Uni Watch
by Paul Lukas
Which Sport Has the Best All-Star Duds?
February is a slow time in the sports world—football
is over, baseball hasn't started yet—which may explain
why three of the four major sports leagues recently
clustered their all-star games within an eight-day span.
From an aesthetic perspective, all-star games are
tricky: Do you let the players wear their regular
uniforms, as Major League Baseball does, resulting in a
crazy quilt of conflicting designs, or do you put the
players in generic all-star unis and hope nobody notices
that they're even worse than last year's? Here's how the
three just-completed all-star contests stacked up.
NFL Pro Bowl: The first problem with
the Pro Bowl is that that NFL always dresses the AFC in
red and the NFC in blue while letting the players wear
their regular team helmets, which results in some
serious color-coordination problems—players from the
Packers, 49ers, and Eagles, among others, may as well
stay home. Then there's the uniform itself, which seems
to get sillier each season. This year's version was so
garish, Uni Watch hardly knows where to start—the
unsightly piping on the jerseys and pants? The
Broncos-style "horns" of color on the rear of the
jerseys? The NFC's
solid-blue look? The
carnival of jersey patches that made everyone look
like Arena League players? And that's not counting the,
uh, authentic Hawaiian fashions
worn by the coaches. The saving grace, of course, is
that nobody actually watches the Pro Bowl.
Grade: F
NHL All-Star Game: Classy job all
around. This year's
basic All-Star unis were gorgeous in their
simplicity. No crazy typefaces, no wacky blocks of
color—just basic, tasteful designs. Lots of nice little
touches, too: the lace-up collars, the little "HB"
stickers that the American-born players wore on their
skates in honor of Olympic coach
Herb Brooks, the throwback wheat-colored jerseys
worn by the refs and linesmen. The only teeny-tiny flies
in the ointment were that players wore their usual
gloves and goalies wore
their usual leg pads, which created some minor color
clashes. All in all, though, this game was easy on the
eyes. Kudos to all involved. Grade: A-
NBA All-Star Game: The NBA has
flip-flopped its all-star approach in recent years. For
decades the game featured generic "East" and "West"
unis, which over the years ranged from
simple to
tacky to
disconcertingly corporate. In the late 1990s,
however, the league began letting players wear
their regular uniforms, which Uni Watch rather
liked—the visual jumble created a cool melting-pot
effect, and it was easy enough to tell one team from
another because all the players on the home team
wore white. The NBA still uses that format for the
Rookie Challenge game but has gone back to generic
unis for the All-Star Game itself. This year's design
was
nothing to be embarrassed about, but it was
nothing to get excited over either—Uni Watch pleads
indifference. Meanwhile—enough, already with the
footwear shenanigans (Tracy McGrady wore one blue
sneaker and one red; Ron Artest wore one yellow and one
white), an All-Star Game tradition that's now officially
annoying. Grade: B
As for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, we'll
deal with that when it comes up in July. The way the
off-season has been
shaping up, though, it looks like the entire
American League squad might be wearing Yankee uniforms.
Questions or suggestions for Uni Watch? Send mail
here.
Paul Lukas is the travel
columnist for
Money magazine, the food critic for the New
York Sun, and the brand-history columnist for
Fortune Small Business.
This article was taken from
slate.msn.com. All rights reserved.
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