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Archive for June, 2006
It all started a few days ago when I got a note from reader Josh Wagner, who describes himself as “a recent Iowa State graduate who currently dabbles in a little bit of everything — film, photography. and design.” The design work is what concerns us here, because Wagner has a logo-overhaul project in mind:
I was wondering if you could offer your thoughts on the subject of Iowa State’s logos. It has physically pained me to look at ISU’s logo since it was introduced in 1995, and I am currently in the midst of a redesign that could be considered somewhat similar to the logo’s 1984 version. The problem with that logo, which I’ve sought to correct, is that the cyclone looked very awkward by itself if the words “Iowa State” were removed. So I’ve designed a new cyclone that can stand alone.
I have secured an appointment in a few weeks to make a presentation to the “important people” in the athletic department, and I would love it if you would briefly give me some feedback on the current ISU logo, or anything you’d be willing to offer as far as a suggested design direction. I have been, for the most part, ripped apart by the casual fan [on internet discussion boards and the like] for suggesting a change, and I remain baffled as to why, because the logo is essentially a cartoon bird riding a tornado. Yippee. The biggest argument is that the current logo is the one most associated with winning and success, but at what point do you give up and say the current logo is, ahem, crap? I would love it if you could give me some feedback.
I gave Wagner one simple bit of advice (”Animals that don’t have teeth in real life, like birds, should never be depicted with teeth, no matter how tough it supposedly makes them look”), mentioned that I didn’t much care for the current typography, and then found myself, um, bored. I just can’t get worked up about college sports in late June. So I suggested turning the matter over to the Uni Watch readership. He readily agreed, so here’s your chance to give advice to the guy who’s gonna have a sit-down with the ISU brain trust. (If you want some quick background, the origins of ISU’s team name and cardinal-like mascot can be found here and here. Special thanks to C.J. Andringa, who provided these links in Wednesday’s comments section.)
My two cents: The teeth and the typography notwithstanding, I don’t really think the current logo is so awful, and I definitely like it better than the 1984 version that Wagner says is his inspiration (I hate seeing full words spelled out on a helmet). But that’s just me. Of course, when I spout off about stirrups being awesome and purple being awful, that’s also just me, and there’s no need for discussion of those points because I’m 100% right about them. But I don’t feel nearly as strongly about ISU’s logo. So go ahead and give Wagner your own two cents via the comment link at the end of this entry.
Sabres Update: There have been a few jillion Sabres redesigns leaked on the web over the past few years. Most have obviously been fakes, so my policy has been to ignore all of them. But the Buffalo News is reporting today that this one is legitimate. Great to see the team returning to blue and gold, but I’ve never liked the sword going through the B, and that stylized buffalo — which some fans are already referring to as a buffaslug — is a nightmare.
Speaking of which: Isn’t it time for Buffalo teams to move away from the buffalo iconography, since it just creates confusion? The team isn’t called the Buffaloes, after all. Why not put a chicken wing on the jersey, or a beef on weck sandwich, or a grain elevator?
Uni Watch News Ticker: Bethanie Mattek’s socks, which were discussed at some length in yesterday’s comments section, are absolutely the coolest tennis hosiery since Sernea’s Cameroon-inspired outfit four years ago. … It isn’t football season and school isn’t in session, but Bob Mejia reports that that hasn’t stopped the pigskin-crazed readers of Texasfootball.com from coming up with a contest to choose the state’s best high school football helmet (and there are a lot to choose from). Here’s the current bracket. … The Blue Jays will be wearing special uniforms tomorrow, in honor of Canada Day. The jerseys will be accented in red (probably something like this), and the players’ surnames will be replaced by “Canada” (like this). And there’s more: According to the team’s web site, “Both the Blue Jays and Phillies will have Canadian flag patches on their hats. This marks the first time both the home and visiting team will have Canadian flags sewn on their hats.” … With the four-day weekend coming up, I may not be writing much between now and next Wednesday, but I’ll try to post at least a few small items over the course of the next few days.
June 30th, 2006
When it comes to ineptitude, you might say the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are experts. But they really outdid themselves last night. The unlucky victim was Jae Seo, who was making his Devil Rays debut. As sharp-eyed readers Perry Gattegno and Richard Craig point out, Seo’s nameplate was upside-down, so it was concave instead of convex. This really brings Amateur Hour to a new plateau, even for the Rays.
