maz

This one will get me run out of town... BFBS is not a crime against humanity. The instant mass retching around here that's induced by a team adding black to its uniforms, regardless of how it actually affects the look, is a phenomenon I like to call, "B*****ng about Black for Black's Sake for B*****ng's Sake". Or, simply, BABFBSFBS. You want a real crime? The Blues and Pirates adding red around that same time period. RFRS, if you will. EDIT: RE: Wearing white at home. The only arguments I ever see in favor of this are, "that's how it used to be!" and, "how else do the home fans see the road team's colors?" We don't still live in the days where home games were blacked out on TV causing you to only see opposing teams' white jerseys, unless you went to games. Which leads me to my main point - why, even today, would you want to see a white jersey every single time you turn on a road game on TV, making every arena look the same, save for the logo at center ice? Even as a neutral fan, color at home makes for more interesting TV and, IMO, strengthens the connection between the home team and its fans. Every team has a white jersey. Not every team has one like your team's dark one. If it wasn't for the logistical issue of having to carry all that equipment around, I'd say hockey and football go to a basketball/soccer-like "wear whatever you want as long as it clashes enough" system, because what we really need are more color-on-color matchups.

That graphic, and some videos from Maulers training camp, show decals on both sides of the helmet. Some videos show one side. Hoping for both sides. Like others have said, I wish they had used gray more beyond just the facemask, and it's definitely better than they could have been, but still not great - overall, a little rough. I actually kinda like that road uniform, though.

The "codes" at the start are references to different things in Pirates history. The shot at the end is a pretty ubiquitous shot of Pittsburgh. So, really, I don't know what we can get from it, if anything. My prediction is the name on the front will say "The Burgh" and the uniform won't be going for a "Steel City" type theme (like this Pitt uniform, for example). Other than that... I have no clue. There are a lot of different ways they could go. Hopefully we get more clues over the next three months.

Yeah, I was afraid they'd do the logo-on-one-side thing. We discussed the colors already, and like I said before, I was fine with it as long as they didn't look like the Steelers. Even if they did accidentally, I'd be fine with it. The one-sided decals is a deliberate "Steelers" thing, though, and that does bug me.

Forget what everyone else says, when it's just the "USA" part, I love the hockey one. It gets the stripes-as-the-S thing right. I get the love for the block "USA" and it isn't a bad choice by any means on a uniform, but as far as logos are concerned, it's one of the best. I liked the old soccer logo. From the mothership's report on the change: All I'd do to change it is make the stars one color and flip the red and blue so to match the flag. It's definitely very 90's overdesign, so I get it, but the new one is too far in the other direction.

Maybe it did only come with the jersey. I didn't pay too close attention to the sign after the initial surprise of it being a thing in the first place. Either way, as long as we don't see it come right from the manufacturer with it put on there, I'm good.

I can't speak for other teams, but the Pens were actually selling iron-on ad patches for fans who wanted to make their jersey more "authentic." I know that's a different sport/manufacturer, but I'd be okay with something like this in baseball. There may be some fans out there who value the "accuracy" of having the ads over the aesthetic benefit of not having them (I doubt that's gonna be a very large crowd), so if they want it, fine. But don't make it the rule. Or, after a couple years we'll just accept it as part of the uniform, like soccer, and you'll similarly see it on both levels of retail jerseys - replica and authentic. That's likely what teams are banking on at this point, not that we have a choice in the matter.

I was more referencing how distance in general is an issue for low attendance teams (and I assumed the Oakland Coliseum was way outside the city for some reason), so I guess a better equivalent is Three Rivers still being around. People would still pack the place for the Steelers and a Pirates team capable of consistently competing. Which is a thought that keeps me on the "relevance is more important" side, but I was 7 the last time I was there and too distracted by the excitement of it being my second-ever game (not counting when I was a baby), so it could've been almost as bad as Oakland for all I remember (though I do remember there being chunks of the concrete just straight-up missing).

