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Monday Morning Uni Watch

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For all photos in this section, click to enlarge

Good morning! Fun snow game yesterday in the Meadowlands, as the Giants hosted the Packers (lots of additional pics here and here). In addition, at one point in the first half, Giants signal-caller Daniel Jones lowered his head on a quarterback keeper and emerged with the “y” missing from his helmet logo. You can see it come flying off in these video clips:

In addition, Giants running back Saquon Barkley lost part of his helmet logo and a piece of a helmet numeral to boot:

In other news from around the league yesterday:

• The Dolphins wore their throwbacks (cue everyone saying, “They should go back to those full-time,” which is true):

In addition, the Dolphins ran a fake field goal play that resulted in a very unusual formation. Really interesting to see (plus this view provides a nice look at the throwback end zone):

• I never mind when the Ravens go mono-black, because it means less purple:

• Not a fan of the Panthers going mono-black, however:

• The Bengals went mono-black as well, but of course they never look good, no matter what they wear:

• The Titans went mono-navy:

• The Texans also went mono-navy:

Prior to that game, Texans linebackers engaged in some cringe-inducing cosplay:

• The Broncos wore their navy alternate jerseys:

• Several Steelers players wore childish T-shirts (including logo creep!) prior to yesterday’s “revenge” game against the Browns. Afterward, they criticized Browns coach Freddie Kitchens for wearing his own childish T-shirt a few days earlier. These idiots all deserve each other.

• ESPN studio analyst Sam Ponder wore an outfit modeled on the Browns’ helmet design:

• Not a single home team wore white. Correction: One team wore white at home: the Colts.

Tonight: The Seahawks are apparently planning to wear neon-green over blue.

Next week: the annual “custom cleats for charity” promotion. Remember when that seemed like a big deal? Now it’s such a yawn that you probably forgot about it until I mentioned it just now, right?

(My thanks to Brian Vilven and Timmy Donahue for their contributions to this section.)

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ITEM! New Vintage Brand raffle and sale: The good folks at our longtime advertiser Vintage Brand are generously sponsoring another raffle. The lucky winner will get to choose any item from the Vintage Brand website (including the hilarious Ohio State cutting board shown above — they really need to bring back that logo!).

To enter, send an email to the raffle address by 8pm Eastern this Wednesday, Dec. 4. One entry per person. I’ll announce the winner on Thursday (and then we’ll have a new raffle that day to boot!).

Also: Vintage Brand is running a Cyber Monday sale today, with 25% off of everything. Enjoy!

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Membership update: Now that is a membership card, am I right? That’s Bryan Stroud’s card, one of eight new designs that have been added to the membership card gallery. If you can’t quite place which jersey it’s based on, let me hep you to the stylings of the Cleveland Force one of the six original franchises in the old MISL (that’s Major Indoor Soccer League, kids). Great card choice, Bryan!

Looking to give someone a membership card as a holiday gift? Fully info on that is available here.

Ordering a membership card is a good way to support Uni Watch (which, frankly, could use your support these days). And remember, a Uni Watch membership card entitles you to a 15% discount on any of the merchandise in our Teespring shop and our Naming Wrongs shop. (If you’re an existing member and would like to have the discount code, email me and I’ll hook you up.) As always, you can sign up for your own custom-designed card here, you can see all the cards we’ve designed so far here (more than 2,300 of them!), and you can see how we produce the cards here.

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Inventory alert: As holiday shopping season moves into high gear, I’ve done my best to maintain ample supplies of Uni Watch products, but a few items are currently in short supply, so I wanted to get you up to speed on that:

• For our Classic Cap, we’re running low on sizes 7-3/8 (only two left), 7-1/4 (three), and 7-1/2, 7-5/8, and 7-3/4 (four apiece). I’ve had new inventory on backorder for nearly two months, but you know how holiday-season wholesale orders can go — we’re at the mercy of the factory. So if you want any of those sizes, I suggest ordering soon.

• Rocker T Collectibles tells me that there are only eight Uni Watch Mini-Helmets left. These will not be restocked, so get ’em while you can.

• For the Uni Watch Gumball Helmets, I have plenty of green but am down to the last white shell. Who wants it?

