
Good Monday morning, Uni Watchers! I hope everyone had a good weekend.
Long time readers will recall that Jay Braiman (who posts as “Graf Zeppelin” in the comments) has been preparing Super Bowl number crunching for more than a decade. He teamed up with Paul in 2013 in a post that appeared on ESPN, and returned in 2014, this time on Uni Watch itself. Since then, his uniform/number observations have been a part of Uni Watch (on the blog, ESPN, Inside Hook, Substack, etc.) in some form or other. When Paul retired as Editor last year, Jay thought his SB notes would retire as well, but last week, I reached out and asked him to keep the tradition alive. He heartily agreed!
So I’m pleased to welcome Jay back as he brings you his …
by Jay Braiman
Philadelphia and Kansas City will meet in the Super Bowl for the second time in three years, and will each wear the exact same uniforms they wore for the game two years ago. They both join the very small club of teams that have had Super Bowl rematches against two different opponents wherein the same uniforms were worn by both teams each time, along with the Cowboys (Steelers twice, and Bills) and Patriots (Giants and Eagles). This is the first time both teams have joined that club in the same game.
Now, before we move on let’s be clear what we mean by the “same” (or “exact same”) uniform. Obviously, the Super Bowl patches on the jerseys are not the “exact same” as the previous game; moreover, the Eagles made a subtle change to their uniforms this year, revising the tiny wordmark below the collar. Looking further, the Cowboys and Steelers wore bicentennial patches in Super Bowl X that they didn’t wear in Super Bowl XIII, and the Steelers wore gray facemasks in the former and black facemasks in the latter. But as detail-oriented as we all are at Uni Watch, the key here is that the design is the same, even if its execution differs in some details.

So, moving on…
• This is the first time we’ve seen an exact uniform rematch (same design, same color selections) two seasons apart, the quickest that could happen without a designated home team electing to wear white in one of the games, as the Cowboys did in the first of back-to-back Super Bowls against the Bills (XXVII and XXVIII), still the only time that’s happened. The Cowboys and Steelers wore the same uniforms three years apart in Super Bowls X and XIII (with Dallas electing white jerseys in the latter); Patriots-Giants (XLII and XLVI) and KC-49ers (LIV and LVIII) were each four years apart. In each of the foregoing rematches, the team that won the first game won the second. Incidentally, neither the Eagles (fifth appearance) nor KC (seventh) has ever elected to wear white jerseys as the home team in a Super Bowl, but each was involved in a game in which the home team elected white: the Eagles against the Patriots in SB LII, and KC against the Buccaneers in SB LV.
* The Cowboys won the third after losing the first two to the Steelers.

• The Eagles will extend their record of appearing in five Super Bowls in green jerseys without ever having appeared in white jerseys, and now take sole possession of second place for most consecutive Super Bowl appearances in either color or white; the Cowboys wore white jerseys in their last seven appearances, after wearing blue in their first (SB V vs. Colts).** Among other teams that have appeared in more than one Super Bowl only the Falcons have worn color jerseys only, albeit two different colors (black in SB XXXIII, red in SB LI), and only the Ravens have worn white jerseys only (SB XXXV with white pants, SB XLVII with black pants).
** Washington and Pittsburgh are now in a third-place tie with four each; Washington in white in SB XVII, XVIII, XXII and XXVI after wearing burgundy in SB VII, Steelers in black in SB X, XIII, XIV and XXX after wearing white in SB IX.

• Philadelphia is 1-3 in Super Bowls overall, 1-2 in the current uniform design including the loss to KC. Kansas City is making its seventh Super Bowl appearance overall, its fifth in six seasons; the latter is unprecedented, as is reaching a third straight Super Bowl after winning the first two.*** KC is 4-2 overall, 1-1 in white jerseys, and 1-0 in white jerseys with red pants.
*** The Patriots reached three straight (LI-LIII) but lost the second; the Bills (famously) reached four straight (XXV-XXVIII) and lost all four.

• Overall, teams wearing white jerseys have a 7-3 record in New Orleans Super Bowls (2-1 at Tulane, 5-2 at the Superdome). Among primary colors, “green teams” are 1-1, both in green jerseys, both at the Superdome; “red teams” are 2-2, 1-2 at the Superdome (1-0 in white jerseys and 0-2 in red jerseys). And, in keeping with New Orleans being such a vibrant, unique and colorful city, the 14 franchises that have played Super Bowls there, including this year’s teams, represent a total of eight primary jersey colors: red, blue, green, purple, orange, aqua, navy, and black.
