Bermuda Shorts?

Back in the Day

There was a time – in the proverbial “Back in the Day” – when you could:

Flick on the TV.
Tune into a game of any kind.
Know exactly who was playing – at first glance – by the uniforms they were wearing.

But not any more.

Some of the uniforms worn recently by the Oregon Ducks

For too many teams, gone are the traditional uniforms, the time-honored uniforms, popularized over decades of play. Instead – thanks in large part to Nike and the Oregon Ducks football program – contemporary monstrosities are now the uniform du jour.

When I see these gaudy eye-sores, an image of Dennis Rodman pops into my head.

Why such drastic changes?

Two reasons:

To draw attention to themselves.
To sell more merchandise.

Northwestern 24 – Ball State 19

I happened to catch some of the Northwestern-Ball State game on Saturday night. As I stay tuned for a good half-hour, there was something about the uniforms that kept catching my eye. But I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was for a while.

And then it hit me.

Many of the players were wearing Bermuda shorts.

The uniform pants stopped somewhere in the thigh-area and well above the knee.

In a time when player safety is supposed to be of such high concern – especially head trauma in the NFL – many of the players aren’t wearing knee pads. And some aren’t wearing thigh pads either.

I’ll bet if players could suffer concussions in the knees or thighs, they’d be wearing both types of pads. And if players delivered well-struck but clean hits to the thighs and knees, flags would be thrown for unnecessary roughness – as it is now with blows to the head.

They’re legislating the hitting out of football – but that’s another topic for another day.

Instead of the traditional jerseys – white and color or home and away – most teams now have a series of jerseys: