Lights Out

2 hours ago, NOLAPelicans23 said:

The only logic I can think of is it's the uniform they (sadly) had the most success in and the very person you have in the picture.

That and nearly every other uniform they've worn has been the visual equivalent of wallpaper. Their home uniforms for decades looked like no-contact practice jerseys and were worn by 4-12 teams playing at baseball parks and college stadiums. You're not going to find a ton of people who fondly remember those. The choices are between ancient uniforms from the 1920s that they threw back to 30 years ago, the 1989-1995 road uniforms, or Reebok's clownsuits, and unfortunately the clownsuits are the ones that the most fans were alive to see and the ones they made it to a Super Bowl in.

There's very little separating that look from, say, Vandy or Wake Forest, and Purdue certainly hasn't distinguished itself with success on the field.

The cowcatcher stripe was a good idea, it just needed to be prominent, not sublimated.

The stripes on Mizzou's gold jersey should match the gold pants.

6 hours ago, SavardToColton said:

As someone with no ties to Iowa State I have no clue why Matt Campbell seems to be obsessed with the black and white gear. 

Seems like another PJ Fleck situation where the coach puts his brand above the program's.

5 hours ago, The_Admiral said:

I see what you're saying about the font, but being the Kings sort of entitles them to a more "stately" typeface than sports teams can usually get away with.

The original 1967-75 wordmark was stately. The new font is corporate and bland.

4 hours ago, Digby said:

Just very funny to me that "Oh, such-and-such owners won't keep this contending team together for long, the luxury tax will be too much" can coexist with "owner of a low-revenue team can tie up $65 million in dead money just like that".

Being over the luxury tax now comes with strict penalties beyond just having to spend more money. It greatly restricts the front office's ability to make moves. Eating a coach's contract does not.

The new crown is good, certainly an upgrade from the 1998 one. The font belongs on a life insurance brochure, not a sports team's logo. And I'm still not a fan of the auto emblem aesthetic or the black and silver color scheme. Overall it's a mixed bag.

The duck-mask logo still does nothing for me. It's better than the webbed D, but the bar could hardly be any lower.

I still wish they circled back years ago to something more in line with the rejected prototypes from their last rebrand.

I really like top-middle and bottom-left.

4 minutes ago, cajunaggie08 said:

TCU's diamond pattern may have been gimmicky but that one worked for TCU.

That pattern was traditional for TCU. It was the evolved form of the uniforms worn by LT and Dalton during their program's rise back to prominence.

People just call any plain-looking uniform "traditional" and "classic" when that's not what those words mean.

Boring downgrades like this are what I always think of when people start wringing their hands about Nike "ruining everything" in the pro leagues' threads.

If modern Nike had unlimited control over every sport and no input from owners or other design firms, every team would be wearing the plainest possible uniforms with no striping or anything to make them unique. Because that's exactly what they've been doing in college over the last few years where they do have that level of control.

On 6/14/2024 at 12:00 PM, gosioux76 said:

The gnashing of teeth over the uniqueness of the color scheme is about as premature as being annoyed by the boring name and jersey design.

 

I would be shocked if they didn't include a tertiary color — most likely, as most of you have said, some shade of purple — when they unveil the eventual permanent branding. We're seeing an intentionally watered-down placeholder look here. Why wouldn't that also include the full color scheme?

 

It seems like a pretty obvious formula they're following: Keep it obnoxiously basic so the eventually branding reveal has more impact. 

People haven't forgotten what happened last time this owner took over a team and did a rebrand. It's entirely possible that the real branding will be only marginally less boring than the placeholder.

The Jazz's course correction was only possible because of the decades of history and brand equity they had to pull from, courtesy of Larry Miller, who had a much better eye for aesthetics and branding than Ryan Smith - which is ironic since corporate branding is a fundamental part of Qualtrics' business, but I digress. The hockey team doesn't have that luxury, so there's less reason for optimism. When they can't even settle on a name in time for their first season like every other team has done, it probably doesn't bode well.

9 hours ago, PrimalCookie said:

Serious answer: NCAA v. Oklahoma happened. This was always the inevitable consequence of taking control of college sports away from an actual leadership board and giving it to TV networks, reorienting the entire product around ad revenue, brands and market size as a result. The only surprise is that it took 40 years for things to get this bad.

