Good Monday morning, Uni Watchers. I hope everyone had a safe and reflective weekend.
ICYMI, last Friday the Oregon State Beavers introduced a new set of four different uniforms. For the most part I liked them — except for the completely superfluous and unnecessary anthracite alternate — but the new set contained something very interesting.
All four of the uniforms, despite being four different colors, contained the exact same striping pattern. It was very subtle, and for the white helmet and uniform, you need to picture a white stripe surrounding the ends of the color stripes. By that I mean, consider that rather than simply having a thin black/thick orange/thin black stripe, picture them as having a white/black/orange/black/white pattern.
That white/black/orange/black/white pattern is repeated, in succession, on the black, anthracite and orange jerseys and pants as well.
I call these “stealthy” stripes, in that the pattern isn’t immediately obvious, but trust me…it’s there and it’s deliberate.
The only other team I can think of who does something similar is Florida, who also sneakily work in an orange/blue/white/blue/orange pattern (in a modified Northwestern pattern).
Almost. Their one exception is the orange jersey, where they break the pattern to go with a blue/orange/white/orange/blue pattern. It would be such an easy fix; just knowing that one and only one of their striping patterns differs on one garment (the orange jersey only) drives me nuts. I believe I’ve mentioned on here before that I have been diagnosed with a minor form of OCD, and it manifests itself in stuff like this.
Back to the Beavers for a second — there were a couple comments where readers did NOT like the stealthy stripes. OK, it’s not for everyone, but it got me to thinking. What other helmet/jersey/pants (or just jersey/pants where applicable) combinations exist out there, and do most teams have matching or non-matching stripes. There are many teams who have different stripe colors for different jerseys or pants — that doesn’t bother me in the least. But what teams actually change their stripes up between helmet/jersey/pants, or some combination thereof?
I’m sure there are others, but I have a short list into which more than the example team falls. For whatever reason, this bothers me more than it should, and I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed this and feels the same way.
Let’s look at a few examples.
Auburn uses a modified Northwestern stripe pattern (a la Florida) on their helmets and jerseys, but their pants don’t follow the same pattern. For the pants, instead of putting thin white stripes between the blue and orange — as they do on helmets and jerseys — they eliminate them. This one doesn’t bother me too much as I don’t think the Northwestern pattern necessarily works for the pants. But I definitely notice it, and when I glance at the full uniform, something always looks just a bit off. It’s a great uniform, don’t get me wrong, but I can’t unsee the different stripe patterns.
C’mon man. Can you spot the problem here? Can you see why this bothers me to no end???
This is an example of what I described above — different color elements have different color stripes. In TB’s case, the white helmet and pants have an red/orange/red pattern, but the orange jersey is red/white/red. The white jersey follows the same pattern as the helmet and pants. Like I said above, I’m OK with this, but it would have been interesting to see the orange jersey go with a red/orange/red stripe to match the helmets and pants. Since TB had no red uniform elements, it could have worked.
Which leads me to…
The Oilers’ best look was always a white helmet with the classic red/white/blue/white/red pattern, and no matter whether they were wearing white or blue jerseys (or pants), the pattern was always the same. This is similar to Tampa Bay — who also had no red elements — and could have used those red stripes in the same way the Oilers did — to create a perfect striping pattern throughout no matter what color uniform element was worn.
I realize this isn’t their “classic” gold/white/gold look, but the team will occasionally break out the mono-whites. Look at those beautiful UCLA loops (well, more like nubs now) — purple/gold/purple. *Chefs kiss* — so what do they do with their helmet and pants? They don’t stick with that pattern, but instead shove a fat white stripe between the purple and gold. GRRRRRRR! It would be one thing if they used an odd pattern with their regular helmet/pants, but they don’t. It’s like they purposely came up with this weird striping pattern just to mess with my OCD.
Then there are the Giants, who have a single red stripe on their helmets (or, using the OSU Beavers/Florida Gators argument, the stripe is actually blue/red/blue). But the Giants have decided to wear a red Northwestern striping pattern on both the jersey and pants. It wasn’t always this way. At one time the team did wear the blue/red/blue stripe pattern, more closely matching the helmet. Not any more.