Other notes on Seo:
• That’s one weird-ass uni number he’s wearing.
• He’s got the Korean flag on his glove.
• His eyewear should make him popular with his manager.
Uni Watch News Ticker: Rick White finally made his Phillies debut yesterday, and sure enough, he’s wearing double-zero, just like he did with the Indians, Pirates, and Reds. The great thing, of course, is that the Phillies are the only MLB team that currently wears uni numbers on the sleeve, so White’s aught-aught gets a bonus treatment. … It’s one thing to leave your top couple of jersey buttons unbuttoned. But last night Scott Olsen’s jersey was unbuttoned at the top and at the bottom. … Very promising news on the baseball hosiery front, as the New York Times has asked me to write an op-ed piece about the tragedy of MLB players wearing their pants down to their shoetops. It’ll run sometime around the All-Star Game (and I’ll let you know when I’m sure of the exact date, natch). … Yet another reason to wear real eye-black instead of the peel-and-stick variety: The stick-on strips can sometimes fall off, as apparently happened to Andruw Jones yesterday (with thanks to Eric Ritschdorff). … David Ortiz was wearing an NBA headband prior to Tuesday’s night’s game (good catch by Brandon Davis). … Those steroids apparently had a greater effect on Jason Giambi than anyone had suspected. … An odd photo surfaced on Yankees.com yesterday, showing Octavio Dotel wearing Bernie Williams’s number (good catch by Michael Toriello). … There are exactly two T-shirts remaining from the Uni Watch Athletics Aesthetics party, featuring this snazzy design. Both shirts are XXL and are now being offered at the bargain basement price of $12 apiece. If you’re interested, give a holler. … Our Iowa State discussion, originally slated for today, got bumped by Jae Seo’s nameplate. It should run tomorrow.
June 29th, 2006
Wondering what NFL coaches will be wearing this fall? Okay, so you probably aren’t, and neither was I, until I got this note from Rachel Bicicchi a few days ago:
“I was channel-surfing this afternoon when I happened upon the Booz Allen Classic golf tournament. Leader Ben Curtis, who I believe is paid to wear NFL gear on the golf course, was wearing Washington Redskins attire, since the tournament is in Maryland. From the front, the shirt appeared to be a normal polo shirt; but a few seconds later, I got a look at the back, which had some sort of gold arch on it. The front shown here is a little different from what Curtis was wearing, but you’ll see the full back. If you ask me, the gold area looks a bit like a flipper. WHAT is that? How could anyone possibly think that looks good on a shirt? What really scares this reader is that the NFL Shop has these shirts available for all 32 NFL teams. For example, Chicago Bears versions are shown here and here. And here’s Curtis wearing the shirt in Uni Watch’s favorite color (apparently he wore Baltimore Ravens gear on Thursday). My question, then, is this: Is this the shirt NFL coaching staffs will be wearing on the sidelines this season? Are we going to have to look at this atrocity all season long?”
Good question. And here are some more: Given the flipper motif, will we now get to refer to Andy Reid as the Great White Whale? Also: Why the hell would anyone actually watch the Booz Allen Classic?
Return to Japan: As regular readers will recall, last week this space featured a pair of first-hand reports on Japanese baseball from readers Ken Clark and Scott M.X. Turner. Good stuff, but Uni Watch was a bit concerned about the reaction of reader Jeremy Brahm, who’s become Uni Watch’s unofficial go-to guy for Japanese baseball matters. Would he feel snubbed? Would he spot any glaring errors?
Fortunately, both these fears were unfounded. Brahm quickly checked in with a thumbs-up reaction, plus he provided some additional info:
Regarding Tsuyoshi Shinjo’s name on the scoreboard: Players are required to “register their name” with Nippon Pro Baseball before the season starts. This is how the player’s name will appear in statistical listings, in newspapers, magazines, etc. When Shinjo played in the past [before his stint playing in America], his name was in Kanji, but now he’s chosen to have it spelled in Romanji. Look at his name on this roster listing — Shinjo is player No. 1.
