TheOldRoman

Unpopular opinion: something not popular or accepted by a majority. See also: previous post.Right, and Mizzou's current sets are awful. I imagine the majority of posters would argue with the contention that any of their uniforms are among the best in college football.

I like brown in sports, but you walk a fine line when using it. Brown with yellow works, because the yellow is vibrant. Brown with gold? Not as vibrant or inspired, but it could still be done in a classy manner. You can't do anything modern with brown, and you can't do anything overly complicated either. You pretty much need to keep it brown plus one complimentary color, and keep white in the mix in all elements. Throwing in orange is just way too much, as it was when the Padres added orange in the '80s. The striping patterns on the Riders might look nice on a polo shirt, but they don't work on a football uniform.

Yeah, red white and blue is certainly overused in sports, but that's just the way it is. No new teams should take that color scheme, but that doesn't mean the Indians should change to brown and red or some crap like that.

Home/road caps work sometimes in baseball, provided the team matches the batting helmets to the caps in all games. However, most of the times the second cap is a reach, and looks much worse than other. The A's road caps (current and former) both are much worse than the home, the Mariners' solid navy cap (former road) is worse than the former-home teal billed cap. The Braves' home cap is much, much better than their awful road cap. The Reds' home cap is much better than their crappy road caps. Teams like the Nationals Twins and Astros would look better only using their home cap, while the Orioles would be better served only using the road one. Road caps can sometimes work, but it's rare. Football is different. With as prominent as football helmets are and with the helmet serving as de facto logos, football teams should never have alternate helmets (outside of possibly wearing throwbacks once per year).

That first photo's pretty rare also, since I think the Jazz wore those horrendous black alts 90% of the time on the road the last few years of that set.

GREAT uniforms. Not only are the Oilers incredible, but that's by far the best Jaguars set ever, in my opinion.

I think there was a rule like that at one time. In 2005, the Dodgers were coming to the south side of Chicago for the first time since the 1959 World Series. I wanted to buy tickets to one of those games before the season. At the Soxfest convention in January, I asked one of the reps if they would be wearing throwbacks for that series. I was told that they would, but by MLB rules, they were only allowed to wear such throwbacks for one game per season. Anyway, the Sox wore fantastic wool throwbacks for the Saturday game of that series. If that rule did exist, it was specifically for once-off throwbacks, and not for throwbacks which the team designated as an official alternate for that season (such as the Sox did in 2001, 2006, 2012 and 2013). I agree that it should be limited to once a year, though. Particularly if the team isn't celebrating an anniversary. It was (kinda) cool that the Sox wore their 1983 throwbacks last year. This year they are official alternates, in a non-anniversary year, so the team basically decides to look like an entirely different team for all home day games at this point.

Here's a likely unpopular one - MLB needs to stop with the Negro League and Minor League throwbacks. It's not needed, it dilutes the brand, and at least in the case of the Negro League unis, most of them are ass ugly. The White Sox shouldn't wear throwbacks to a Negro League team that had no affiliation with the Sox. The Brewers, Padres and Rays shouldn't throw back to old minor league teams that had nothing to do with those major league franchises (even when they share the same name). We criticize MLB for the camouflage and S&S, and rightly so, but these are no better.

I'm with you on the tight uniform Dan Uggla wears the 1980s cut That's about how a baseball jersey should be worn. It's clearly fitted, but it's not skin tight. The trend today is baggy uniforms. They don't look terrible for the most part, but the horrible part is the giant sleeves. It seems like half the players today have gigantic sleeves which go down to their elbows. And they're unlike the 3/4 length sleeves in baseball's past because the sleeves are extremely wide in addition to being long. It seems like every other player is looking like CC Sabathia, minus the whole obesity thing.

LOL. Vinnie Viola. I laugh every time I hear that name. Not to stereotype because I'm part Italian, but if you hear of someone named "Vinnie Viola," you should probably avoid doing business with him. Same with Boots DelBiaggio. I just looked him up, and it appears he is a middle-aged guy in a business suit. I was picturing a younger, weight-lifting douce in an Ed Hardy shirt. Think Joe Francis with gelled hair.