• For Uni Watch Seam Rippers, I have plenty of yellow and white, but green and red are temporarily out of stock and I have only one blue ripper left. These will all be restocked soon, or at least soon-ish, but the product is coming from Asia, so I can’t predict when it will arrive.

• I currently have eight of the beautiful chain-stitched Uni Watch patches. Amy Bengtson, who makes them for me, is tied up for the rest of the holiday season, so I won’t be getting more of these until the new year.

• We never run out of membership cards. But if you want one in time for Hanukkah or Christmas, I suggest that you get your order in by the end of this week. (You can also purchase a membership gift voucher. No deadline on that!)

• Uni Watch 20th-Anniversary Plates are now sold out.

Everything else is well-stocked. You can see our full list of merchandise offerings here. My thanks, as always, for considering our products for your holiday purchases, or just for yourself.

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Click to enlarge

Pin-tac-toe: Speaking of Uni Watch products, reader Brett Baker wore his Uni Watch enamel pin on nine different caps while attending Nebraska football games this season — nicely done, Brett!

If you want your own pin, it’s available it’s available in the Uni Watch Teespring shop.

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’Tis the season: One day in December of 1993, when I still had an office job in Times Square, I took a lunchtime walk down to Herald Square and stopped in at the local Woolworth’s, where I spotted a bin of plastic mistletoe. I had recently begun writing a column about consumerism for the alt-weekly NYPress, and faux ’toe seemed like a good nutshell summary of our increasingly plastic culture, so I bought one for $2.99, wrote about it for my next column. and hung it in my apartment for the rest of the holiday season.

More than a quarter-century later, that Woolworth’s is long gone, but my plastic mistletoe is still as good as new. I brought it out of the cupboard the other day for its 27th consecutive year of working its magic. Let the Yuletide necking commence!

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Holiday weekend movie roundup: The Tugboat Captain and I went to see three movies over the holiday weekend, all of which I enjoyed quite a bit. First up was Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, a documentary about a Philadelphia activist and hoarder who packed her home with TVs and VCRs and, over the course of 35 years, obsessively created history’s largest archive of TV news recordings.

I’d heard of Stokes before but didn’t know much beyond the barest details of her story. It’s pretty fascinating. Here’s the trailer:

Then we saw Parasite, the South Korean black comedy that’s becoming an unlikely “Best Picture” Oscar contender (not that I care even a little bit about the Oscars, but it’s interesting to see a foreign-language movie in the running). It’s about a poor but conniving family whose members slowly worm their way onto the staff — and into the home — of a very wealthy family, with results that are both hilarious and horrible. There’s a lot of stinging class commentary, not all of it flowing in the direction you might expect. Really good movie. Here’s the trailer:

The day after that we saw Waves, a drama about a Florida family that has to deal with a series of circumstances that spiral into tragedy. Great performances here, and dizzyingly spectacular camera work (including during some sensational high school wrestling scenes). I really loved this one — my favorite movie of the weekend, and one of the best I’ve seen this year. Trailer:

Oh, and a few weeks ago I saw The Irishman. I didn’t mind the 3.5-hour length (everyone involved, from the director to the cast to the crew, is a total pro, so there’s a certain pleasure in watching them stretch out), but there’s nothing here that wasn’t done much better 30 years ago in Goodfellas, so the whole exercise feels like a Scorcese-by-numbers retread. Not a bad movie, but an unnecessary one.

Still need to see Queen and Slim, Knives Out, 63 Up, and a few other things — so many movies, so little time. It’d be easier if I had Netflix or any of the premium cable channels, but I don’t want any of that because I already spend too much staring at a screen in my home and don’t want to facilitate more of it. Not having Netflix forces me to go out to see movies, which is how I prefer it, even if it inevitably means I end up missing some of them.

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The Ticker
By Jamie Rathjen

Baseball News: Blue Jays C Danny Jansen commissioned Sylvie Marsolais, one of the mask artists for goalies in the NHL and otherwise, to paint a catcher’s helmet. No, he can’t wear it on the field (from Marc-Louis Paprzyca). … A Reddit user hand-drew new logos for each MLB team (from Mike Chamernik and Adam Vitcavage).

