FinsUp1214

I have to say, there’s a part of me that’s really happy to see SDSU in the Final Four. I remember as a kid in Utah watching Mountain West Conference sports all the time, something like the Final Four always felt really distant for the conference (Utah had been in the WAC during thier ‘98 run). For the Aztecs - one of the conference originals - to finally break through and represent the Mountain West in the Final Four is pretty big, and it’s really cool to finally see it happen. If I had to choose one team to root for next weekend and the following Monday, it’d be for the Aztecs to win one for the old Mountain West.

I’m honestly really stoked with this season as a fan; and this is coming from someone who, as my avatar suggests, was on the Tank For Wemby train early on. I don’t think anybody expected the rookies, Kessler and Agbaji, to be as good as they have been this season, let alone this good this soon. The team has also shown a gritty resilience that I don’t think anybody expected either, even after gutting the rotation at the trade deadline and enduring injuries to key players. They’re finding ways to win when they have no business winning. Look at just the record and it’s easy to assume there’s too much driven by stagnant veterans, but that isn’t the case; a young team is pulling this off, which is very encouraging. They are more poised and matured than expected at this stage of thier growth. It’s true that the price of this is likely going to be no Wembanyama, but the encouragement of seeing the Jazz be so far along so quick is a trade off I’m fine with. Let’s not forget the Jazz will likely wind up with two top 20 - possibly two top 15 - picks this coming draft. There’s still great opportunities to add talent with where they’ll land. It may be the stark contrast of last year’s team being so grating and deeply frustrating to root for, but this team and where they’re headed has me absolutely excited. It’s been a while since I’ve been this optimistic about the Jazz and thier future.

There’s an inevitability to UConn that I have to admit has sucked the wind out of the sails the further I’ve watched the tournament. I ought to be excited that one of FAU, San Diego State, and Crieghton will ultimately be playing in the National Title game; that excitement wanes a bit when you realize their opponent could be a buzzsaw that’s beating teams by 400 points a night. It’s not necessarily that it’s UConn themselves, it’s that I genuinely worry that a UConn vs. FAU/SDSU/Crieghton matchup wouldn’t be entertaining at all if UConn keeps this pace. I really hope I’m wrong and that we get some great, close games in Houston no matter who is in (that includes UConn) but there’s a “writing on the wall” feel to this that is looming.

Something I want to say about your concepts in general: I love your attention to detail with era-specific crests. Every single crest history you’ve presented for each team looks so legitimate because the style of each crest matches the era it comes from so well. It’s all 100% believable and nothing ever looks out of place. That takes a lot of research, study, effort, and execution to get right, and you’ve absolutely done so. I really respect that and, along with the excellent work you put out for the kits as well, makes this one of my favorite series to follow here. Keep up the excellent work!

Holy smokes, that whole entire Adidas lineup is a home run. I agree that Germany is the best of the group (that’s probably my favorite Germany green kit ever), but so many others in that group are absolute class too. Adidas absolutely executed from top to bottom.

HUGE kudos to you for crafting a wordmark and number font off the “D”! You did an excellent job of designing and constructing them; everything fits and comes together so well. The uniform itself looks excellent too, and despite it being an alternative design, still has that “DUKE” look to it. Your homages to Cameron are so well placed and executed, as well. Excellent, excellent work! Between this and your awesome Houston set, I’m a fan of this series and looking forwards to more.

Furman with the first taste of Madness! What a crazy finish. Hope we get a few more finishes like that over the next few weeks.

The deal is actually for less than I expected, and Meyers is going to be the WR2 behind Adams anyway, so I like this deal for the Raiders. There’s some concern as to how healthy Renfrow and Waller can stay, but if everyone’s healthy? Jimmy G, Jacobs, Adams, Meyers, Renfrow, and Waller is a pretty solid offensive group. Now they’ve just to fix that porous defense to give that offense a chance to keep up with the rest of the AFC. EDIT: Welp, Waller just got traded, so there’s that.

Pendleton is an absolute A+. I love the Tottenham style crest, and you’ve executed perfectly on your inspiration for each kit. This is one of my favorites in the series so far. Excellent job!

Forget it! I’ll take a dozen hairnets!

Yeah, the potential of the Bucs signing Baker doesn’t seem that crazy to me. Do I think it’s a good move? I’m not so sure, but the prospect of them doing so isn’t preposterous at all. They clearly need a quarterback, but aren’t in a good position to draft one in the first round. They didn’t really seem urgent to go after Carr and don’t seem all that urgent to go after Garoppolo either, and have never been in the Rodgers running. That would leave signing a guy like Baker, Brissett, or even (gasp!) Wentz on a more economical deal, either to be a solid starter or somebody to hold it together until they want to give Trask or a rookie next year a shot. It’s always possible they draft a guy like, say, Hendon Hooker to create a true QB competition with Trask and see which one emerges, but the cheap veteran route seems like the more likelier route to me.

While I completely see where you’re coming from and also see where you would have interpreted my comments this way, these aren’t my primary concerns. I’m talking strictly about the execution of the manufacturing here, which is problematic across a few teams. While things like mono-red and contrast stitching on hats aren’t my cup of tea, I also understand some of those choices are cultural and is to be expected on a global stage (I’m also Hispanic/Latino and get the bright-color aesthetic, so again, not a problem there). That doesn’t bother me for these purposes. What bothers me is when word marks and numbers look like printing errors that either didn’t get caught in time or weren’t thoroughly inspected, or when a team like the Netherlands* are wearing something that looks like they paid the lowest price for from the neck down. There’s a cheapness to the overall look of this tournament that I think is permeating a bit too much here, and that’s where my objection is. Not cultural design choices of color or monochromatic combos. *EDIT: The Netherlands - not teams like Venezuela - was who I was referring to with the “rec league” comment, for clarification.