Someone on this board (I don't remember who) has been claiming that the rule was only for last season, and teams will be allowed to have throwback helmets in coming years. However, there have been no articles to back that up. Nothing we have seen so far has said the rule was only for 2013.

The Patriots switched to that style in 2000, the year before he was injured and Brady lead them to the Super Bowl. In fact, that photo is from 2000, seeing as the Dolphins are wearing Nike uniforms. In 2001, Reebok took over all teams except for the three Adidas contracts which would remain for another year (NE, SF and TB). In 2002, Reebok did all uniforms and added the "Equipment" patch.

Reminded me of:

After Jordan retired, those pinstripes didn't see the court again until last season. The Bulls' black jerseys had pinstripes in 1995/96 and 96/97. In Jordan's final season with the Bulls, they dropped the stripes.

You know what's literally a world away from LA? Mars.

Right. Somebody's got to be last, but the Rays are a very competitive, exciting and young team which has made the playoffs four out of the last six seasons; one which plays in the AL east, meaning a quarter of their home games are against NY or Boston, which gives them a huge bump from those teams' transplant fans coming out. Somebody's got to be last, but it shouldn't be the Rays.

I will laugh for days if the Cardinals decide to offer $5 parking to undercut the Coyotes. But really, it won't make much of a difference anyway because the majority of the 6,000 or so attending any given game will just park in the free mall lots and get a Jamba Juice on their way to the game rather than paying $25 dollars to park.

Is this a serious post?

Hawk is obviously the brooding. I don't think Hawk is at all to blame for a bad public image, but he certainly doesn't help. This image of the Sox has gone back to early years of the Reinsdorf era, at least. Hawk can pout at times when the team is doing poorly in a game, but the only time he was completely unlistenable to me was last year. Even in 2007, with a talented team sandwiched between 99, 90 and 89 win teams, which just so happened to crap the bed, he wasn't bad. You get a lot of Hawk hate from Cubs fans, obviously, but I don't think he has been a detriment among casual fans. If anything, his catch phrases would pull people in somewhat. Hawk was at his best with Wimpy, and I really believe they were one of the best PBP teams in baseball. They played off eachother well. Jackson is just dry toast; he did little to complement Hawk, and added very little of his own. Hawk didn't get to really bad until he was paired with Steve Stone. I think there's just too much ego for one booth to contain. Stone is a brilliant analyst, but his smugness can at times be grating. Hawk and Stone are a lot better than they were last year, but I still wouldn't be at all depressed if both left at this point. As for radio, Farmer's pretty bad. John Rooney is one of the best PBP guys in baseball - great skill and a classic voice. When he left to go home to St. Louis, Farmer was promoted and the broadcasts have struggled since. Farmer would blabber on about whatever, but Rooney would always cut him off with, "I see, Ed. Runner in motion and here's the 3-2 pitch to Frank..." Rooney adequately reigned him in. Admiral's not exaggerating about Farmer. I listen get in my car at times and listen for 10 minutes before I hear the score of the game. "Welcome back. First pitch of the inning was fouled off. So, on our off day yesterday, I did a little golfing. I went to the X charity golf outing out at Ruffled Feathers. You ever played there?" (No) "Ruffled Feathers in Lemont. Have you played that course?" (No sir) "Well, anyway, a lot of the '85 Bears were there" *crack of bat, loud groan of fans in background* "and I got paired up with Hall-of-Famer Dan Hampton. Did you know he's in the Hall of Fame now? Dan was telling me about times back in Arkansas, they were playing Alabama, coached by legendary Bear Bryant" *audible sound of ball hitting mitt, mixed reaction from fans* "and it was a big deal playing Alabama back in the day. Today, Arkansas is in the same conference, but back then they were in the Big Eight, so they didn't" *crack of bat, fans get very loud, then groan* "play all that often. It was a big deal. Alabama had some great teams. So, Morneau leads off with a double, just out of the reach of De Aza. Dan told me that..." Jackson and Farmer just have this creepy love/hate relationship where they take shots at each other that really aren't that funny. Lots of awkward pauses, too. On Pat Hughes, I think he has a good voice, but at least from what I've heard of him, his delivery is too schmaltzy. Or maybe it's the Cubs' schmaltz machine that shapes his delivery. I would think it's hard to sound legitimate when you're reading between batters "we've got a letter here from Beatrice in Des Moines, Iowa. She's 82, been a Cubs fan for 70 years, and listens to every game on WGN. She asks 'Pat, why do the Cubs wear pinstripes at home but not on the road?'" Anyway, I think teams could do worse than him, but they could also do better.