Football News: The Tampa Bay Times is holding a Bucs redesign contest (sounds familiar, obviously), but in addition to reader submissions, they’ve come up with the first of some concepts of their own (from Austin Ledley). … The University of Wyoming issued a formal apology to the “Black 14” (WaPo link), a group of black players who were kicked off the school’s 1969 football team when they asked to wear black armbands to show solidarity against racism. … The latest school from Blaise D’Sylva’s helmet collection is UNLV.

Hockey News: The WHL’s Winnipeg Ice wore jerseys with red trim, instead of the usual silver/light blue trim, that were auctioned with the proceeds going to a local youth hockey program (from Wade Heidt). … Down a level in junior hockey, Wade also sent us new alternates for the British Columbia Hockey League’s Alberni Valley Bulldogs. … Also posted in baseball: Toronto Blue Jays C Danny Jansen commissioned Sylvie Marsolais, one of the mask artists for goalies in the NHL and otherwise, to paint a catcher’s helmet. No, he can’t wear it on the field (from Marc-Louis Paprzyca). … Christmas-themed uniforms yesterday for the Calgary Hitmen. The bears are from the team’s annual Teddy Bear Toss — fans toss stuffed animals onto the ice, and the toys are later donated to local children’s charities (from Mike Styczen).

Basketball News: Bucks press conferences now have an American Sign Language interpreter (NYT link). … Iowa debuted the black uniforms from their new set on Thanksgiving. I don’t have a good picture, but they also kept the grey TNOB alternates from the previous set. … Maryland wore yellow and Marquette sky blue in the final of their Thanksgiving tournament in Kissimmee, Fla. (from multiple readers). … Pitt is wearing black and gold on Tuesday (from Noah Kastroll). … Temple G Jake Forrester’s NOB was misspelled yesterday (from @UntillTheNight). … Penn and Long Beach State wore light grey and dark grey, respectively, when playing each other (from Timmy Donahue). … San Diego State is wearing Michael Jordan/Bulls-themed alternates on Dec. 8 — not that Jordan has anything to do with SDSU except that his brand is on their uniforms (also from multiple readers). … French soccer team Olympique Lyonnais became the advertiser for the French basketball club ASVEL. OL recently bought stakes in both the men’s and women’s teams (from Christophe Davy).

Soccer News: Premier League teams are participating in the UK’s Rainbow Laces campaign in the midweek of Dec. 3 and 4 and next weekend. Scottish Premiership teams and many others in Scotland participated this weekend, which at the very least included rainbow captain’s armbands. … Also in the Premier League, Wolverhampton Wanderers wore black armbands in memory of former striker Benik Afobe’s daughter, who passed away this week. Wolves’ goalscorer, fullback Matt Doherty, celebrated by taking his armband off and kissing it. … Leicester City midfielder James Maddison also wore an undershirt supporting Afobe (from Josh Hinton). … FC Barcelona debuted the latest edition of their recurring Catalan flag-themed kit (from @DukeStJournal). … We also mentioned in the past two weeks or so that Barcelona renewed their contract with the fashion designer Thom Browne to outfit the team for when they’re traveling to away games and the result can look odd, apparently (from Mark Coale). … New first shirt for Irish team Shamrock Rovers. … French team Lille OSC wore 75th-anniversary throwbacks this weekend, but with the usual Ligue 1 font (from Ed Żelaski). … Also from Ed: Dinamo Tbilisi won the Georgian championship for the first time since 2016, which apparently called for a celebratory logo. … South Korea might be changing their crest (from Donald Wine II). … Cross-listed from the basketball section: French team Olympique Lyonnais became the advertiser for the French basketball club ASVEL — OL recently bought stakes in both the men’s and women’s teams (from Christophe Davy). … In 1990-91, Italian team AS Roma wore two different white second-choice shirts, with no discernable pattern determining which one was worn.

Grab Bag: English rugby union participated in the UK’s Rainbow Laces campaign this weekend. The Premiership added rainbow accents to its logo and officials’ shirts and flags. … After the NLL’s Rochester Knighthawks moved to Halifax, an expansion Knighthawks replaced them, but they wear olive green and black instead of purple and teal and have a new bird mascot (from Wade Heidt). … Gross: Players at the Australian Football League’s draft posed with a ball featuring the giant logo of the draft’s advertiser (the same was done at last month’s women’s draft), though the ball already has an ad anyway. … Catastrophic: An organization in the UK dedicated to the correct use of apostrophes is conceding defeat and shutting down (from multiple readers). … Here’s a great interactive page on the history of New York City subway map design (NYT link).