I turned on the Colombia-Mexico game yesterday, and for a few seconds I saw Mexico and thought “now THAT’S a professional looking baseball uniform.” And then the player turned around and I saw the cheap-ish looking NOB on a single line and a lacking number font. Mexico was SO close to nailing it! At least the rest of the uniform looks good enough for it to still stand out among a sea of bad ones. This may ultimately be something the WBC doesn’t care all that much about, but I do view the poor quality of the uniforms across the tournament as a real problem for legitimizing the tournament. If they want this to truly be treated as a big, global-stage event, it needs to look like one. This isn’t a matter of big-name manufacturers vs. little-name; the FIFA World Cup has all sorts of manufacturers too. It’s about craft, execution, and quality, and no team participating in a major world baseball tournament should have a wordmark the size of an index card on the front center of the jersey or look like rec league teams. The single manufacturer uniforms of past tournaments looked so much more legitimate.

I don’t know how anybody received a proof sample of that Canada uniform and approved the size of that wordmark and number with a straight face. That passed through rounds of people and final approvals to get to production. I’m honestly floored as to how that could have happened.

From what I’ve seen so far, the WBC uniforms have really taken a nosedive this year. Most uniforms look either cheap or over-designed. The Netherlands set (aside from the hat) looked like a rushed rec-league set last night, Canada has some serious sizing problems with the wordmark and numbers, Puerto Rico’s massive El Morro scene on the front of the jersey looks like something you’d buy for cheap on Amazon, Cuba’s gradient looked goofy…it keeps going and it’s pretty rough across the whole WBC. I honestly would take the single manufactured sets of past WBC’s again in a heartbeat. I could do away with the contrasted armpits of past templates of course, but at least the composition and actual execution of the uniform looked more professional than most teams do now. They weren’t perfect, mind you, but they did look better in my opinion.

I really like Seattle’s look from the neck down, but am not sure I’m on board with the helmet. The first problem is the finish; it looks more copper to me than orange, and it looks a bit mismatched with the rest of the set. And second, even if it were true orange with no copper-ish finish, I think it’d be too much orange altogether. I almost feel for some reason like a navy helmet would strike the perfect balance across the set. It at least looks a lot better in my head than the copper-orange does, and would go better with the navy socks too. There’s still the fire from the logo on the helmet, so the helmet wouldn’t lose an orange tie with the color shell switch.

Honestly, make the patch a bit smaller and I wouldn’t mind that placement. It’s generally where championship patches go in most other sports. I think it only looked weird on the Rockies because they were the only team to do it in baseball, but if the whole league adopted it and made it the norm (albeit at a smaller patch size), I don’t think I’d terribly mind it.

Something for the fun fact bunch: Dom Capers is the only man in NFL history to be the inaugural Head Coach of two expansion teams (Panthers 1995, Texans 2002).

My line of thinking was that it would bring awareness to and show (a consistently visible) support for the tribe. I was unaware of the casino connection, so I guess there’s that, but I’d still like to believe there were some good intentions behind the patch to benefit the tribe in some way. Of course a team should do much more to support causes than simply say “here’s a patch for you”, and anything less would be an empty gesture. But the optimist in me saw some good in the patch, I guess.

Yeah, this feels like it’s in the same class as the patch the Jazz wear for cancer research - deliberately using ad space for a good cause. I’m generally opposed to ad space on (non-soccer) uniforms on purely aesthetic grounds, but this is of course a very welcome exception. If ad patches HAVE to be a thing, then I’d love to see more teams in the NHL, NBA, and other ad-wearing leagues take this kind of “do good” initiative with the ad space they have.

Not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the moment

This might be the feature of the XFL that I enjoy the most; not only does it show full transparency of what goes on during reviews and challenges, but I actually find it really educational about rules too and what needs to be confirmed when reviewing calls. I really think the NFL would do well to adopt this feature and agree that it would help with officiating concerns, as well as teach viewers more about the rules of football.

I almost passed on watching the dunk contest this year; I’m glad I decided to keep watching! McClung’s dunks had me out of my seat. The dunk contest needed that badly. Also, a very cool moment with Dame winning the 3-pt Contest here wearing a Weber State uniform. He’s the greatest player to ever come out of a Utah school and definitely beloved here (I’ve attended two Blazers/Jazz games in SLC, and both times he got a near standing ovation when introduced in the lineup), and he’s always shown a lot of love right back to the state. I was rooting for Markkanen of course, but Dame winning here was the next best thing from a Jazz fan perspective, and I was really happy to see him do it.

Hadn’t seen the socks until now. Man, I love them. I feel like I haven’t seen national teams get bold with socks lately until this set, they really stand out in a good way.

Okay, learning the five stars on the shorts represent Utah’s National Parks is very cool. That’s a really nice touch. (BTW, if I may be a homer for a quick second: if you haven’t been to any of the Utah National Parks yet, GO! Seriously some of the most amazing places and sights you’ll ever see.)