The story goes that Reinsdorf had the seats colored "Dodger blue" because he grew up in Brooklyn a huge Dodgers fan, was in attendance for Jackie Robinson's first game, etc. First off, the seats weren't actually Dodger blue, but as far as I know that was just a rumor and there was no confirmation his picked the color to honor the Dodgers. On the upper deck, as I said, it was no steeper than in other new parks. The biggest problems with it were 1) it was HUGE. I don't have the numbers anymore, but the percentage of seats in the upper deck was much higher than in other parks built since, due to both a smaller lower deck and a barely-there mezzanine deck. 2) The entrances are at the bottom level. If you look at all the other new parks, you always enter somewhere in the middle of the upper deck. At New Comiskey, you entered from the concourse and looked up at 30 something rows. It was much more daunting. As for John McDonough, strangely enough, he is a lifelong Sox fan. I also believe that he would have been able to level the playing field more between the two teams. Marketing is not just the commercials a team does, but the total image the team puts out at the park and on broadcasts. McDonough is great at creating a fun atmosphere and broadcasts which promote the team and the game experience. The Cubs were always excellent at finding the perfect shot of the kid with a too-big ice cream cone, or at the other end, the busty coeds in tank tops. Sox broadcasts have never done that. They show the game, but they don't portend fun, and when the team is losing, are often brooding.

I think there's more to my post than that. Like I said, the Cubs did a lot right, while the Sox make blunder after blunder. Anyway, I laughed when I heard those new Cub commercials on the radio. That's the type of crap the Sox have been known to put out. It is, and I have nothing to back that up, but it's just a feeling I get talking to other Sox and/or Bulls fans. For one, Reinsdorf is the chairman, but he owns less than 5% of the team and speaks for the board of trustees. It's not like he is personally hoarding money. He could be misguided, but his teams have spent money when the fans came out and when they had a chance to win. Some jackasses were going nuts about the Bulls not putting themselves into cap hell by loading up and paying luxury tax in a year Rose was out, but whatever. The Bulls were raking in money instead of giving max salary to random players in the Tim Floyd era, but no amount of money to marginal free agents was going to turn that dumpster fire around. I'm not holding that against them. If the team goes cheap the next few years, criticism will be legitimate, but I'm not going to say the team should pay the luxury tax every year regardless of their chances of winning or the quality of players available. There isn't much defending things Reinsdorf did running the Sox from 1981-2003, but since then the team has increased its payroll to its expected market position, regardless of attendance. I know the Bears have a reputation for being cheap going back to Halas, and it's pretty silly in the age of the salary cap. Still, I don't see anything close to the level of hatred for any other owners as I do Reinsdorf. The "money grubbing" and "backstabber" comments seem to come out among fans when talking about him. The fact that this level of hatred has come for ownership which brought Chicago 7 championships is even more damning. Reinsdorf has made more than his fair share of mistakes, but he has obvious successes. Also, he has been extremely charitible in his time in Chicago, and that's not really spoken of. At this point, I would say his biggest fault is his loyalty, including when the loyalty hurts the bottom line.