When the NFL allowed for teams to have a second shell, the Cleveland Browns introduced a new white helmet to pair with their “1946” fauxback. The white helmet worn by the Browns in their early years had no stripes, but they added a brown/orange/brown stripe to the new white shell. But look at the stripe pattern on the pants. Since the helmet stripe was created out of whole cloth, why wouldn’t they match the stripe pattern on the pants? WHY???
I’m not arguing for or advocating that every team has to have perfectly matching stripe patterns. There are also plenty of teams who don’t match and look great (I’m thinking of the Green Bay Packers, for example, who insist upon sticking a thin white stripe between their green/gold jersey stripes, but stick with a green/white/green pattern for their helmet/pants, or the Pittsburgh Steelers, who wear a modified Northwestern pattern on their jersey sleeve caps, but sport just a thick black stripe on their pants). Those uniforms look great even though the stripes don’t match.
But what about the …
NEW ORLEANS SAINTS
Let’s face it, the Saints uni has a lot of problems that fixing stripe patterns won’t cure, but why do they have a black/white/black stripe on their helmets, but a thick black stripe on their pants? It’s been that way since 1986, but it wasn’t always. Back in the day, when the team wore more of an old gold, their pants stripe matched their helmet stripe. Why did they go away from that?
So what about you, dear readers? What kind of stripes do you like? And are there other examples than what I posted that don’t fit any of these patterns? Again, I am not arguing that every team has to have matching stripes. But sometimes it baffles me why teams seemingly deliberately change patterns. And if you’re one of those who actually don’t like ANY stripes matching, what the hell is wrong with you why do you feel this way?
Fire away!
There was a big issue with the Betsy Ross Flag a few years ago when Colin Kaepernick amongst others calling a flag of slavery and getting Nike to discontinue a show with the flag on it.
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Only thing wrong with the LSU part of the article is…the yellow pants do have a different stripe! There are thin yellow stripes in the pants to sabotage the NFL stripes. In other words, there are really five stripes on the yellow pants! Purple yellow white yellow purple, on the yellow pants. So just like the white, it’s weird
Yes! Came here to point out this exact issue with LSU’s yellow pants. The unnecessary thin yellow stripes between the purple and white striping has always bothered me. In my book, striping patterns should always match on pants and helmets of the same color.
Thoroughly enjoyed today’s topic. Glad to know I’m not the only one who notices (and can’t unsee) seemingly minor issues with uniform details.
GTGFTU: September 18, 1994, New Orleans Saints at Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Tipoffs: The throwback 75th anniversary patch on Sam Mills’ jersey, plus the Saints’ throwback unis. (Since part of my email address is “keep pounding,” I might need to know this.
Washington, in their last uniforms before discarding the Redskins nickname, had mismatched strips on the helmet (three detached stripes of white-gold-white), jerseys (attached pair of stripes, burgundy over gold on the whites and white over gold on the burgundies), and pants (gold pants with burgundy-white-burgundy stipes).
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So bad
I’m probably in the minority, but while I like stripes on jerseys/pants, I think A LOT of helmets would look better with no stripe at all. Example: the Bills. No stripe is better than the ugly tapered one they have today.
I’m firmly in the Stripes Should Match camp. Mismatched stripes make it look to me like the elements of a uniform were assembled from a bin of randomly available items, not designed as a coherent uniform.
As to the Olympic flag, it’s worth noting that the firmest evidence we have for a 13-star flag with the stars arranged in a circle dates to the late 1800s, a century after the American Revolution. Star arrangements were pretty random for the first decades of the republic, and probably a number of circles were used, but by far the most common arrangement was a grid, like in the Olympic Committee logo. The real Betsy Ross made a number of important contributions to both the Revolution and the War of Independence, but sewing a 13-star flag with the stars in a circle wasn’t one of them. That particular bit of mythmaking seems to date from the mid-1800s and became popularized around the Centennial in 1876. It’s the flag equivalent of Abner Doubleday inventing baseball in Cooperstown in 1839.