• The L.A. area has hosted 13 teams in eight Super Bowls (two at the Coliseum, five at the Rose Bowl, one at SoFi), representing the same primary jersey colors listed above plus burgundy and minus navy — that is, unless you consider the Cowboys in their last three appearances, including SB XXVII at the Rose Bowl, to be a “navy team” because their color jerseys have been navy since 1981 even though they’ve never worn them in a Super Bowl, and their white jerseys have royal-blue numerals and stripes. If you count the post-1981 Cowboys as navy rather than blue that gives L.A. the edge with nine different primary jersey colors.
• Now, if you count navy and aqua as blue, and burgundy as red, then New Orleans and L.A. are tied with six (red, blue, green, purple, orange, and black), which is the most among Super Bowl host cities. San Diego, which hosted only three Super Bowls, is right behind them with five (red, green, black, orange, and blue); Miami, which like New Orleans has hosted 14 teams in 11 Super Bowls (five at the Orange Bowl, six at Joe Robbie/Dolphin/&c.), has only four: green, blue, red, and black; separating out navy from blue, and burgundy from red, gives them each one more.
• However, if you go the other way and differentiate the greens, then New Orleans gets the edge over L.A. having hosted the Eagles in medium green**** (SB XV), the Packers in hunter green (SB XXXI), and now, the Eagles in their unique “midnight green,” bringing that city’s total to ten, whereas L.A. would have nine even with navy for the Cowboys. So in that case, the Eagles will put New Orleans in the lead as the most colorful Super Bowl city.
**** The Eagles’ uniforms from 1974-84 used a slightly darker green than those that came before and after, and so were not a true kelly green.
• Finally, this year’s teams will tie their own Super Bowl record, which they share with Indianapolis and Chicago (XLI), and Indianapolis and New Orleans (XLIV), of having the most combined syllables in the names of their represented cities, with nine: Philadelphia (5) and Kansas City (4).*****
***** Readers may quibble over whether New Orleans has three or four syllables, whether Indianapolis has five or six syllables, or whether Philadelphia has four or five syllables. They can have at it in the comments section.
Readers? What say you?
Dallas at Buffalo 1984. Winless Bills beat Cowboys14-3.
I think that effectively ended the Hogeboom experiement
Yes, Greg Bell 85 to the house on the first play. Won tickets to game from radio station when I was in high school. One of my top Bills game I ever attended as a fan.
GTGFTU: 11/18/1984 – Dallas Cowboys (3) at Buffalo Bills (14) Rich Stadium, Orchard Park NY. Cowboys with the 25th Anniversary patch.
Note that Cowboys center Tom Rafferty is wearing the team’s then-current navy jersey with the outlined numerals and serif lettering, which was adopted in 1981 and modified in 1996. For most of his Cowboys career, including 1984 (link) and through at least 1987, Rafferty continued to wear the pre-1981-style white jersey with the serif numerals and sans-serif lettering (link); only when the Cowboys wore blue did Rafferty’s jersey match his teammates’.
Didn’t the niners and chiefs just have same uniform super bowls also?
Yes; SB LIV and LVIII, four years apart. Mentioned in the first bullet paragraph.
In-di-an-ap-ol-is 6
Phil-a-del-phi-a 5
Those are pretty obvious
New – Or-leans 3
New – Or-le-ans 4
Now I am questioning how I usually pronounce New Orleans.
N’awlins – 2
Some phoneticians would argue that the “ia” in Philly represents a single syllable, as in “California” (i.e., “Fil-la-del-fya”). For Indianapolis one could conceivably do the same thing (“In-dya-nap-o-lis”), or alternatively, combine the last two syllables by making the “o” silent (“In-di-a-nap-lis”).
That said, I completely agree that Indy is 6 and Philly is 5; most people pronounce Philly with five syllables, including Elton John in “Philadelphia Freedom” and Neil Young in “Philadelphia,” so I consider that to be correct.
