The new craze in college and professional sports is snazz.
It's not enough anymore to simply wear a college or pro team's stated colors anymore, it's about snazzing out uniforms so everyone can feel a little more snazzy snazzalicious.
If you watched the NCAA Tournament, you undoubtedly saw the Louisville Cardinal men's team wearing what looked like orange uniforms. The uniforms looked much more Syracuse-like than Cardinal-like. A Cardinal, for those of you that don't know, is red.
But, hey, so what? School colors, schmool colors.
And now that Nike has wrestled control of the NFL's uniforms from Reebok, the non-uniform uniform snazztacular is reaching new levels.
In fairness to Nike, most all of the NFL team's uniforms received a facelift of some sort. Some, like the Seattle Seahawks, were given a complete makeover while most uniforms simply received minor changes to the collar.
I can't stand it and have done columns in the past about the use of non-school colors in uniforms. It irritates me when red is used on Chambersburg Trojan uniforms or if a school with green and white colors shows up wearing black uniforms.
That's my cross to bear.
Well, apparently, some NFL football teams felt the same way as I did about the redesign. The Green Bay Packers, Oakland Raiders and Philadelphia Eagles have decided to forego the new design and stick with the one they had.
How refreshing.
Green Bay was the first team to make the decision and cited tradition as the overwhelming reasoning from staying away from Nike's new self-professed "design aesthetic."
The term "design aesthetic" even gags me a little.
It's a design.
No need for aesthetic.
And really, no need for complete uniform makeovers either.
I'm quite surprised that the teams have final say and were able to simply spurn the wishes of Nike, but I assume this will be grated away little by little over time.
Over the next few years, it'll be interesting to see how the subtle invasiveness of "design aesthetics" is able to expand.
It's how socialism gains a hold - before you know it, everyone gets a trophy.
All Nike wants to do is to get its toe in the door.
Little by little, minute changes made annually could make for total uniform transformations after a period of five years and we'll all go, "Where did all this neon come from?"
The new uniforms are also made of a slightly lighter fabric and utilize the Flywire collar, which is designed to reduce the ability of an opponent to grab the jersey.
In addition to keeping the same design, the three aforementioned teams will also be keeping their "former uniform fabrication."
That means no Flywire and heavier uniforms.
It'll be interesting to see if the Eagles, Raiders and Packers start wearing down at the end of games due to having to wear the heavier jerseys As for the Seahawks, their new design, according to Nike, is based on Seattle's environmental hues. The deep blue color of the ocean and the neon green of the ubiquitous trees, ferns and moss is what dominate the new uniforms.
Actually, it's not neon green, it's called Action Green.
As time goes by, it'll be interesting to see what kind of environmental hues Nike picks out for a city like Detroit.
Rust and Action Grey?
Snazzarific!
Things have gone too far for too long.
----------
Graham Messner is a free-lance writer and a former coach. He may be reached at graham@innernet.net.
extenze tenacious d steve smith zou bisou bisou tim tebow press conference tebow press conference trina