Great topic today. I’ve also always appreciated how Florida has the same stripe pattern on both the white and blue jerseys. But also I’m the sort that likes when stripe patterns are the same, with color swapping with different element colors, such that they are inverted (for example, a red jersey with white/black/white stripes, turns into a white jersey with red/black/red stripes), and the third color always stays the same in the stripe pattern. That usually works, it is when you end up in a situation like the Browns have, where the three parts of the uniform all have different main colors (orange helmet, brown jersey, white pants) and then there can be no continuity along the stripe pattern.
Tampa Bay is an easy fix. White/red/orange/red/white on the orange jersey sleeves.
That’s forced consistency.
Actually it’s not consistent because the jersey would have five stripes.
I like it better as is.
“Fixing” Auburn’s road pants wouldn’t look forced.
They probably use that flag design so they can trademark it
Fewer starts on the flag means it’s lighter, improving performance.
But you’re right about the trademark issue. The original proposed emblem for the Corvette had two crossed flags: One would be checkered, the other the American flag. They were not allowed to use it, so the US flag became a design with the Chevy emblem included. To this day, the logo is based on the revised design.
The issue with Chevy was that at the time, it was illegal to use the U.S. flag for commercial promotion, and that law was sometimes enforced. Today, for sound First Amendment reasons, that law is not enforced, and you can slap the U.S. flag on products to your heart’s content. There’s nothing that I’m aware of that would similarly weigh on the USOC today with regard to its flag logo. And also the original Corvette logo did not show all 48 stars on the then-current U.S. flag design. If a reasonable person would see a design and think that it represents a U.S. flag, that design _is_ a U.S. flag under federal law. Though that’s a distinction that is basically meaningless for most purposes. The USOC logo’s 13 stars is surely motivated mainly by a desire for a mark that is clearly reproduceable at varied scales and across mediums, not concern for any obscure regulatory minutiae.
Interesting article. Of the ones shown, the one that bugs me the most is Auburn. Would be a perfect look if they just “fixed” the pants striping. For the others, I’m not as bothered, in that at least the design/look/alignment of the stripes is at least the same (like Miami. Yes, the helmet sequence of colors differs and would be better orange/green/orange, but this happens a lot when teams have one helmet (or main helmet) and they go from white to color jerseys. For the ‘Aints, all you have to do is look at the photo for GTGFTU to marvel at how much worse the solid black stripes on the pants look (let’s not get into the pitiful tan color vs old gold).
The three different bolts on this uni combo has ALWAYS bothered me!
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Blue/Yellow for the helmet
White/Yellow for the jersey
Blue/White for the pants
UUUUUGH!
Yeah, this is why 99% of the time you don’t have all three uniform elements in different colors. Especially if you have a white helmet, you should be going with white pants when wearing a dark jersey.
I give the Browns a pass because they have had that look for so long and it is iconic to the franchise. Even though their stripes bother me, I can give it a pass since orange/brown/white is just how that team is supposed to look.
I completely agree! As much as most people love the current Chargers uniforms, I never liked that the triple color combo is the standard. It just feels too busy. I usually love yellow pants (Michigan, USC, Steelers, Packers, etc), but it doesn’t work with a white helmet and a powder blue jersey. I think the Chargers look MUCH better with white pants. And the helmet bolt matches the pants bolt for Marcus!
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As a Chargers fan, I couldn’t agree more! I love our white/powder/white as our primary look the best. Yellow pants flow better with the white jerseys but even then I don’t think it’s better than the mono white look either.
I just hope we bring these link back as throwbacks in the near future. We don’t need 3 different blues of the current iteration jerseys imo.
That’s super annoying, Marcus! Now I’ll never be able to unsee it.
I love this topic! This is something that has always killed me about my beloved Buffalo Bills, none of the stripes match on the current uniform.
But I always LOVED that the red helmet had the same effect when paired with the white pants. The pants basically had the stealth white stripe.
That California Sun game jersey is SPECTACULAR! I love game jerseys and oddball jerseys and this one has so much going on. Great stuff.