Arlo Guthrie, in “City of New Orleans,” pronounces it “New Or-leens” as does Janis Joplin in “Me and Bobby McGee” and Billy Joel in “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” the latter two with emphasis on the last syllable. Having been there a few times my understanding is the correct/preferred pronunciation is “New Or-lins” with emphasis on “Or”; that’s how Kevin Costner’s Jim Garrison and his staff in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” pronounce it. I have heard it pronounced with the extra syllable but off the top of my head I can’t think of where (probably not in a song).
I also can’t think of a song with “Indianapolis” in the lyrics.
Graf, that is very interesting. Thanks!
Yeah, three sounds like the way people typically say New Orleans, but I have definitely heard, and I think from various now retired sports broadcasters, it pronounced “New Or lee ins”, which perhaps was just their little flourish on the word.
New Orleans is [obviously] named after Orléans, in France, which is pronounced with three syllables.
In his 1968 hit “Little Green Apples,” O.C. Smith sings, “It don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.” I listened to the line several times, and it sounds like “In-d’in-a-plis.” So, creative liberties could make Indianapolis four syllables, although multiple pronunciation guides show it in six syllables.
Here’s an example of New Orleans as four syllables
link
Yes!! I had a vague memory of that, but couldn’t place it. Thanks!
One of the biggest arguments my roommates and I ever had in college was whether “Kyle” was one syllable or two. (I argued one).
For what it’s worth, I’ve known quite a few people from New Orleans and the surrounding area, and every one of them has pronounced it “New Or-lins.” No one has ever said “New Or-lee-uns” or “N’awlins.”
Just my own personal experience.
GTGFTS: Super Bowl XXXIX, 6 Feb 2005. The picture is taken from right before the Eagles kick the last point of the game, 21-24.
It’s the same exact scoreboard from last Wednesday: link
Correction: Patriots-Giants were XLII and XLVI.
Got it, now fixed.
Jay, I really enjoyed your walk through the Super Bowl uni-verse. At one point in time, I could recite all the scores, MVPs and stadiums. Probably during the prime of my child-rearing years (in the XLs) do I still get hung up, more on locations than anything.
I noticed an omission – not a uniform matter, but still noteworthy to the Super history. To your triple-asterisk footnote on consecutive SB appearances, the Dolphins were the first team to appear in three straight Super Bowls: they lost VI to Dallas in New Orleans before they won VII over Washington in LA (to finish 17-0) and repeated in VIII over Minnesota in Houston. Uni wise, they wore aqua jerseys in VI and VIII and were in their whites in VII.
Fun stuff!
D’oh! Good catch.
In addition, the reason why “they wore aqua jerseys in VI and VIII” as the home team, and why the Cowboys wore blue in V as the home team, despite both teams’ predilection to wear white at home, was that back then the NFL mandated the “home” team in the Super Bowl wear its color jerseys. Not sure when the rule changed, but my guess is the Cowboys lobbied for it in advance of Super Bowl XIII when they became the first “home” team to wear white jerseys in the big game.
In the 1980s and ’90s, you’d only see the “home” team wear white if it was a team that tended to wear white at home, i.e., Washington (XVII) and Dallas (XXVII). The first time I remember a team electing to wear white for some other [i.e., superstitious] reason was when the Steelers did so against the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL, because they had made their entire playoff run on the road (and which would have been a much better-looking game had they gone the other way (e.g., link, link, link). Since then we’ve seen the Broncos (50), Patriots (LII) and Buccaneers (LV) elect white; the Rams wore white in SB LVI at SoFi which is their home stadium but they weren’t the designated home team.
The Cowboys in SB XIII were also the first team to appear in back-to-back Super Bowls in the same uniform (having worn their white jerseys against the Broncos in SB XII the year before); the Steelers (SB XIII-XIV), Washington (XVII-XVIII), Bills (XXVI-XXVII-XXVIII), Cowboys again (XXVII-XXVIII), Patriots (LI-LII-LIII), and KC (LIV-LV) have done it since.
Happy to see the 2025 MLB uniforms trending in the right direction, but it’s still an embarrassment that Nike was too lazy/cheap/whatever to produce jerseys with sleeve stripes not on the very end of the sleeves. The Orioles are supposed to have daylight between the black/orange/black bands and the end of the sleeves! It looks fine enough but why is Nike incapable of producing this?!