These uniforms look like what I've always heard about British weather.

I mean, you aren't wrong. There's good reason nobody gives a crap about the Bucs, and they would pack the stadium if they were competitive (see also: 2013, 14, 15 like you said). But to the "stadium matters more" crowd's point, I did wonder: if they played in a dump half an hour out of town in Cranberry or something, would people still come out for a competitive Pirates team? I find it hard to believe. Steelers? Yes. Pens? I dunno. Bucs? I doubt it. Oh and trust me, I'd love to inherit a top notch Baseball ops and some prospects from a competitive franchise. But Nutting would still find a way to ruin it. Now if there was some way for MLB to also take care of him...

I'm with those who aren't sure a new ballpark would help attendance if a team is still irrelevant. The Pirates are irrelevant and play in a widely-lauded downtown ballpark. Nobody still comes to games. Hell, if PNC wasn't part of a package deal with Heinz back in the late 90's, they'd likely have gone to DC years before the Expos did. And after that first year when the "new ballpark" novelty wore off... right back to crappy attendance. A good stadium doesn't necessarily draw crowds when your team is irrelevant, it just keeps the team around a while longer, whether people care or not.

... obviously. To simplify the admittedly-wordy and roundabout way I originally made my point: A logo that didn't stink would make a red bill cap passable, but no matter what, all-blue would always be the better cap.

The all-blue USA cap is fine, IMO. A better cap logo would help out a lot. I feel like the current logo makes the red bill cap the lesser cap whereas, with a better logo, I could see an argument for a red bill. But, even then, all-blue just feels right to me. You don't need much red for a US (or patriotically-themed) team.

Me: Huh, for someone whose mother was born in Italy, I really don't have anything Italian. Maybe I'll snag one of the Team Italy hats... .... Nevermind. (I know the letter I isn't the most interesting one to make a monogram with, but still)

See, with rising sea levels and all that, I wonder about the ability of any dildo-based structure to withstand flooding from the storm surge of any given hurricane. Unless we can redirect the lava flow into the sea with a strategically collapsed building ala the 1997 Tommy Lee Jones classic Volcano and use the natural processes of the water cooling the lava into rock to actually build more land. The ability of dildos to withstand hurricane-force winds is still a mystery, though.

Last thing lest this thread get Burgh-jacked. You're right. The white home top with Pirates on the front, both the sleeveless one and the t-shirt style with mustard gold, are the jerseys of Clemente - that alone makes them their most recognizable. As well as the very rather similar home unis of the early 90's Killer B's and three straight lost NLCS's. Which I suppose makes the 79 look, while legendary, not the most closely-associated with the franchise.

It's interesting to think about whether or not that would be different had they never drafted Crosby, Malkin, etc. and had the success they have for the past decade and a half. If they had continued to stink since 2003 when they went back to the skating penguin, despite the two cups in 91 and 92, I wonder if the many other 90's playoff runs and golden years of Mario and Jagr's careers being in the robo would've, with age, made the it more "iconic" in a way similar to how the Pirates' most iconic look is, arguably, the one they haven't worn in nearly 40 years - because they've been mediocre at best for all but six years ever since then, and with that there's been this growing affinity for the 1979 "Family" team and the "last time we won anything". That said, this was the worst of the many combinations that year and thus Willie Stargell is my Pirates entry for the thread. But again, with how many combos they wore that year, it's hard to pick which is the most-associated with him. There's a good argument the gold shirt/black pants combo is most remembered, especially with the Pirates wearing that on Sundays for a few years recently.