I love it when stripes don’t even come close to matching on a uniform. Why? It reminds me of when teams would just order everything from different suppliers, and whatever stripes the manufacturers used for each piece of equipment is what you got. Same with colours all being a little bit off for the same reason. I also preferred when teams would order uniforms from whatever supplier they wanted, there was no league-wide contract. So much more fun and interesting.
I think Mizzou’s striping all matches up if I’m not mistaken.
I just always assumed the 13 star flag was easier to render in littler sizes than the full detail of the 50 star flag. Everyone knows why we have 13 stripes, the 13 stars is just an echo of that/takes the flag back to its roots. Put another way, if you’re not going to render all 50 stars because of the detail required, 13 stars is the only REAL choice in terms of rendering less without it making hardly any sense. The Olympics folks chose this path, and just have stuck with it.
This is what I was thinking as well, and I think it’s likely the staggered-row pattern was chosen because it resembles the staggered-row pattern on the 50-star flag.
By and large, I dislike Northwestern stripes on the pants. The Oilers were the exception because the blue and white stripes were of equal width. When the pattern is simple, I like matching stripes. When it’s Pittsburgh Steelers sleeve stripes, the helmet and pants need to be simpler.
I can’t explain why, but when the Washington NFL team changed the jerseys and pants in 1979, but not the helmet, I thought the result looked okay.
I agree, but the prior Washington combo, which was sort of a stripe-o-rama, particularly on the jersey sleeves, was really nice!
My beloved Patriots latest uni set makes a mess of the striping.
The white jerseys/navy pants uniform is jarring. The white jersey features red/blue/red should stripes while the navy pants use red/white/red. They are almost unwatchable in this uniform.
Meanwhile, the mono-navy set has matching jersey/pant striping. One good thing on a miserably uninspired uniform.
Thank goodness they don’t have stripes on the helmet!
I absolutely can not wait for the Pats to ditch this whole look.
Guess the Game:
New Orleans Saints at Tampa Bay Buccaneers – September 18th, 1994
NFL 75th Anniversary Patch is the clue.
Mizzou dabbles in the Florida stylings.
The Oilers’ best look was always a white helmet with the classic red/white/blue/white/red pattern
If the world began in 1975, you’d be right.
The best look was the gloriously mismatched one that preceded the meh white helmet.
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Stripes match, stripes don’t match…to be honest it doesn’t matter to me. As long as you have the right colors.
In fact, sometimes I never noticed this with certain teams until I discovered Uni Watch.
Great article about striping. The lede picture reminds me of artwork I believe is in the NFL offices that very briefly showed up on some documentary or Inside the NFL a while back. Personally, I’d love for every team to have their own unique striping pattern (different thickness, number, etc).
Where can I get a poster of the NFL stripes AWESOME
So many of your examples shared I agree with, and think about waaaay more than I care to admit.
For some reason, the two most egregious in my mind are The U and the Saints, because their fixes are so damn easy.
But I’m also a fan of the idea of “X base color has one striping pattern/Y base color has another.”
Perfect example: 49ers: gold base has the “red-white-red”, while red or white jersey has the contrasting three stripes. They do a good job with this, but I wish it would still carry over into their socks.
Also wish the Steelers would either narrow their pants stripe, or (more to my liking) widen the helmet stripe.
The Cowboys’ all white uniforms have always bothered me since they came out, as the helmet stripe is navy/white/navy while the pant stripe is navy/silver/navy. link
The Cowboys have a LOT of weird uniform quirks. Their various shades of blue (and aqua and silver?) always annoyed me.
I’ve hated the Cowboys’ white (home?) look forever because of this. Silver helmet with navy/white stripes, white jersey with essentially royal numbers (with that odd black thin outline on the sleeve stripes) and the weird sea foam pant color (sometimes it looks light blue, sometimes steel grey, ugh). It’s especially bad in that their other set, which they don’t wear often enough, is all matching. Silver helmet with navy stripes, navy jersey with white and silver elements and silver pants with navy/white stripes. It doesn’t help that I dislike them in general, but still.
They changed from sea foam pants to a blue/silver for the white unis in 2020
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As a cowboys fan the blues not matching between unis doesn’t bother me so much. The helmet does a lot more. They *should* use the royal blue on the helmets on the white unis and leave the navy blue decals on the navy set. The “color rush” should have no silver elements at all. Throwbacks are absolutely perfect.