 
  
 
Categories
NFL
Comments (45)

    Giants QB Daniel Jones lost the Y off his helmet during the first half. It was repaired at halftime.

    In my experience, snow games are a lot less fun in person than they are on TV.

    “The Bengals went mono-black as well, but of course they never look good, no matter what they wear”

    The alts they wore for the Monday night game in Pittsburgh (Color Rash?) didn’t look bad.

    I don’t mind the bengals set, although I’m biased. If they ditch the side panels on the home black jerseys, we would look fine!

    The Seahawks have worn snot green over blue before … not with this current uni look (jersey was, of course, snot green with blue sleeve insets and predominantly white numbers), but it has occurred before. Triggered as much retinal burn then as it likely will tonight

    the worst part of The Irishman was De Niro’s eyes getting CGIed in BFIS (Blue For Irish Sake)

    “These idiots all deserve each other.” – In reference to the Steelers and Browns personnel. All are entitled to their opinions. Maybe they are “idiots.” “Idiots” who earn excellent salaries and have healthcare…

    1) I think you mean “health insurance,” not “healthcare.”

    2) This is a particularly weak attempt at trolling. You’re trying to insult me, but did it occur to you that there are literally hundreds of millions of Americans (most likely including you) whose salaries are less than those of NFL players, and tens of millions who do not have health insurance? What exactly are you saying about them? About yourself?

    Apropos of nothing, NFL players have the best health insurance ever. Like literally ever. The President’s is better, that’s it, but they’re pretty comparable.

    And yet, their healthcare outcomes are abysmally poor. NFL player life expectancy is less than 60, putting NFL players on par with average male residents of the poorest nations in Central Africa. An ordinary person need not necessarily envy the insurance and care available to NFL players. I know that the insurance doesn’t cause NFL players’ outrageously low life expectancy, but neither does it seem to help.

    As for the president, he definitely receives the best healthcare that the military can provide and has since the early 1800s, but out of a pool of 44 individuals to hold the office, at least one has died as a result of overly intrusive medical care. Over-treatment can be as dangerous as under-treatment, and the former is a real danger for an incumbent president.

    The Cleveland Force? Well done!

    I wonder if the New York Arrows are represented yet? I hold no illusions that anyone else remembers the Hartford Hellions.

    When I was 6 I attended the first ever St Louis Steamers home game at the St Louis Arena. They lost in overtime to the the Hellions.

    My dad and I went to the Colosseum to see the Force several times and it seemed like they were always playing the Baltimore Blast.

    Especially in the postseason… the Blast ended Cleveland’s playoff runs quite often. One of my favorite rivalries.

    I agree! I wish I would have thought to get mine in a Dallas Sidekicks theme. On purple amnesty day of course!

    It’s the nittiest of nitpicks, but Goodfellas was released almost 30 years ago (1990 I believe), not 20 – which is amazing to me. Time flies.

    I’m so bad with math I have the following pinned to my desktop just in case:

    Dates: Anniversaries
    Ann’y | Year | Next Year

    00 | 2019 | 2020
    05 | 2014 | 2015
    10 | 2009 | 2010
    15 | 2004 | 2005
    20 | 1999 | 2000
    25 | 1994 | 1995
    30 | 1989 | 1990
    35 | 1984 | 1985
    40 | 1979 | 1980
    45 | 1974 | 1975
    50 | 1969 | 1970
    55 | 1964 | 1965
    60 | 1959 | 1960
    65 | 1954 | 1955
    70 | 1949 | 1950
    75 | 1944 | 1945
    80 | 1939 | 1940
    85 | 1934 | 1935
    90 | 1929 | 1930

    Just wanted to mention that the Winnipeg Ice weren’t wearing their normal jerseys with a red trim instead of blue, they were the jerseys of that local team that the auction supports.

    link

    Yep – we are aware. The crest of the jersey makes that apparent. The Twitter link in the Ticker does refer to the jersey being auctioned. It is for St. Vital Minor Hockey Association.