EDIT: Double post

First off, on Ferris Buehler. Director John Hughes was actually a diehard Sox fan. He wanted to have that scene at Comiskey, but the Sox weren't at home during the days they had set to film that scene. Instead of keeping the crew around another few days to just to get shots at Comiskey, he decided to use Wrigley. That scene helped immortalize the park and added to the growing sunshine-and-rainbows aura that was started the year before when Ryne Sandberg became a superstar, the Cubs won the division, and Harry Caray became a national icon broadcasting the games on WGN. I am not old enough to speak definitively on Comiskey vs. Wrigley, but I can say that Wrigley wasn't always the crowned jewel it is now. The Cubs had tried a few times to get a new park, and Wrigley stands today only because they failed. In the late '70s and early '80s, they closed the upperdeck when the Cardinals weren't in town. Lakeview was a shady area at the time, as well. Gentrification happened, the Cubs got kinda good, Harry came, it was pretty much everything happening at once to turn Wrigleyville into the place to be. Then-owners WGN did a masterful job of marketing the park above the team, turning it into a place to go and be seen. It's a tourist destination even for people who aren't baseball fans. Before this wave, Wrigley was just another park and their attendance was tied to their record, like every other team. The Sox owned the city in the '50s, and things went in cycles. One of the biggest things helping the Cubs is that they have had their games on WGN TV and radio for a real long time. In the mid '80s, WGNTV became a superstation and turned them into a national brand with loveable drunken uncle Harry Caray calling their games nationwide. I also think it helped that, unlike the TBS-showcased Braves, the Cubs played their home games during the day, when kids were home and there was nothing else to watch on TV. WGN radio was a huge part, too, as it has a huge broadcast radius. It helped turn the top 2/3 of Illinois and nearly all of Iowa into Cubs fans. Meanwhile, the Sox had plenty of incompetent ownership groups. They bounced around from radio stations and TV stations. For a while, they didn't show home games. In the '70s, they aired games on an amateurish Channel 44, of which NOBODY received a clear signal. Then, the year before they won the division in 1983, they pulled their games from WGNTV, instead creating their own cable network (which was brilliant in hindsight, but 20 years before its time). The network was basically PPV at that time, as you had to have a special box from the cable company to get it. The night the Sox beat Seattle to win the division, an estimated 15,000 people in Chicagoland saw it on TV. The next year, the Cubs won the division and it was broadcasted across the nation. Also, Harry Caray, having left the Cardinals after boning Busch's wife, spent several years on the south side and became an icon. Harry had disagreements with the new Reinsdorf/Einhorn ownership group, and the final straw to him was when he was informed the team was taking its games to PPV. He took less money to go to the Cubs, where he would have a much larger audience. His 7th inning stretch routine had started in Comiskey, when Bill Veeck put a microphone into the booth unbeknownst to Harry, thinking that if fans heard his terrible singing, they would sing along. He obviously took that with him to Wrigley, and it added to his charm. The Sox were hurt in the '70s by bad teams, penniless owners threatening to move the team, and racial conflicts which gave the neighborhood a bad aura. After the Sox were sold to the Reinsdorf group, they had money and the teams got better, but the "aura" remained. This was largely due the the fact that the flames of subtle racism were fanned by the Chicago media. They wrote about how dreary, seedy and dangerous the southside was, in comparison to the happy fun place where white people in polo shirts go to watch America's pasttime. Today, Bridgeport has a considerably lower crime rate than Lakeview, but the "dangerous neighborhood" aura persists, due to perpetuation by the media and the fact that some black people live within walking distance. While Wrigleyville became a happening area, Bridgeport never went through that. There were ghettos nearby, but those are gone. To the north of the park is lots of two-flats which have stayed in the same families for years. North of that is Chinatown, which is never going to be hip. Mixed-income housing has been built where ghettos stood, and some million+ dollar homes went up, but the neighborhood isn't going to draw people other than for baseball games. The most glaring error over the last two decades was the building of New Comiskey. The Sox were actually pitched the park that would become Camden Yards, but thought it was unncessarily orante and expensive. They opted to go with something that was similar to Kaufmann and other recent parks. It was a marvel in its first year. Then Camden Yards opened the next year, putting it to shame and leading a wave of retro parks. It was compounded by the fact that Comiskey II was an ugly shade of blue. Not only was it a cold, non-organic color, but every single empty seat stuck out like a sore thumb, which didn't look good on TV. After the new park smell wore off, the media ran with stories of the "dangerous" neighborhood (tales of bullet holes in seats) and spoke about the upper deck as if it was pitched at a 70 degree angle, despite the fact that it was no steeper than the upperdeck in Jacobs Field or Coors Field. The Sox had arguably the best team in baseball when the strike came in 1994. When the players came back in 1995, the team sucked and many fans blamed Reinsdorf, who was instrumental among hardline owners. The park has been renovated, and it was a night-and-day transformation. It's a great place to watch a game, but still, it will never be Camden Yards. Some jackasses pouted to themselves and boycotted the Sox even when they won the series in 2005, and others who came back into the fold that year again boycotted management afterwards when the team didn't go back-to-back. Reinsdorf has done a lot of good, but also a lot of bad things as an owner. Still, I think a lot of the animosity towards Reinsdorf is rooted in anti-semitism. Other than that, Reisndorf hs more or less ran the team like a mom-and-pop business. Not just in terms of spending, because he has spent money when the fans came, and even these past few years when the fans didn't come. The team is just run as a small-time business. Whereas Arte Moreno was extremely proactive, coming into LA and taking on the Dodgers (a much more unwinnable situation), Sox ownership has been more content to say "Hey, here's an AL team for you guys who want to see the Yankees." The media puts out the image of the antiseptic, dangerous park and brutish fans who will smash whiskey bottles over your kid's head, and ownership has done nothing to combat that. They are content knowing they will get die-hards every year, while pulling in bigger crowds when the team is good. Also, I think a part of it is that the Sox didn't have a heated rivalry with a nearby team. The Cubs where hated rivals with the NL's top franchise, the Cardinals. The Sox didn't have a natural rival until the Brewers came along, but that rivalry never built up that much because the Brewers were a newer franchise and the teams weren't good at the same time. When the Sox were really good in the '50s and early '60s, their key rival was the Yankees. Duh, get in line to hate them. The Sox were nothing to the Yankees. I think having a huge rivalry like that keeps the team at least somewhat relevant. "Throw the records out" and all that crap. The Cubs blew in the '70s, but I'm sure it was still a big deal when they played the Cards. In summary, the Cubs, despite having incompetent baseball people, had really good marketing people. They had good fortune with the team getting competitive at the right time and WGNTV going national, along with day baseball and Harry Caray. The Sox had ownership that was at times outwardly hostile to the fanbase and didn't really care to create an image for itself.

