MCM0313

They’re probably donating to the Zoolander Center.

I sure wouldn’t want to see it in sports though.

It’s why monopolies are bad for quality.

Any day now!

Shame that the one pictured is the Marlins’ long-awaited blue shirt. I hope the template has to change, but I also hope they don’t get rid of the blue when it does.

Look, this time last year we were told the Cardinals would be darkening their maroon and adding burnt orange. I say we should take all this with (Milton from “Office Space” voice) biiiiiiiiiig grains of salt and just wait for the actual reveal.

I don’t remember the Dolphins’ throwbacks ever having plain white socks. I remember them having white socks with aqua and orange stripes.

Bears’ navy is the same as Texans’ (which, we will see if that stays). All the other navy-dominant teams use different shades. Good eyes.

It does a solid job of looking old (and Vikings did live long ago, after all), but I’m not sure how well it can fit with their brand. I also feel like it would set a dangerous precedent IRL, but in this universe you’re in control, not The Swoosh.

This has actually gotten to the point where I can’t tell from photos which team is which in most games. It seems like at least 50% of games are black against white. Yuck.

Thank you! I’ve used that site for uniform info before. Didn’t realize they also had a thorough field database.

Fwiw, my Broncos’ solution: Ditch navy, don’t bring back royal blue either. Make your secondary color as close as you can get to the shade of the 1980s-1996 helmets. Ole Miss uses Pantone 307 for their medium-blue helmets; given those likely have a similar origin story to the Orange Crush lids, I would guess the color is almost identical to that of Denver’s pre-1997 helmets. This time, though, don’t have the mismatch between helmet and trim. Have numbers and stripes in Pantone 307. Maybe even an alt. The logo should be some hybrid between the Robohorse and the D. The white helmet should be ditched, and a 1997 navy blue throwback should be added (in the 1997 shade of navy too, which isn’t the 2023 one). Bada bing, bada boom! Problem solved.

The top pic is probably the best we can hope for. It’s pretty good too, aside from the one stupid white helmet.

I mean, that’s their shade.

I found aerial footage from ‘97 on YouTube. The end zones were still green with white logos but near as I can tell that was it. They hadn’t embiggened the logo within the end zone to accommodate for the elements that had been dropped; it looked small and lonely, and the overall look of the end zone was less cromulent than it had been the previous decade.

Ah! My mistake. Must’ve been an inaccuracy within the game I played a lot. Did they continue to also have the helmet and the conference logo in the end zone all the way up through 1997?

Right! How could I forget the Giants’ red end zones with blue team name and white outlines from SB XXI? Simple font without the italics or outlines. That was in their end zones. Related, the Jets’ end zones in the ‘80s and ‘90s were disappointingly plain. They just left the field its natural green color rather than painting it and then slapped the logo down in white, IIRC. Hopefully this time around they exercise a bit more creativity with their end zone designs.

Glad to see I was mistaken! I guess I kind of thought there was at least an informal prohibition on that sort of thing across the Big 4. (Except NYI in 1997, obviously. The Fisherman was reviled.) Having thought more about this…has this been true of any other NFL logo of the Super Bowl era? Maybe the Rams at some point in the ‘90s - or was the helmet always the primary pre-2000? I guess the Big Blue Wrecking Crew-era Giants, but then when they switched to the ny logo, they had the good sense to retain the underlined logo as their wordmark.

You mean at the same time? As in, primary and wordmark were identical?

I think the script will be identical to the old one. The primary logo probably won’t - isn’t there something in NFL bylaws that prohibits returning to an old logo, unaltered? - but the script almost certainly will. My guess would be that the logo will become the script inside of an oval, which they’ve used in various ways over the course of the past year.

I mean…

You’ve been here longer than me, yes. I’m not a newcomer though. And I think “good but not great” was the most common opinion of that logo - though, if I see anyone down on one knee in these parts, I will immediately tell you.

Turrible, turrible.

Naw. Not barfworthy at all. Also…you’re a smart guy under all the snark. I wish you would give us fewer memes and reaction GIFs, and more of your actual thoughts and analysis. You can do better.

To me it looks an awful lot like their Color Rush jersey. Maybe brining that back in some form? Or, yeah, just some commemorative something or other. Of course, that design was based on a combination of the ‘50s look and the ‘80s/‘90s look. So this could be commemorating whatever, pretty much.