My thoughts exactly. When I think about Jagr, I think any of the three robo jerseys, which I know much of Pittsburgh hated. Being born in 93 I grew up hearing fans in Pittsburgh lament that logo and be thankful when it was gone. But with how people's opinions seem to have softened over time (outside of the nostalgia my age group has for it), I was beginning to wonder if it qualified. FWIW, I've been told by fellow Pens fans the main reason it was hated was because they had just gone back-to-back in the other uniforms, and the new ownership group seemed to be overstepping trying to make a big impact right away by "modernizing" the team's look. Then when they got upset by the Islanders that year, it sealed the deal for Pens fans hating it. Legend has it Mario hated it for that exact reason and it's part of why, when he bought the team, they got rid of it not long after and it didn't come back until this year's RR - the first season after he sells the team. It goes back, again, to the "best vs. most iconic" thing, and when it comes to the robo era of the Penguins, there seems to be a lot of debate these days about both categories whereas before it felt like the hockey world was decidedly anti-robo.

Has anyone else been getting a full-screen McAfee ad saying your subscription is up and it's doing a scan? It's more than just a pop-up, it takes over the whole window. A recent google search shows it is a phishing scam. I don't get it on any other site I have whitelisted from my ad blocker.

This was one of my first thoughts . I had thought of Sid and Geno as well, considering their best individual seasons, and two of their three cup-clinching games, were in that jersey. Although, with the Pens wearing the throwback at home in the 2016 playoffs and going to them full-time the following season, we could end up in a similar situation to Mario Lemieux, who's associated with both the Pre-Robo and Robo jerseys. Which brings me to the debate about the meaning of this thread - I think they mean "wrong for their team" as in "not their best aesthetically," and not "one that isn't most iconic." A lot of people equate success with what the "right" and "wrong" uniform is. Example: the throwbacks the Pens went to a few years ago? They were sub-.500 for 9 of the 13 seasons they originally wore it, including the three worst seasons in their history. I can't help but wonder if people would have longed for them to come back so much if the Pens had changed before they won their first back-to-back cups. EDIT: That said, if your team went back to a throwback that could be bested in originality and thoughtfulness by a 12-year-old armed with nothing more than MS Paint and a dream, then it's only "right" if all the other uniforms were truly awful. Old and generic doesn't always = good, either.

Another one from the Pittsburgh area, but a move away from copying - the Pittsburgh Central Catholic Vikings, alma mater of Dan Marino and Damar Hamlin. Used to change the purple in the Minnesota Vikings logo to blue, But in recent years appear to have designed what, to my knowledge, is an original (albeit heavily inspired) logo... Still using Minnesota-like helmets, though...

Thing is, I think it mostly was an art student or teacher making logos for their teams back in the day, but more often than not they were just super cartoony or realistic hand-drawn caricatures. Then the internet made digital copies of cleaner-looking pro and college logos more readily available and it became easier to change it just enough then order mass amounts of stuff with it put on there. Add on apathetic AD's who want their team to look "legit" without caring at all about originality, and boom - hundreds of Denver Broncos and Philadelphia Eagles all across America.

Something I think next to nobody notices... the "P" in the arch Pirates script is "capitalized" (aka it's slightly bigger than the rest). This led me to notice that it's slightly changed a few times over the years. It was this way when they first went to that script in the 50's up through the 60's and most of the 70's. The original version of the 1960's uniforms appears to have taller letters than the more "squished" current version they've worn since bringing back that uniform when they moved to PNC Park in 2001. Personally, I prefer the late 70's to late 90's version with all the letters the same size (before they went to this for a few years which, honestly, I also kinda liked).

The Avalanche looked better with black pants/glove/helmets. Does it match? Does it make sense? No, I admit, it doesn't. But something about all the blue feels "wrong" to me. I can't put it into words.

Came back to share how one of my school's biggest rivals, the Plum Mustangs, always copied the Denver Broncos but made them purple and gold... ...but has recently begun bastardizing the Pitt script instead. Their ice hockey team appears to still use the Broncos logo, with a Capitals-esque wordmark, on throwback LA Kings unis... I always give a pass to teams copying unis, however, since it is easy and cheap to get bulk jerseys on existing templates.