Foreign-born players have tried to do different things with their registered names. The majority of players just use their last name. But Frank Ortenzio, who played for the Nankai Hawks in the late ’70s, had the following kanji: ???. It was only in the papers and on the scoreboard [and on listings like this one], but not his uniform.
Dave Nilsson, former Milwaukee Brewer and Australian native, called himself Dingo when he played for the Chunichi Dragons in 2000, in preparation for the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
Some players use initials: Doug Jennings, Ichiro’s teammate with the Blue Wave, called himself D.J.; Chris Donnels called himself C.D. And Jeremy Powell used Powell in 2004, when he was playing for Kintetsu, but when that team merged with Orix in 2005, he called himself J.P. This season he’s with the Yomiuri Giants and has gone back to Powell.
Big thanks to Jeremy for all that info. Meanwhile, coming up tomorrow: Your big chance to help Iowa State create a new logo.
June 28th, 2006
A week or two ago I mentioned a very promising book that I’d just become aware of, Now Batting, Number…: The Mystique, Superstition, and Lore of Baseball’s Uniform Numbers, by Jack Looney. At the time, I hadn’t actually obtained a copy of the book itself, but by now I’ve gotten one and spent some time with it.
The good news: There’s a small mountain of information here, including team-by-team historical roster breakdowns of every MLB team (i.e., if you want to know what number Tommie Agee wore for the White Sox in 1967, it’s in here), all-time “best of” rosters for each uni number (i.e., the greatest players to wear No. 3, No. 7, etc.), an entire chapter devoted to equipment managers, plenty of fun anecdotes, and a lot more. The production values are generally quite high — good color photos, high-quality coated paper, etc. At 545 pages — many of them rendered in relatively fine print — you’re getting a lot for your dough.
The bad news: The writing style often feels slapdash. Transitions range from choppy to nonexistent, as if Looney collected loads of information over the course of many years and then did his best to throw it together without actually smoothing out any of the junctures (which I bet is exactly what happened). There are also factual errors, some of which are pretty glaring: In a single paragraph, Looney misidentifies the year in which Willie Mays joined the Mets (1972, not ‘73) and misspells Alejandro Peña’s first name as Alexandro. It’s great that he includes a list of pitchers who’ve worn single-digit numbers, but not so great that his list doesn’t include Wayne Gomes, who wore No. 2 for the Giants in 2001 (easily confirmed in the all-time Giants roster listing just a few pages away). And while some of the photos are great (if you’ve heard about Andy Messersmith’s infamous “Channel 17″ jersey but have never actually seen it, it’s in here), more of them seem apropos of nothing, as if they were just put there to fill up space.
Bottom line: If you’re sufficiently detail-obsessive to read Uni Watch, you probably need this book on your shelf. But you’ll likely be annoyed by a few of its flaws. Necessary but imperfect — life is like that sometimes.
Fortunately, there’s another new book on the market that I can recommend with fewer reservations: A Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball, by Peter Morris. This book isn’t uni-centric per se, but there’s a short chapter devoted to uniforms and a much larger one focusing on the genesis of batting gloves, helmets, catcher’s gear, and other equipment. Meanwhile, if you want to learn the stories behind left-handed catchers, the hidden-ball trick, basket catches, team captains, squeeze plays, peeking at the catcher’s signals during an at-bat, and plenty more, this is the place. The writing is excellent, and Morris spends plenty of time debunking various myths and apocryphal stories that have become entrenched over the years. To his enormous credit, he’s also willing to say, “I don’t know” or “It’s not clear which story is accurate here” on various points — always the sign of a good historian. Don’t miss.
Uni Watch News Ticker: Interesting bit of early-’90s logo creep here — check out those Champion logos on umpire John McSherry’s pant leg and sweater sleeve. … Elastic-less pants update: Last week a reader reported that the Cubs’ broadcasters had mentioned on the air that Scott Eyre had been fined for removing the elastic for his pant cuffs. But now comes this dispatch from reader Lincoln King: “Cubs broadcasters Len Kasper and Bob Brenly reported during the June 23rd Cubs game that Scott Eyre received word that he would not be fined by MLB after all. Instead, he was given a warning.” … Dean Miller has come up with the perfect design for a new Phillies uniform.