This probably makes no sense, but I can appreciate those quirks, especially with the historic factor attached to those uniforms. The all-white Color Rush feels like a careless mistake. Would be easily fixed if they wore their throwback pants with that uniform: link
Great article, Phil! As a fellow OCDer, this annoys me as well. Here are my thoughts on how much each of these annoy me:
Auburn: This one really annoys me because it’s two different stripe patterns. And it’s the same color element! The pants should definitely have Northwestern stripes. It’s so easy to fix!
Miami: At least it’s the same pattern, but it’s the same element color. These stripes should all be in the same order. Huge miss.
Buccaneers: It’s the same pattern just in a different order for different element colors, so this one is practical and doesn’t annoy me.
Oilers: This is perfect!
Tigers: It’s a one off alternate, so I’ll let it go. But it’s still annoying.
Giants: This one doesn’t bother me because, unlike Auburn, the different stripe is just a single stripe versus a completely different stripe pattern. The jersey and pants match and the helmet looks good with a single stripe. I’m OK with this!
Browns: What are we doing here? Too many patterns! Too many different combinations! At least make the pants match the helmet.
Packers: They could remove the thin white stripe from the uniform, but these uniforms are still perfect. The home jersey also has a thin green stripe between the yellow and white jersey stripes. The pants matching the helmet also really helps.
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Steelers: Kind of like the Giants, I think this one is mitigated due to the pants and helmet having a single stripe. It would be more bothersome if the helmet or pants had a completely different stripe pattern. However, the single stripe works.
I think there should be some consideration for the horizontal stripes of the (sometimes) shoulders and the horizontal stripes of the socks, versus the vertical stripes of the helmet and pants. In the reference of the browns in this article, the socks and shoulders match and the helmet and pants match while on different parallels. It’s seems like a workable layer of nuance that can help some teams in certain situations especially when in all white or opposed to having to imagine a “ghost stripe”
JMO
Guess I just noticed the pants and helmet are inverted on the browns. So maybe it it doesn’t bother me but should probably bother the designers . Like a big typo , using there instead of their.
But the saints and LSU is a distracting so thumbs down
Similarly, the Kansas City Chiefs apply the same striping pattern (white/red/yellow/red/white) to both their red and white pants. The end result produces an uneven look with stripes that appear much wider overall on the red pants than on the white pants, which are much thinner comparatively. Additionally, I never understood why the Chiefs don’t include an element of yellow trim on their helmets, given its use on their jerseys and pants (but I digress).
While I nearly always prefer the striping pattern of helmets and pants of the same color to match, I realized there is one exception to this rule that does not seem to bother me as much – the white pants and and helmets of the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts use one blue stripe on their helmets while using two blue stripes on their pants (Nebraska and Tennessee employ a similar striping pattern using red and orange respectively). Perhaps the fact that the two stripes on the pants match the two stripes on the Colts jerseys helps to mitigate the difference with the helmet – and honestly, the classic look of the Colts helmet would be diminished with two stripes instead of one.
Another minor pants striping issue: the dark navy blue pants of the Chicago Bears. To be the direct inverse of the navy/orange/navy stripes used on their white pants, the Bears should have white/orange/white stripes on their navy pants. Instead, the Bears use orange/white/orange stripes (regardless, Butkus and Sayers never wore navy pants, just sayin’…).
GTGFTU: 18 Sept 1994, Week 3 – New Orleans Saints @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Saints won 9-7 while wearing throwback uniforms for the NFL 75th anniversary
This is such a great article!!!
Comrade Marshall coined the term “Chicago Stripes”:
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Those are my favorite pattern.
This article is pretty much my exact sentiment about striping patterns. I don’t think EVERY TEAM needs a Master (Stealthy) Stripe though, because I also like Inverted Stripes. That’s how I’ve always described the Buccaneers example used above.
I share the preference for stripe uniformity. But these days, I’m just happy when pants have any stripes. Those black pants my Saints wear, for example, are just damn yoga pants for christsake. They used to have great black pants with stripes.