[Editor’s Note: This morning our own Anthony Emerson is back with the results of our new year-end feature: The 2024 Uni Watch Uni Awards. Today we name the winners of the “Best” and “Worst” new primary and alternate uniforms, and logos. Thanks to all who participated! — PH]
• • • • • 2024 Uni Awards: Winners (and Losers)
by Anthony Emerson
Well, well, well. What a week! We’ve been overwhelmed by the Uni-verse’s response to our inaugural Uni Awards. We received dozens of nominations and thousands of votes.
Today, we’ll reveal the winners.
As we enter our first full calendar year without our fearless founder, I know I speak for Phil, Jim, and the entire Uni Watch crew in thanking you for joining us. Let’s make 2025 a great year.
Best new primary uniform: Detroit Lions
A return to tradition. While they may go Monolulu or BFBS too frequently for our liking, the Uni-verse was clear with its choice.
Worst new primary uniform: TSV Hartberg
The voters were almost equally as “enthusiastic” for TSV Hartberg and their ad-covered offering for this season in Austria’s Bundesliga.
Best new alternate: Oregon yellow/green/yellow
It was a landslide. Perhaps the voters were biased, since Uni Watch’s color scheme is similar. But I don’t think so —- if only the Ducks pulled this out more often.
Worst new alternate: Philadelphia Phillies City Connect
In a year with (unfortunately) lots of competition, the Phillies stood out with this gradient number. To its benefit, it sort of feels like a microcosm of everything that’s gone wrong with the City Connect series, which means it should live long as a case study of what not to do to a baseball uniform.
Best new logo: Portland Hearts of Pine
Our narrowest result, with the USL League One side beating the Raptors’ incredible Dunking Dino by only eight votes.
Worst new logo: New York Sirens
Rounding out our inaugural Uni Awards, we have the New York Sirens of the PWHL, by a surprising margin over a lot of other slop.
Thanks again for reading, voting and nominating! Please let us know what we could do to improve next year, new categories, suggestions, anything you’d like!
Have a great 2025.
I had no doubt that the Phillies’ city connect alternate uni would win its category. All year long if the Phillies were playing on a Friday night I made sure not to tune in.
I do like the Phillies’ City Connect caps. But that gradient is awful!
I think that’s a fairly universal opinion. I see so many City Connect hats in Philly, but I see almost nobody wearing the jerseys, maybe because wearing half a gradient looks stupid
The “worst new logo” voting is really intriguing to me. I voted for the Ottawa Charge, but I was curious how people would come down on Utah and the Red Bull team.
Utah is plain, and replacing the far superior Kachina logo, but passable.
A team named Red Bull is in my opinion a representation of the absolute worst in sports right now, but also, there are a baker’s dozen Red Bull teams now.
I don’t have conclusions, but I think the voting results there are very interesting.
I actually love the Sirens logo. It has the visible sensation of a sound wave
I agree with you Mike, it’s clever to me
The only ones I strongly disliked on the worst alternate were the Texans reds and the Celtics. I honestly didn’t mind the Phillies too much. Weren’t great, but weren’t terrible imo. I might be a lot more open/lenient when it comes to alts, especially in the MLB though.
Thanks for doing this…a great new tradition for Uni Watch
Two suggestions for next year:
1. Don’t use the same logo for each piece of voting, and/or put something in the first round of voting explaining that there will be more. I had no idea there were more than the first two categories to vote in. I could have read better, but meet us halfway.
2. To me, making an alternate and making a throwback are very different things. I think they each deserve their own category.
I’ll reiterate an earlier comment, I think there should be a best throwback (which can include either a team designating a single true throwback like the buccs creamscicle, or returning to a close match of an entire old wardrobe, like the buccs did with their last uni update) and that should be separate from alternates. There should also be a most improved, as I don’t believe the lions have anywhere near the best new uniform in sports, but perhaps deserve a most improved award. And maybe a best bang for the buck award aka the details award. I really don’t think the Yankees removing the lettering outline on their roadies makes that uni even worth nominating, but I see how people might find it to be a game changer if they fixate on that particular detail, so maybe an award for a team that only made a tweak that really turned things up, like the ravens adding a purple helmet, or when the d-backs removed the snake skin texture.
Thanks for the feedback, Dave!
We anticipated a few hiccups with the inaugural Uni Awards, and I’m sure Anthony (whose baby this is) is taking all suggestions to heart for the 2025 Uni Awards!
Hearts of Pine logo looks more like a retirement facility or city park, not a sports logo. The Dunkin’ Dino was robbed.
Disagree 100% – The Hearts of Pine logo is a thing of beauty!
Absolutely, but all of the voting and even the nominations has really just been a cj
What’s a cj?
Agree on both!
Next time, with just a tiny bit of extra effort, you could present the results as a Looker Studio dashboard instead of a series of screenshots of the Google form results with so many of the details getting truncated.
Those Austrians have the single best uniform in team sports, completely surprised it came in first in the opposite category…on the other hand: there was still some ad space left here and there so yes: complete failure. Worst uniform of 2024, indeed.
No surprises, but tbh the whole process of nominations and voting was fundamentally broken from the get go.