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Impact of colour television on team uniforms?


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When colour television was introduced to Australia in 1975, the Victorian Football League gave all clubs permission to use coloured shorts, instead of sticking to the traditional black and/or white shorts. One of the few clubs to change was Essendon, who used red shorts instead of black for the season:

Essendon-Uniform-1975_zps0501abc0.gif

They returned to black shorts for the 1976 season, and continue wearing them today.

With colour television becoming reasonably popular in the mid 1960's in the United States, did many American teams change their uniforms around this time so that they would stand out more on colour TV?

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The one that immediately comes to mind is the Dallas Cowboys, who came up with silver-green pants that were optimized for color TV reception. They've kept them through changes in television cameras and textiles, and now they look a little strange. I like the shade, personally; it's unique.

I suppose you could argue that powder blue road uniforms in baseball came into vogue as color television did, but I'm not sure how much of that had to do with color TV; the Dodgers and a few other teams had dipped their toes in the water in the '40s and '50s.

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The one that immediately comes to mind is the Dallas Cowboys, who came up with silver-green pants that were optimized for color TV reception. They've kept them through changes in television cameras and textiles, and now they look a little strange. I like the shade, personally; it's unique.

What the Cowboys came up back in the '60s was a unique shade of what they called "Metallic Blue"; over the years, the home pants have evolved into the crap-fest that is now referred to as "Silver-Green".

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(That last image is a beautiful piece of work. Lord, I love me some garish baseball uniforms)

That's always struck me. You seem to be quite traditional in football but, as you say here, love baseball uniforms that buck tradition.

Disclaimer: If this comment is about an NBA uniform from 2017-2018 or later, do not constitute a lack of acknowledgement of the corporate logo to mean anything other than "the corporate logo is terrible and makes the uniform significantly worse."

 

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Not exactly color TV, but done for TV purposes nonetheless...black and white TV is why all NFL teams have a white jersey, and to a lesser extent, why most Americans consider white a neutral color. In 1957, the NFL forced its teams to adopt a white jersey to wear for away games. Before then, most teams wore their colored jerseys for almost all games, and in some cases, both teams would wear similarly (or identically) colored shirts anyway (thus, Packers-Bears games where both teams wore navy were rather common). The Rams had attempted to fight this, partially, as they'd been wearing gold jerseys pre-57. They adopted blue jerseys, but wanted to keep their gold set as well, though the league forced them to get white jerseys like everybody else.

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I don't have any link or proof of this being true, but I've always heard that the NHL had home teams wear white jerseys so that viewers at home (in front of their new color tv) could see a various jersey color worn by the opposing team every game.

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I think this was one of the first, according to the owner himself...

WK-AU050_books__DV_20100527181214.jpg

oakland72WSeriesBench.jpg

Corbis-U1590440.jpg?size=67&uid=53466a31-6cae-4dd4-a84b-d81277926757

(That last image is a beautiful piece of work. Lord, I love me some garish baseball uniforms)

I'm sure that the pendulum will swing back to that type of uni soon enough with the direction we are going. At some point in time some hot shot genius designer (I say that tongue in cheek of course) will say "Hey, look at all of this yellow and orange they used back in the day!!! YELLOW AND ORANGE ARE THE NEW GREY!!!!!!$@#$@#"

It'll happen....trust me...and somehow it will suck because they will inevitably try to put some modern twist into it.

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Yeah, what I like about that stuff (late 60's baseball uniforms) was that they still used the old styling, but added new bright colors. When a team (in any sport, really) tries to go "out there" today, they usually push the boundaries in terms of style/template/fabric/etc. but with muted and boring colors. I'm looking for the day we can flip that... traditional style but push the envelope with color choice.

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I don't know if it was color tv so much as the materials used for the uniforms. At least for baseball, polyester seemed to offer a bigger selection of color options than flannel.

I think the Expos and Brewers were the first teams to bring powder blue uniforms into consistent use in 1970, and that was about the time of the material switch.

But for sports where multiple players of both teams are in play simultaneously, like football and basketball, I'm sure TV was a huge factor in white vs dark contests. Black & white tv required a lot of contrast between uniforms. For example, blue vs green would be really hard to tell unless the image was really sharp, and the uniforms had enough distinct markings.

Even color tv itself wasn't as common in households until the early to mid 70s. There are plenty of news clips around that time that were still shown in black & white. And magazines like Sports Illustrated and the Sporting News weren't full color cover-to-cover.

But once more households bought color tv, and the print magazines became full color, then fans could really see how bright (and sometimes garish) the teams were dressing.

And then 30 years later, teams got sick of color and brought back black and anthracite to everything :upside:

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padresfunky.jpg

Interesting hat. I don't think I've ever seen that one before.

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padresfunky.jpg

Interesting hat. I don't think I've ever seen that one before.

That was the '72 Sunday alternate. It's part of the holy grail for hat collectors, and I've never seen it anywhere else besides this photo plus a few limited others in action shots of the players.

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Corbis-U1590440.jpg?size=67&uid=53466a31-6cae-4dd4-a84b-d81277926757

(That last image is a beautiful piece of work. Lord, I love me some garish baseball uniforms)

Poor Joe D. He has the look of someone who realizes he's stayed too long at a party.

True... here's a couple more like that...

berra-astros.jpg

padresfunky.jpg

I agree that those pics are sad...Although I can think of two stars that transitioned successfully from flannel to double knit. Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson

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Corbis-U1590440.jpg?size=67&uid=53466a31-6cae-4dd4-a84b-d81277926757

(That last image is a beautiful piece of work. Lord, I love me some garish baseball uniforms)

Poor Joe D. He has the look of someone who realizes he's stayed too long at a party.

True... here's a couple more like that...

berra-astros.jpg

padresfunky.jpg

I agree that those pics are sad...Although I can think of two stars that transitioned successfully from flannel to double knit. Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson

Sad? I didn't say that.

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Corbis-U1590440.jpg?size=67&uid=53466a31-6cae-4dd4-a84b-d81277926757

(That last image is a beautiful piece of work. Lord, I love me some garish baseball uniforms)

Poor Joe D. He has the look of someone who realizes he's stayed too long at a party.

True... here's a couple more like that...

berra-astros.jpg

padresfunky.jpg

I agree that those pics are sad...Although I can think of two stars that transitioned successfully from flannel to double knit. Pete Rose and Reggie Jackson

Sad? I didn't say that.

sorry for the presumption on my part but other than Don Z the other two legends look sad in my opinion.

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