June 27th, 2006
Uni Watch is pretty good when it comes to noticing the little things. But Uni Watch readers are often even better, and several of them contributed some doozies over the weekend. Check it out:
• Bryan Henniger noticed something funny when Rich Aurilia came up to pinch-hit on June 21st: As Aurilia approached the plate, he reached into his belt loop and produced a small canister, which he then brought up to his nose. Henniger thought it might be smelling salts, but Uni Watch figured it was probably a nasal decongestant. And sure enough, it turns out Aurilia has a history of allergies.
• Christopher Fleming writes: “Todd Jones’s throwing-arm sleeve is tailored noticeably shorter and tighter than his left sleeve” (additionals views are available here, here, and here). Lots of players wear uneven undersleeves, but this is the first time Uni Watch can recall seeing a player with uneven jersey sleeves. Anyone know of any similar examples?
• Actually, Carl Morrison noticed a similar example at the Booz Allen Classic on Sunday, where Ben Curtis appeared to have uneven sleeves.
• As we all know by now, FIFA maintains extremely tight control over the World Cup branding, logos, and pretty much everything else. But Thomas Courtman notes that Massimo Busacca, who refereed Saturday’s Mexico/Argentina match, had a little Christian cross dangling from the base of his whistle. Maybe Jesus is an official sponsor.
• And while watching Sunday’s A’s/Giants game, Mike Lichtenstein noticed that the ubiquitous MLB logo was missing from the back of Matt Cain’s jersey. Looks like the logo was present and accounted for during his other starts this season, so this may be a rare case of MLB neglecting to slap its brand on something.
Big thanks to Bryan, Christopher, Thomas, Carl, and Mike, and to everyone who contributes material. You people are amazing!
Uni Watch News Ticker: Good weekend for throwbacks, beginning on Friday night, when the Giants and A’s wore early-1980s attire. Both teams get high marks for small details: The Giants included their 25th season in San Francisco patch on their left sleeve, and the A’s nameplates were horizontal instead of arched, just like back in the day. … Then on Saturday, the Braves and Devil Rays turned back the clock to the early 1970s, which for the Rays meant dressing up as the minor league Tampa Tarpons. … And then on Sunday, the Brewers and Royals donned Negro Leagues attire. Dig those socks! … Speaking of socks, the Phillies’ players could learn a lot from first base coach Marc Bombard, who always wears real stirrups, complete with the Liberty Bell logo. … Latest flappage devotee: Jose Reyes, who wore his right pocket inside-out last Thursday (I was at the game, so I had a particularly good view of it) and has continued wearing it that way since then. … And Mindy Specht reports: “Albert Pujols had a back pocket out during BP on June 23rd. The following day, teammates Yadier Molina and Aaron Miles had their pockets out during the game.” Good story, but some quick photo research reveals that Miles had been exhibiting flappage at least as early as June 20th.
June 26th, 2006
Hockey season just ended, but the NHL is still in the news, because the Anaheim Ducks (no longer “Mighty,” because they’re no longer owned by Disney) unveiled their new uniforms yesterday.
This design has its nice touches (the repeated use of the thin orange stripes is particularly nice), but Uni Watch is generally unimpressed. For starters, the diagonal jersey striping (which looks even worse from behind) is bad news, especially since it inevitably evokes thoughts of such ill-fated disasters as this and this. And the black/orange color scheme is a bit iffy — as reader Joe Berlinghieri points out, “there’s the danger that they could start to look like Halloween costumes, like the old Canucks uniforms.”
But the biggest problem is the jersey logo. Uni Watch loves the web-footed “D,” and the overall wordmark isn’t so bad by itself, but it’s a total snooze when applied to the jersey. Over on Chris Creamer’s message boards, someone showed how cool it would’ve been if they’d just used the D. And hey, what if they’d had the guts to do something literal, instead of stylized, like the minor league Long Island Ducks baseball team. Still, Uni Watch supposes we should be glad the Anaheim crew didn’t take any cues from those other Ducks who released new unis this week.