On 6/11/2024 at 6:33 PM, Rygi13 said:

The cynic in me thinks Nike is doing simple designs to save money.

You might be right, but I also think they've gotten lazy and complacent because of how little competition there is in the college sports apparel space anymore. As much as people applaud the return of classic looks, the majority of them come out looking like cheap catalog orders with no attention to detail. It also feels like an overcorrection with good modern looks being thrown out because of the backlash towards the bad ones.

I like the overall design, but I have to agree that the constant overuse of the same colors, particularly dark blue, on City Connects is becoming repetitive and grating. It already sucks with teams' normal uniforms, but it's crazy that even the uniforms that are supposed to look different from the norm still can't escape this level of blandness.
 

This would have been a great chance for the Twins to experiment with a Vikings-inspired purple and gold look.

The more I look at these uniforms, the worse they get. None of the stripes match at all. The 2012 uniforms were pretty dull design-wise, but they were at least consistent.

20 hours ago, bowld said:

2 new uniforms revealed and both feature classic striping, no piping, no black and no neon.

 

Have the Nike HQ's been hacked??

Basic and simple has been Nike's shtick in college sports for years now. It's their recent NFL/NBA/MLB work that makes people think otherwise, though they overlook that Nike is beholden to the whims of egomaniac billionaire owners in those leagues who want to put their personal stamp on their teams.

So the leak was real after all. I don't get the logic behind changing the wordmark just for this uniform. That's what made me think it was fake initially.

I expect it'll look like ass on TV with the bright silver stripes not contrasting enough with the white base. About the only thing I do like is the icicle effect on the numbers, it's very clever without being overdone. But again, because there's so little contrast, you won't even be able to see it outside of close-up pictures in perfect conditions.

14 minutes ago, Danny the Sheeb said:

I just don't understand why people like those jerseys so much (other than nostalgia/success) when the J-note word mark is one of the most creative and iconic designs in the league.

I've never been a huge fan of the J-note myself, but I do like the J-note/number lockup they've been using since 2017-18 and I'm glad it's sticking around in some capacity.

Obviously it's a big upgrade for the Jazz, but I do wish they put the team name on one of those jerseys.

I like the Suns' current uniforms. I wish they'd shift the sun/ball over a bit so it doesn't get cut off as much, but overlooking that, it's a fine update to the Barkley-era uniforms (unlike their first attempt in 2013 that was just horrible).

The ones before it were okay too, but once I noticed the mismatched collar and armhole trim on the jerseys, I could never unsee it. I don't know how such a sloppy mistake made it through the design process without ever being noticed or fixed.

In my view, 2000-2019 was the clear aesthetic low point for the Suns. It was so bad, the All-Star uniforms from when Phoenix hosted the game were infinitely better than what the actual team was wearing. Even then, I think the inclusion of silver/grey with the purple and orange made for an interesting color scheme in theory, just not one that was appropriate for the Suns in particular.

As for the Bucks, I've always thought that a combination of forest green and hunter orange would be nice for them.

18 hours ago, ruttep said:

The darkening of the red. Why, why, why, why, why. The brighter and bolder the red, the better for the Niners in my opinion.

I think the darker red was more noticeable on the white jerseys than on the red jerseys, which still always looked vibrant on the field in any decent lighting. I don't have a strong opinion on it either way, but I don't think it was a dealbreaker.

My biggest pet peeves were the white pants they wore exclusively for the first two years of the redesign, the mismatch between the pants and helmet stripes, and the lack of gold on the sleeve stripes. I also think double-outlined numbers would have been better than drop-shadowed, although I understand why they chose the latter at the time.

3 hours ago, truepg said:

that they got rid of soon after for unexplicable reasons

Adidas got lazy with the switch to Rev30 and only offered a limited selection of generic collar designs. The same thing happened to the Bobcats, Timberwolves, Hawks, Sixers, and Rockets.

3 hours ago, Captain Poncho said:

 

Those 49ers uniforms are vastly superior to what they're wearing now.

There are some tweaks I'd make to them in an ideal world, but yeah, at least they aren't as dull as the current look.

I don't think any of those "logos" can be described as trying too hard.

Between this and Ryan Smith already threatening to move the team out of SLC proper before a single game has been played, the NHL somehow managed to replace the Coyotes with an even more dysfunctional clownshow. OITGDNHL.