Lights Out

9 hours ago, Dynasty said:

MLB is literally the closest thing we have here to European soccer.

College football is way closer to soccer. Actually, it's even worse nowadays since at least soccer pretends to have rules and leadership. CFB is just chaos that only benefits a small handful of blue bloods and is slowly killing the sport for everyone else.

For all the MLB's flaws, they just had a Diamondbacks/Rangers World Series a couple months ago, capping off a wild postseason where all the 100-win teams combined to win exactly one playoff game and got eliminated early. Something like that is borderline impossible in European soccer or CFB, but playoff baseball is a great equalizer that produces all sorts of unexpected matchups.

On that note: whenever the Dodgers sign their next superstar, I just start wondering which 82-win team they'll end up losing to in the NLDS. At least when the Yankees used to throw their money around like this, they would actually win. 

The Eagles have only beaten Seattle three times in the last 30 years and zero times since 2008. It's crazy how lopsided that matchup has quietly been.

12 minutes ago, Sykotyk said:

But to say Texans have some type of 'classic' look would be to say that the Kansas City Royals going blue away uniform is a 'classic look'. It's just dated, and nostalgia plays a role.

The Texans barely even have anything to be nostalgic about, that's the crazy part. These are glorified catalog-order uniforms for a franchise that's been chronically mediocre.

I don't agree with the Royals comparison. The powder blues bring back memories of George Brett, Bo, the '80 and '85 teams, etc. There's legitimate nostalgia and history there. I would compare the Texans more to the OKC Thunder branding-wise. The Texans have a way better logo, the Thunder have had more team success, but both will still always be in the shadow of the Oilers/Sonics and their more iconic brands.

Even if it was a "flavor of the moment," the Texans as they are now have no flavor at all.

19 hours ago, henburg said:

 

This is literally just the Titans color scheme. I just think it's so weird that people seem to want for them to rebrand to be more similar to one of their division rivals.

It's the Titans that are the problem here. Their whole brand from day one has been squatting on the Oilers' colors so Houston can't have them. It'd be a different story if they had kept the Oilers brand, but when they became the Titans, they should have changed the colors more drastically than they did.

Well, the Titans sure choked like the Oilers. They might want to reconsider those throwbacks.

9 hours ago, ruttep said:

If Brandon Staley isn't fired by tomorrow morning they should just delete the franchise. 

It won't matter either way. If Staley does get fired (which is still a huge if) Dean will just find another obscure yes-man who's willing to work for cheap. And regardless of who the coach is, the roster will never be good enough to win when Dean's unqualified son is the one making all those decisions and the GM is just a puppet.

They've blamed executives, coaches, players, and even the city of San Diego, but the problem is and has always been in the owner's box.

On 12/11/2023 at 6:05 PM, ruttep said:

 

This is legal how?

I shrugged when the Dodgers signed Ohtani since all the spending and big names haven't amounted to much for them in the playoffs, but this is just dumb. Any restrictions on spending the league can come up with are toothless if teams can just avoid the consequences of their spending by deferring most of the money.

I wish I could say I'm amazed the league didn't anticipate a loophole like this, but Manfred is a moron and most of the owners are apathetic at best. I also don't get why everyone bitched so hard about the Mets' and Padres' spending but they ignore the Dodgers'.

This makes the Chiefs' whining even more egregious. Not only are they mad at a correct call, they even still got away with more on that play:

You just know the refs are going to spend the rest of the season carrying the Chiefs up and down the field thanks to all this crying. And the call was actually correct for once! I used to like them, but now they're one cheating scandal away from being the Patriots all over again.

29 minutes ago, Kramerica Industries said:

Are the Saints wearing their current helmets with the older FdL slapped on, or did they have the same kind of color matching problem with their helmets and pants as the Giants and Rams did with their helmets and jerseys in the past?

It does seem like they had matching issues back then, but it doesn't look quite as pronounced as it is in today's game:

The whole "we don't fire coaches" shtick has always been silly since the Steelers haven't actually needed to fire anyone since Bill Austin. I think most other teams would have also kept Noll and Cowher around for a long time.

Conversely, before Noll, when the Steelers were their era's version of the Browns/Lions/Jets, they were cycling through coaches every few years like anyone else. And as Cowher's players retired, Tomlin gradually became another Wayne Fontes who does just enough every season to avoid being fired - another situation that isn't unique to the Steelers by any means.

The Steelers have seemingly had a knack for losing to the worst teams ever since that Raiders game in Cowher's last season where Ben threw two pick-sixes. As bad as the Patriots are, it didn't surprise me that they won last night.

The images are broken.

The scorebug isn't necessarily bad, but that font has to change. I don't know what possessed them to use a near-unreadable ultra thin width font for things as important as the game clock and the team names.

I don't think it's bad, but it does really need a logo or something to fill in that large red block in front.

I actually love the neon green jerseys and if it were up to me, they'd be their primaries at home. They just shouldn't wear monochrome neon.

I'm surprised Seattle hasn't tried wearing the meon green pants with the navy jerseys yet.

On 11/27/2023 at 2:41 PM, TalktoChuck said:

And I don’t think they do football uniforms at all.

They do Maine's football uniforms. Not sure if they're the supplier for anyone else right now.

Years ago, they also did football uniforms for Wyoming and CMU.

On 11/27/2023 at 10:28 AM, dgthree said:

Not sure if this New Balance template is unique to Bryant or something they are rolling out on other teams too.

BC just unveiled a new alternate with this template.

On 11/28/2023 at 12:10 PM, GFB said:

Those schools you mentioned started hand-painting their helmets again in the 90s (if you look at the finish and how they scuffed) because they only had to worry about 80-100 helmets per season vs. national supply chains and quick turnarounds like an NFL franchise would have to.

I'm pretty sure the Bengals hand-painted their helmet stripes until recently, so there was already precedent for NFL teams doing the same.

15 hours ago, GFB said:

There was the "eggshell" blue that the Broncos and Ole Miss used,  or the navy helmets that the Rams and Giants used... but no true "royal" blue until 2000ish.

Kansas, Duke, and San Jose State all had actual royal blue helmets by the '90s. When some of the worst college football programs in America were getting it right in an era before big-money apparel deals, the only explanation for NFL franchises not being able to do it is that they didn't care enough about how they looked.

Nice to see the Bengals wearing their best combo today (orange/black/orange).

2 hours ago, ruttep said:

Huh? You'd prefer black pants over gold pants for the Saints??

No, I'm talking about the Ravens.

On 11/17/2023 at 2:58 PM, kaleb_girod said:

After watching the Ravens last night, it bugs me so much that their black pants are just solid, much like the Saints. I hate inconsistency. The Ravens purple and white pants have stripes, but not their black pants. The Saints gold pants have a stripe, but not their black or white pants. Idk, it just really bugs me.

 

On that note though, if there’s one team that does all-black right it’s the Ravens for the simple fact that they don’t overdo it. They save it for one (or two) special/big games per season. If only the Saints could take a note from them instead of just wearing the all-black for every home game. It’s just not that special or cool when it’s worn out.

I've always thought that they could just put their helmet stripes on the black pants too and call it a day. It wouldn't match the other pants, but if it was up to me, they'd only have the black pants anyway.

The new color scheme is surprisingly nice, but the uniforms themselves are still too plain for my liking. I still truly believe they were on to something with the snakeskin pattern a few years ago and just needed to figure out a more tasteful way to incorporate it rather than getting rid of it altogether.

Reverting back to the old D-snake is also an odd decision. I don't see what was so bad about the updated one.