Uni Watch News Ticker: Uni Watch can’t decide what to think about Lastings Milledge’s red armbands — sorta cool, but also the kind of thing that could easily get out of hand. … Uni Watch webmaster John Ekdahl is up in Cooperstown, where he snapped this photo of the MLB uniform guidelines, which are posted in every team’s clubhouse. … Interesting note from Matt French, who writes: “During Wednesday’s UNC/Cal State Fullerton game, UNC called on lefty fastballer Andrew Miller to close out the game with two out in the 9th. As Miller made his way to the mound, the home plate umpire noticed he had a red substance on the right shoulder of his uniform. They called a mound conference and discussed for the better part of two minutes whether the substance was blood or ketchup. It turns out Miller — traditionally a starter — was eating something in the dugout, figuring he wouldn’t see action in the game. When he got the word in the 6th that he might throw some relief, he apparently dropped whatever the food item was onto his uniform.” You can vagely see what he’s talking about in this photo of Miller icing down his arm after the game. … Uni Watch’s recent note about the growing scourge of elastic-less pant cuffs prompted this note from Lincoln King: “Cubs broadcasters Len Casper and Bob Brenly reported during the June 20th Cubs game that Scott Eyre received word from his agent that he would be fined by MLB for taking the elastic out of the bottoms of his pants. That night, he returned with elastic in his pants.” This is the first Uni Watch has heard of anyone being fined for this particular offense. … Logo Creep Alert from Dave Schmitt, who took this screen-grab from yesterday’s Ghana/USA match. “Is this a bandage?” he asks. “A Nike ring?” Beats Uni Watch. Anyone..? … It’s annoying enough that Roger Clemens has been wearing that stupid “Rocket Man” logo on his glove in recent years. But it looked even bigger and uglier last night.
June 23rd, 2006
New Uni Watch column on ESPN.com today, and it’s all about baseball pants pockets. While researching the article, I queried the membership of the Society for American Baseball Research to see if they knew of any good stories about players keeping various items in their pockets. I got lots of good responses — too many to include in the ESPN piece. But the stories are too good to waste, so I’m posting them here:
• From Wayne McElreavy: “Supposedly Gates Brown was once about to devour a hot dog when he was called upon to pinch-hit. He stuffed the dog in his pocket, then got mustard and/or ketchup on his uniform when he slid into a base.” This account is backed up here.
• From Jared Wheeler: “Nellie Fox use to keep a red hankerchief in his back pocket, with about a quarter of an inch showing.” You can sort of see it here (that’s Fox on the right, and it looks like Luis Aparicio has something in his pocket too), although apparently his handkerchiefs weren’t always red.
• From Scott Merzbach: “Bob McGee’s book The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers has an anecdote about Frenchy Bordagaray getting tagged out on a play in which he didn’t slide, because he had cigars in his back pocket.”
• From former big-leaguer Dave Baldwin: “Many pitchers in the 1960s and ’70s kept a rosin bag in their hip pocket. This was perfectly legal, and saved them wasted energy in bending over to pick the bag off the mound after each pitch. Some pitchers kept a bag of talc — from where the umpires stood, talc and powdered rosin looked much the same, so the pitcher merely touched his two pitching fingers on the bag to cover them with a layer of the slippery talc. The whiteness of the fine powder was hard to see on the white ball, and most of it flew off when the ball smacked into the catcher’s mitt. The ump never suspected. Pitchers called this a ‘dry spitter.’”
• Frank Vaccaro came up with a bunch of 19th-century examples: “Whenever Davy Force caught the last out of a game, he always nonchalantly put the ball in his pocket and walked off the field. Sadie McMahon, an 1890s pitcher, carried ‘lamp-black’ in his back pocket to darken new balls. Ed Daily, of the 1880s, pitched with a handkerchief hanging out of his back pocket, something that may have been in vogue for many players at that time. John Grim always batted with a miniature wood bat replica in his pocket for good luck.”
• Pockets have even figured in injuries. On Sept. 21, 1923, Red Sox rookie Clarence Blethen put his false teeth in his back pocket and ended up biting himself in the backside when sliding into second base. And Bill Nowlin, co-author of Tales from the Red Sox Dugout, quotes the following account from Mickey McDermott, who played in the 1940s and ’50s: “I hit a triple once with the Red Sox. I was running like hell and I slid into third and I had been smoking down in the dugout before I came up, and I’d put a pack of matches in my back pocket, and when I slid they caught fire and there was smoke coming out of my ass and the third baseman said, ‘You son of a bitch, you can really run!’ The smoke was going like a flamethrower and I was yelling, ‘Yoww!’ I had a blister on my ass like an apple.”
