"Want to win? Wear red."

[brinkeguthrie]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/more...ex.html?cnn=yes

[Alphabet Man]

i was just about to post this, no wonder the Blue Jays wont win a World Series, they dotn have red!

[OB33]

What do anthropologists know about sports?

[Stampman]

Hmm that explains the Flames' turnaround in 2004, they switched back to red from black...

But it doesn't explain all the years between 1989 and 2004.

[Jezus_Ghoti]

That sure explains the Yankees, and Packers, and Lakers, and Celtics, and... oh wait.

[Alphabet Man]

no wonder collingwood cant win!

[VitaminD]

A case can perhaps be made that most of the recent winners of U.S. sports championships have at least a touch of red on their uniforms: among pro teams, the Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, the Detroit Pistons. And in college football, Southern California.

Umm... yeah.

Counterpoint #1:

Calling USC's color red in the same phrase as the Red Sox, Pistons and Patriots is a little bit generous. Their cardinal is closer to the old Phillies' burgundy than the red that the other teams mentioned - or Tiger Woods - wear. Since the color spectrum is a broad continuum, we're not that far from mentioning that the Lakers wear purple, which is half-red, half-blue (COLOR WHEELS, PEOPLE!).

And before we delve into anthropological bunk, some animals are brightly colored as an asset for mating (birds especially). But many animals are brightly colored to warn others that they are dangerous and doesn't have much to do with sexual selection (especially reptiles and insects). The red mark on a black widow tells the animal kingdom to stay away, not necessarily "I'm a winner!"

[NJTank]

Well look at the NHL since 1995 all but 2 Stanley Cup Champs have red jerseys.

[VitaminD]

The NHL champs since '95 include the Devils and Red Wings three times each. I'd be willing to bet you could throw some of those Detroit teams out there in the most wretched, ECHL-theme night jerseys and they'd win the cup with all the talent they had. Ditto the Devils - Brodeur and Scott Stevens could win a Cup in ice dancing costumes. Colorado falls into that iffy area between red and "not quite red". Crimson, cardinal and the like never struck me as truly red like what Detroit and New Jersey wear.

It's an interesting fact, but it seems more like a coincidence that two of the perennial contenders in the NHL happen to both wear black than a scientifically-provable certainty. Moreover, it'd be impossible to make a real experiment to put this hypothesis to the test - you'd have to play one game in one set of uniforms, then recreate the environment and conditions of that first game in a 2nd game, with only the uniform colors as a variable. Same crowd, same pretenses, same pregame motivations.

[EagleFan344]

Hopefully the Eagles will unveil a red alt this yr

[winters in buffalo]

But the Pats and Pistons are primarily BLUE.

[Cujo]

Those people at SI are morons.

[SEMOSTLfan]

yeah while that article spraks some interest, it is a bit of a stretch especially considering the great teams mentioned in this post....lakers, celtics, yankees etc. a valiant effort by the people of SI.

[Alphabet Man]

it was in todays Herald Sun here in Melbourne......and i immediately thought.... Manchester United (probably cos that was the pic!)

[Bleujayone]

When the Patriots wore red, they were known for more stumbling and being in the middle of the pack than for any kind of dominance. And this is from someone who likes the red jerseys.

The best they could muster were two drubbings in the championships, 51-10 to the Chargers in the old AFL in 1963 and a 46-10 bouncing by the Bears in Super Bowl XX in 1986.

When they went to Super Bowl XXXI in 1997, they had already made the change to blue for their primary color and their home jersey was blue, but their visiting jersey was white with red. The result was another loss 35-21.

It wasn't until they made the next change from royal blue to navy that the Patriots began their real reign. You'd be hard pressed to find much for red on their uniforms these days, it's navy with silver as the seconday color, followed by red as a minor accent color. If that's SI's idea or wearing red, they are rather generous in their statement. That's about one step above saying that the purple and gold LA Lakers qualified because somebody wore a red jock strap.

On a side note, red is a popular and primary color worn by a large number of teams. Saying that winners wear red- any scrap or red is about as bright as saying that real winners wear black or blue; chances are you could find many examples to win the argument.