    Unlike the traditional big North American sports, soccer managers can follow their personal preference in how they dress during games. Until fairly recently the 2 options were either suit or tracksuit. Pep Guardiola (and others) have switched to casual wear in the last few years.
    In his first match as interim Arsenal manager Freddy Ljungberg opted for a grey sweater over a blue dress shirt. Commentator Paul Scholes was critical of this choice thinking he should have worn a club suit and tie.
    link
    Having seen the comments live I would say it was a mild criticism and not a “slam” and Ljungbeg’s decision to not wear a suit wasn’t the reason Scholes didn’t think he was the right man.

    I remember that “crazy spread” formation from the ’80s; I think one or two USFL teams might have tried it. When I was in high school back then we might have experimented with it in practice, but IIRC we never used it in a game.

    Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more about the Steelers/Browns (and The Irishman). I feel like I’ve spent two weeks explaining to people that you’re not allowed to hit people with helmets ( or kick them in the head)

    The Irishman is a perfectly fine movie, nothing more, nothing less.

    It doesn’t look like this made it into the Ticker last weekend, but over the weekend the European Tour allowed golfers to wear shorts for the first time in major professional golf history.
    It was brutally hot in South Africa, which is was the reason for the exception, but I see this becoming a trend.

    link

    Personally, I’m all for it. Less fuddy duddy gatekeeping is good for the sport, I think.

    Why can’t Danny Jansen wear his customized catcher’s helmet in a game? Is there an MLB rule prohibiting that?

    Yes. That’s also why you don’t see custom-designed hockey-style catcher’s masks. It’s pretty ridiculous, and I’m surprised they’ve clung to that rule for so long.

    So players can wear whatever socks they want but customized catcher’s helmets/masks crosses the line? I hope MLB chokes on their maker’s marks.

    I’ve been describing The Irishman as good but not as good as Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, etc., etc. etc. but your review — “Not a bad movie, but an unnecessary one” — is right on the money so I am going to steal it. I loved the book, despite its possible fabrications (Sheeran’s involvement in the Gallo hit for one). It didn’t make the movie but Sheeran also alleged that he picked up the rifles used in the JFK assassination at Monte’s Venetian Room in your old neighborhood. After a while he comes close to being a wiseguy Forest Gump.

    Parasite was my favorite movie of the year and saw Ford vs. Ferrari over the weekend. It was very entertaining.

    Think the Seahawks neon-green jerseys would look great over the white pants. Anybody have a template to see what that would look like? Or, possibly the navy blue jerseys over the neon-green pants?

    I wrote about just such a scenario link. There was a follow up to that link — dealing with not just the Seahawks, but many teams wearing CR. I thought mixing and matching would work well for a few of the crappy CR monochromes.

    It will never happen, but the orange shade that Sam Ponder is wearing, is the shade of orange the Browns should adopt, more muted, more sophisticated.

    Knives Out was a tad disappointing, expected more based on the favorable press it has received.

    I’m probably in the minority on this but I don’t care much for the Dolphins throwbacks. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I definitely prefer their current unis. To each his own I suppose.

    Thanks for the recommendation for the Recorder movie. It’s coming to town later this month. Sounds faaaaascinating.

    Double thanks for the ASL story. Shared it!

    I loved that 99% Invisible on the old Raptors jerseys. I had seen a TED Talk Mars gave on flags because of the VlogBrothers Hank and John Green (it’s really a wonderful talk unless you’re from Pocatello, ID or Miwaukee, WI. It’s basically just like the podcast only A- you can see him and B- there’s an audience. Link is here if you’re interested: link) But what I kept thinking about was how Mars could easily make a follow-up to this episode of the podcast talking about how weird and crazy NBA Alternates have gotten! Take for example the very Toronto Raptors the episode mainly focused on. They’re alternates are crazy! They’re not the team colors (at least for the most part), they have no team name, city name, or even location identifier in general on them unless you count NORTH as a location identifier (again, for the most part since this years says TORONTO right on it), they have weird striping in the chevrons on the NORTH jerseys and the same jagged pinstriping from the original on the side of this years TORONTO one, and more. And Toronto is not the only team that is doing this–Chicago is leaning into the blue and red of the city flag, the Warriors are using the big tree logo as the center focalpoint, the Pistons have their big (ugly as sin) striping, I could go on and on.

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