• And then there are these two stories, which Uni Watch will allow to speak for themselves. From Dave Baldwin: “Another interesting back-pocket item was a pistol carried by an outfielder in winter ball in Venezuela in the early ’70s. I can’t remember who the player was. Apparently the pistol-packing player had made some local enemies and was prepared for a ballpark shoot out. I imagine that made his teammates a little uneasy.” And from Merritt Clifton: “Twice I’ve been playing ball various places when an opposing player lost a handgun from his pocket, once while rounding second and once while rounding third. The time the guy was rounding second, I was in centerfield and overheard the discussion as the shortstop handed back the gun when the runner retreated to the bag:
“Hey man, you lost your gun.”
“No problem. I’ve got another in my sock.”
“Whatcha doin’ with those out here?”
“Dangerous neighborhood, man.”
Big, big thanks to all the SABR members who responded.
Uni Watch News Ticker: Throwback news: The Mariners will be dressing up as the 1969 Seattle Pilots on July 9th. … The University of Nebraska-Omaha’s hockey team is holding a design contest for a 10th-anniversary logo. … Badger State report from Uni Watch Wisconsin bureau chief the Rev. Nørb, who writes: “At the Father’s Day Brewers/Indians game, my eagle-eyed brother pointed out that Brewers middle reliever Geremi Gonzalez was wearing a regular Brewers batting helmet, as opposed to the (obviously quite superior) retro Sunday throwback ball-in-glove logo helmets that everyone else was wearing.” … Gabe Kapler has worn batting gloves for most of his career, including his stints with the Tigers, Rangers, Rockies, Red Sox, and in Japan. But Uni Watch Lifetime Achievement Scholar Mark Mihalik notes that when Kapler made his season debut with the Red Sox earlier this week, he was gloveless — apparently the first time he’d batted without gloves since briefly experimenting with the bare-handed style in spring training of 1998. … Latest Japanese baseball observation by Uni Watch Far East Consultant Jeremy Brahm: The Seibu Lions’ shoes used to have stripes that matched their uniform colors. … Bill Blevins alertly caught a few screen-grabs of Mariano Rivera preparing for his first career regular-season at-bat. “He was originally was wearing Jeter’s helmet, but within a minute the equipment staff had found what appears to be a new helmet with Mariano’s 42.” … This trend of ballplayers removing the elastic from their pant cuffs is getting way out of hand. … Toronto’s Jason Frasor was still wearing the MLB Father’s Day ribbon on Tuesday night (good catch by Michael Murray). … Interesting footwear note from Chris Murphy, who’s alerted Uni Watch to these grass-patterned soccer shoes, which create sort of a camouflage effect (except, of course, for the Puma logo striping).
Incidentally: I usually like to be available on the day an ESPN column runs, but I’m heading off to this afternoon’s Mets/Reds game, and I’ve got post-game plans too, so I won’t be around today to respond to comments and e-mails. Talk amongst yourselves and all that.
June 22nd, 2006
Oregon’s new Nike-designed football uniforms are being unveiled today. No, they’re not quite as extreme as the illustration shown at right, but they’re predictably silly nonetheless, featuring four different jerseys, four different pants, and three different helmets, all of which can be mixed and matched (plus there will be several different undersleeve options, creating even more of a crazy-quilt effect). They’ve also reprised the diamondplate pattern and the “Oregon” and “O” on the pants, all of which first appeared in last year’s Civil War game. Basically, the whole thing is ridiculous, which is pretty much what everyone expected.
I got a sneak peek at the new designs because I wrote a short piece about them for the new issue of ESPN [the] Magazine, which hits newsstands today. Naturally, I poked fun at the new unis, although I didn’t go overboard because by now everyone knows what to expect from an Oregon uniform. If ever there was a case of “Dog Bites Man,” this is it.
Anyway, here’s what I want to talk about today: While working on that article, I spent the better part of two hours interviewing Nike VP Tinker Hatfield (the guy who’s also largely responsible for the Air Jordan line) and Nike Creative Director Todd Van Horne. And as is so often the case when dealing with people you supposedly revile but have never actually met, they turned out to be really interesting folks. I remain diametrically opposed to their notions of branding, and I think their idea of good design is very, very different than mine (and, I hope, yours), but I enjoyed talking with them and gained a lot of respect for them in the course of our discussions. I also give them a lot of credit for being so open and forthcoming with me, even though they knew my feelings about a lot of their work. In short: classy guys.
