gosioux76

Probably not, but it's not as if the Titans would make that move without making that connection abundantly clear to everybody.

Yeah, it's a bizarre choice to use local media as a focus group for a brand you don't intend to debut at least another year. I presume the local print media steered clear because something like this would have almost certainly required participants to sign a nondisclosure, or at least a very long-term embargo, which any credible news media wouldn't agree to.

From looking at those hats, my bigger concern would be the team ending up with sort-of a split personality. One is in the old Oilers colors. The other is is only navy and white. There's been a pattern lately of sports franchises going too far in a push for simplicity. So I'd be wary of a team that tried to go Navy/White as its primary colors, then used powder blue as a City Connect-esque alternate. The best scenario, if these colors are legit, would be a Powder/Red look with navy as tertiary. Similar to the Titans, yes. But if applied with the right color balance, it could still be unique.

I agree with this. At first glance, it feels like a logical extension from last year's caps, in which the logos were the same color as the hat, but with a different colored outline. Except in full color (as opposed to white) it seemed to have more character. I really liked the Twins hat.

As much as I want the USFL to succeed, this whole thing feels a little to "try hard" for my liking. I appreciate the effort to want to connect with Pittsburgh sports fans, but if I'm local, it has to ring a little hollow for a team that will have gone two seasons without playing a game in Pittsburgh to have earned a place in this lineup.

It's interesting that this is coming up today, because apparently the Texans hosted some local media last week to give them a sneak peek at some of the changes. Here's a link to a story about it on the team's website on Friday. And below are some reaction tweets.

I agree. Plus, there’s a reason this team didn’t adopt black and gold in the ‘80s: They can’t pretend to be the Steelers.

Those feel like a real downgrade from last year's Spring Training caps. I thought last year's were really strong. Something about these new ones looks cheap by comparison. I'm sure it'll vary team by team, but that Padres hat might be the only product that makes me question whether going to back to brown was a good idea. That hat is unappealing.

That seems like more billboard than patch. It's huge.

If you were watching the NFL playoffs on Fox this weekend, you probably saw quite a few ads promoting season two of the USFL, which starts in April. One of the ads caught my eye because of its use of footage from the original USFL. One of my biggest disappointments with the new league's first season was how it was completely devoid of references to the original league, likely due to a lawsuit brought by owners of the original league claiming Fox was using its trademarks without permission. In news I never saw until now, Fox settled that lawsuit in August, and the ads promoting the new season are the first indication that it will be referencing more of the USFL's history in the season ahead. I'm glad to see this. Nostalgia for the original USFL is one of this league's biggest selling points. Watching game broadcasts that seemed to go out of the way to avoid discussing its history made the whole thing feel incomplete.

This is interesting. I really liked the idea of the mesh-styled hats for BP and Spring Training, but mostly out of nostalgia. I remember as a kid finding it interesting how some teams used the cheap mesh snapback models of their hats during spring training before switching to the wool fitted caps for the regular season. The switch last year to a higher-quality version of mesh cap brought back those memories.

The single-layer numbers on this one feel way more 2022 than 2005, particularly with that stylized font. Maybe the Panthers are ahead of their time?

Is this the same sort of texturing they put on the Vegas jerseys to invoke brocade fabric? I agree with the cheapness of the look.

I get what you mean, but I've always liked the idea of a retro weekend. Pick an era -- say, the '80s -- and have every team in throwbacks/fauxbacks from that period. Work it into the stadium experience, with throwback video displays, vendor uniforms (and prices?), and do the same (to a degree) with the TV broadcast and commercials. Then do it again each year but with a different era. I bet you'd get a lot of sellouts. I'd watch a whole weekend of games just to get that experience.

Inter Milan is the only one, to me, that has worked in the past. And it was much better before they took the gold out of their crest. This is another good example of why blue and black need a strong tertiary color to keep it from being too boring. As much as I appreciate the simplified Inter Milan crest, the addition of gold added just enough character to keep it from being too bland. Now, the crest just seems to blend into the rest of the kit without standing out.

I've always thought the Quakes should make more use out of red as a tertiary color. Not in any way that's overwhelming, but in subtle touches here and there. They have such a similar color palette to Montreal. And while it's not unprecedented in world soccer to have teams share a color palette, the smart and consistent use of accent colors could be enough to add some differentiation. Plus, there's something very bland about the Quakes brand, starting with the colors. As a result, it's an easy team to forget.

I don't know, guys, I'm getting some real warm feelings of nostalgia with this one. It looks just like a sweater my grandma bought from a souvenir shop in Sedona back in '89.

In general, I tend to be more sympathetic to team owners than most, largely to counteract sports fans' often irrational sense of entitlement over how a private enterprise operates. But a fan, in this case, is still a customer, and the owner of any consumer-facing business should know better than to speak down to customers like this. They should really send this guy to the same training seminars that fast-food franchise owners attend.

Thom Brown: Suits for our dystopian future.

At the very least, you'd want ownership to at least send the signal that they have aspirations for success. The need to explain and rationalize failure so as to deflect blame is a baffling leadership strategy.

You've just set the table for a future Pendleton blanket-inspired kit. Nice work.

As a fan of a team that has lost four Super Bowls and hasn't made a return trip in 46 years, I don't have any sympathy for a team that won three Super Bowls in the '90s. I don't care if they've sucked since then. They've been to the mountain top. Add to that misery the fact that the Vikings have been in five NFC championship games since the last Super Bowl appearance and lost every one of them in excruciating fashion, then I have no time for complaints from former dynasties.

The Vikings would like to dispute the awarding of that title to the Cowboys..

I'm sure I just have to see the whole thing in real life, but the image above is where it seems like a mismatched kit. It's possible it just look that way because I'm not seeing the white Adidas stripes on the shoulders, which could balance it out. But from this truncated view, it seems as if the striping and numbering on the shorts should be gold to match the jersey.

This is a gorgeous jersey, and easily one of the Timbers best. But I don't get why they'd have gold trim on the jersey but white stripes on the shorts. I noticed it yesterday on the media interview photo, where you can see the white-striped shorts and part of the gold piping on the jersey. It makes it look like a mismatched kit.