. Fuck, if you skip the Deadspin piece and instead read the Sports Biz Journal piece on which it’s based, you’ll find that the first word of the article is “If,” and that the whole piece is based on contingencies and suppositions.
Word I’ve heard thru the grapevine is that the new TV deal actually makes uni ads *less* likely, for a variety of reasons I can’t get into here.
Possible? For sure. Probable? Too soon to say. Inevitable? No way.
#NoUniAds
Nothing’s Over!
#NoUniAds
I’m going with ‘Inevitable? Yes way.’
Maybe not 2014-15 or 2015-16, but before Adam Silver exits the NBA, there will be ads on NBA jerseys.
Lee
Re: those Eagles/Jets mashup decals, I don’t think that’s terribly unusual, viz., using a familiar wordmark style to spell out a different name (this is really just the word “Eagles” done in the style of the 1978-97 “Jets” wordmark). About 25 years ago I worked with a Pop Warner team that was called the Raiders but their helmet decals were essentially the Giants wordmark; same font, underlined, RAIDERS instead of GIANTS. Years later I was coaching in a different place and we had an opponent called the Broncos that did the same thing.
I remember in 2008 we saw this with some political t-shirts that spelled out the candidate’s name using MLB wordmark styles.
I think a lot of youth and high school teams do this.
The Bears have had all manner of problems with their socks this year. A ton of players have been squishing their stripes so rather than three distinct stripes there’s just on big blob.
Better look at the Eagles new nike elites
link
If the Rams decide to go back to these uniforms full time, I hope they follow the lead of the Giants and use a better color matching helmet.
why doesnt someone invent a way to paint nfl game helmets so we can get throwback helmets. there has to be a way to do a high def coat of paint that can be wiped off after the game
when i was a kid i played peewee ball for several teams and i used the same helmet. i used painted a coat over it
They could probably do it with some kind of wrap too.
The NFL is just in CYA mode (still) over this concussion lawsuit … but methinks there is more to it than the one helmet rule (I’ve no proof, mind you, I just think there is more to this than player protection, and the evidence is possibly specious that “only” one helmet per season is any safer). But, they’re sticking to this “better safe than sorry” dictum for the foreseeable future.
It looks like there’s no pink tonight, am I wrong?
I guess the one helmet rule only applies to design, not color?
They are using the same helmets, just with a different decal. Love the old Rams look.
I love the Rams’ throwbacks, but something about the jerseys just doesn’t look right. I don’t know if it’s the collars, the ram horns on the tight sleeves/shoulder caps, or the numerals; I think (although I’m not certain) that those jerseys always had vinyl heat-pressed numerals, whereas these are tackle twill. Or maybe it’s a combination of these.
I think the yellow they’re using now is a bit brighter now than the originals.
Yea, I think so too. I also think the ram horns on the shoulders are too thin at the top/front.
link
Locust Grove (OK) Pirates went God Awful Pink with “Fight Like A Pirate” on the front, and presumably cancer sufferers on the back? They are the #1 team in 3A and have scored 70+ the last two weeks.