[Blue Falcon]

It's just a popular color. Look at the MLB: 11 of the 28 teams have red in their scheme, 18 have blue in their scheme, 10 have both blue and red as their colors, and a whopping 21 of 28 teams have either blue or red in their colors.

[DEAD!]

no wonder collingwood cant win!

What about the 'aints ... I mean Saints?

I don't think this would apply just for sports teams. How do you explain the British victory over the French at the Plains of Abarham?

[BallWonk]

That sure explains the Yankees, and Packers, and Lakers, and Celtics, and... oh wait.

Well, now, there are some methodological problems* with the study, but even if the findings are true it doesn't say either that wearing red makes you win or that you must wear red to win. All the social scientists concluded was that the athletes who wore red seemed to have a slight advantage over those who did not that cannot be explained by other factors or by random chance.

So the fact that the Yankees, Packers, Lakers, and Celtics have won a lot of championships without wearing red doesn't disprove, or even argue against, the "wear red to win" study.

*It appears that, for some events, the study's authors did not control for the fact that a few nations with particularly strong sports programs, such as the United States, China, Russia, Japan, and Britain, habitually make red a dominant part of their Olympic uniforms. Nor that in some team sports, especially the European soccer they studied, teams that wear red sometimes and blue or white other times most often wear red at home games in which they have a natural advantage anyway. It is possible that much of the reported benefit of wearing red can be attributed to coming from a sports-backing country, or to playing at home. However, the study did look at a few events in which uniform and equipment colors are randomly distributed; that part of the study does see to suggest a real advantage to wearing red. Tellingly, those were mainly one-on-one fighting events, where the influence of aggression responses and dominance displays is most plausible.

[VitaminD]

As I said earlier, this is at best an observed coincidence. Part of the scientific method is reproducibility, and there is absolutely no way that you can replicate any individual event - in this case, a game or match - over and over to achieve a controlled prospective study.

Hypothetical case in point : It's November '04. Pacers at Pistons. Choose any variable you want to investigate, be it jersey color, wearing headbands, black socks. Let's say jersey color, and we want to investigate if the Pacers play better in their navy uniforms. So they play, and then comes the fight.

Now, here's the challenge to test the variable: replay the game again under the exact same conditions as the first game was played under, with the ONLY difference being the Pacers' uniform color..

To do this, you would have to eliminate the following:

- the effect of the Pacers' win and Pistons' loss on the standings;

- the effect of all of the emotion engendered by trashtalking and/or physical play;

- the effect of the fight and its aftermath;

- the effects on the psyches of the individual players involved with regards to their performance during the game (i.e. frustration over playing poorly or overestimation of one's talent from playing well in the 1st game), as well as the impact the players' performances would have on coaching decisions for the 2nd game (e.g. Would Larry Brown give Tayshaun Prince 31 minutes after the shot only 2-8 from the field in the fight game, and scored only 4 points?)

Furthermore, you would have to ensure the following:

- every fan who attended the fight game shows up in the same seats, in the same mood and without being influenced by the event of the first game; if a guy was pissed off going to the fight game because he got yelled at by his boss at work earlier that day, then he must be pissed off for the same reasons while attending the repeat game;

- the referees must call the repeat game exactly as they called the first game, without any biases engendered from the fight game (like calling it tighter to rein in the physical play before it gets out of hand).

Basically, you're asking over 20,000 people to ignore the events of the fight game - one of the most memorable NBA games of the past 50 years - and do it entirely over, except that the Pacers wear their gold uniform set.

Even the soccer games that were cited as proving the point fail this test - different fields, different fans, different referees, different players. Eliminate all of the other confounding variables - which will be impossible unless you can achieve mind control over tens of thousands of the human subjects involved - then analyze the data.

Furthermore, in a country whose national colors and red, white and blue, it's not too uncommon for many of their teams to wear some or all of the national colors.

It's a nice observation, but it isn't much more than a coincidental observation.

[yh]

Well, this certainly explains the overwhelming success of the Arizona Cardinals, now doesn't it?