Stockholm Syndrome? Yeah, maybe, at least in part. But the reality is that it’s easy to demonize a faceless abstraction called “Nike” (which is why I’ll no doubt continue to do it), but things get a bit trickier when you put living, breathing human beings into the equation. With that in mind, and in the spirit of fairness, I want to share some of the things that came up in our interview but didn’t make it into the short article I ended up writing:
• The Nike people are well aware that the approach they’ve taken with Oregon and with some other schools wouldn’t fly with some the country’s more conservative programs. “The University of Oregon is willing to partner with us on this approach, and I don’t think you’d find that in too many Division I programs,” Hatfield told me. “If we walked into Joe Paterno’s office and said, ‘How about putting “Penn State” on the left leg of the pants?,’ we’d probably get tarred and feathered. We think it’s great that there are these storied programs around the country that have tradition, and you just don’t mess with them. I love Michigan’s uniforms; I love the simplicity of Penn State.” He sounded pretty sincere about this (although, as I pointed out to him, Nike did “mess with” Michigan’s road jersey last season). Of course, it would be nice if he could bring some of that simplicity to other Nike-outfitted teams, but that’s another matter.
• If you look again at this photo, you’ll see that Oregon’s new pants and jerseys come in green, yellow, white, and black, but the helmets only come in green, yellow, and white. Why isn’t there a black helmet? “That was discussed — some players thought it’d be pretty cool,” Hatfield told me. “But I didn’t think it would be right, out of respect for Oregon State, because they have black helmets. So I vetoed any black helmet.”
• On the performance side, the new uniforms are made of a fabric called FA05, which is supposedly much lighter than its predecessor, FA04. You can see some statistical comparisons here and here.
• Nike’s Oregon program is all geared toward catering to the athlete — not just in terms of the uniform’s performance-based aspects (which makes sense), but also in terms of aesthetics (which doesn’t, at least to me). They hold focus groups with the players, have the players submit design sketches, and so on. So if you think these unis look like they were designed by a bunch of 20-year-olds, well, to a certain extent they were. “They want to feel intimidating, like gladiators coming into the arena,” Van Horne told me. And about the diamondplate pattern, Hatfield said, “It’s basically a graphic representation of toughness. The players want to look tough — it’s a tough sport, there’s a lot of intimidation.” Frankly, I think this is all pretty stupid, but hey, 20-year-olds are stupid (if anyone reading this is 20 years old, I apologize, but trust me, your smarter years are ahead of you). Of course, the larger issue is why Nike would cater exclusively to the athletes when there’s a much larger group of people who have to look at the uniforms, but that’s a separate issue.
• It could have been worse: Many of the players were in favor of going with the asymmetrical-sleeves look, but the Nike people decided against it.
• The tapered uni numbers (here’s the full set) are a new typeface called Bellotti Bold. They were essentially art-directed by Oregon coach Mike Bellotti, who didn’t like the numbers used in the Civil War game (and hey, who can blame him?). Hatfield said, “The tapered number just adds a little more of a dynamic attitude. Basically, if a player feels more invincible, he’ll go out and play better. That’s sports psychology 101.” Again, I think this is silly at best, but it appears to be another case of giving the players (and, in this case, the coach) what they want.
• Speaking of the numbers, the actual number fabric is stretch twill, so the numerals will stretch and give along with the rest of the jersey — apparently a first in uni design.
So have I suddenly become a Nike apologist? Hardly. I still think they’re the biggest problem in sports design today, I still think they usually have the manufacturer/team relationship backwards, and they reeeaaaalllly need to cut back on all the swooshes. And when Hatfield trots out a talking point like, “We’re used to the criticism, because that’s the role of the leader,” as he said to me toward the end of our interview, that’s just a convenient all-purpose dodge.
But it was good to trade ideas with Hatfield and Van Horne, and to be able to put a human face on Nike — to see the man behind the curtain instead of the Wizard of Oz, so to speak. Only problem is, the curtain is covered in swooshes.
June 21st, 2006
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