No. ^This. Also, the White Sox and Cubs have coexisted in the city for 113 years. The Sox had a few ownership scares and "build me a new stadium or I'm leaving" moments, but they have never lacked fan support to the point where they'd have to move. And the situations aren't even comparable. The Lakers were an established, landmark franchise for the NBA, winning bunched of titles when the Clippers came in and said "Hey you guys, go Lakers! But if you can't get tickets to the Forum, come see the NBA stars at a discount here!" The Cubs are certainly a popular team now, but they are not at the level of the Lakers in LA, and the Sox didn't come to the city in the middle of the Cubs being a perenial winner (LOL). Besides, the whole "Chicago is and has always been a Cubs town" thing is a misnomer. Up until 1984, the more popular team was the one who was winning. And the Cubs' bumbling ways are well noted, but the White Sox have made several colossal mistakes that ceded the market to the Cubs and then refused to challenge to take it back. I would say the situation would be similar to Chicago getting a second NFL team, but I don't think that is even the case. Chicago is ridiculously saturated for the Bears, with the only non-Bears fans being small bunches of Packers douchecanoes who were likely descendants of Cardinals fans that vowed to never root for the Bears after Halas forced the team out. Anyway, Chicago is crazy about the Bears, but with the nature of the NFL, I think it could care about a second team short-term. Everybody would want to see the shiny new toy, and if the Bears were bad, Chicago2 would be able to steal some market temporarily. However, the Bears are too entrenched, and whenever they got good again, that market would evaporate. Still, with teams only playing once a week and all, Chicago2 would have a better chance to succeed as an alternative team than a GTA hockey team.

I don't know what Selig is doing here. It's pretty clear to everybody that Tampa Bay absolutely doesn't work as a baseball market. Yes, the stadium is horrible. Yes, it's in a terrible location. Still, if they can't draw respectable crowds with young, exciting, competitive teams, and can't sell-out playoff games, it's just not going to work. I believe the owner has made comments to that effect previously. I really don't think the Rays are actively looking for a new stadium in the Tampa Bay region because that market has already shown to be a failure. Why committ to that for another 30 years at this point? They would surely get a big bump from a new stadium, but I don't think it will be nearly as big as they'd need it to be.