My 20 Most Hated Sports Uniforms Ever

It's been awhile folks. I was so overjoyed at the prospect of the Steelers losing the Super Bowl and so depressed about the Blue Jackets urinating their season away that it created this vortex tornado of sadness and glee that threw me out of the writing-my-sports-feelings-zone. But here I am, back to discuss an issue very near and dear to my heart, sports uniforms.

You see boys and girls, I am a sports uniform aesthete. When others were watching the game, I was watching the game and obsessing over number fonts, color differences, stripe widths, whether the names were vertically or radially arched. I worry about things like which baseball teams use the standard gray road uniforms and which teams use the slightly more greenish gray uniforms, tiny microscopic differences in block fonts, and which NFL teams use a metallic flake for their helmets. It literally extends to anything and being this observant is a curse more than a gift. I go to games and the multitude of ebay fouls, counterfeit jerseys, and blatantly incorrect personalization jobs are enough to make me scream. Ask my loved ones, especially the GF, and they'll tell you about the burden I've placed on them.


I have a list of my personal favorite sports uniforms. It's very exclusive and very difficult to crack (the Hartford Whalers 1992-1997 are #1). That would however, make for a boring discussion. This is a list of my 20 least favorite sports uniforms that have ever been worn, starting with number 20 through 11.


First, some parameters need to be set:
1. I'm only doing the 4 major sports of North America (NHL, NFL, MLB, NBA). It seems that it's a prerequisite for Soccer, minor leagues (google Tucson Toros), or the WNBA teams to have purposely ugly uniforms. No college, no foreign leagues, and certainly no high schools. We're talking about the professional ranks here.


2. I'm not going back farther than 1970. That's when the age of uniform design became really important in terms of branding and presenting a franchise to the masses. With the widespread use of color television and shortly after, the sale of replica jerseys, outfitting a team in an ugly uniform in this era is far more dangerous than it would have been in say, the 40's.


3. No alternate uniforms. Alternate uniforms are occasionally worn to give the fans a new look, but the real motive is to give the team a third jersey to sell to said fans. Teams often take risks with their third jersey that they wouldn't normally take and this can sometimes spell disaster (Check back in later, for more on alternate uniform disasters). For a uniform to make this list, it had to have been worn for at least one year as the team's primary uniform option.


4. Don't mistake what I'm saying for ugly. Often times the uniform wasn't ugly, but a harbinger of bad design that encouraged future generations of uniform design to make unattractive or misguided design choices, or it jumped on bad design trends far after said trends had passed. These are my 20 least favorite uniforms in sports. These aren't what everyone else should agree is the 20 ugliest uniforms in sports. Totally different things. 


Let's get started

20. Denver Broncos “Swooshed out”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the Broncos’ uniforms from 1997 and by today’s design standards they appear somewhat tame, but back then the bold orange side panel, custom number font, and tapered stripe were considered wild and cutting edge. These uniforms are still around and though I think there are uniforms out there that are far uglier and more egregious violators of my person uniform policies, this one makes the list for its far-reaching effect on the game of football. This particular template ushered in a new era in uniform design in a previously fashion conservative NFL that paved the way for modern-design atrocities such as the Arizona Cardinals, Minnesota Vikings, the soon to be extinct uniforms (and making an appearance later) of the Buffalo Bills, and even my own Cincinnati Bengals. Even worse, this template launched a million terrible high school football uniforms that still exist today.

19. St. Louis Blues 1995-1998

In uniforms more befitting of a fast food employee, the garish colors didn’t help the St. Louis Blues in their mid 1990’s atrocities. This uniform is the poster-child for 1990’s “over-design”. In the 90’s you had to have more than two colors (white not included) and if you didn’t have more than two you had to add one (which was usually black). The Blues adopted red as part of their color schema in the mid-80’s, but it was used minimally until moving to these uni’s in 1995. Another major trend of the 90’s evident here is the team took their theme and crammed it onto every part of the uniform. This uniform then took it a step further by over-striping the jersey and socks with lines meant to resemble what I can only assume is a musical staff. This would all be bad enough without mentioning that the numbers are slanted to accommodate the insane number of stripes so legibility was also an issue. I can’t look at them without thinking of a warm, moist kid’s meal burger with too much ketchup.  

oh yeah, they made THE GREAT ONE wear these for 18 games.

18. Utah Jazz "So Blue"

There’s nothing horrible about these either, but they’re just so unoriginal and bland and arrived at a time when it seemed that every team in the NBA was using some variation of dark blue and light blue. The wordmark is nothing to write home about and it’s in such a blah typeface it might as well say “Generic Basketball team”. Nothing about these was unique or appropriate for Utah and for the first time in team history the Jazz weren’t wearing purple. They look like a standard uniform you’d order for your Tuesday night league out of Eastbay. This season they were replaced with a navy blue, green, and gold number that is more evocative of Utah Jazz history and is at least unique to the NBA. Still, the perfect Jazz uniform to me is anything John Stockton wore, shorts included.

17. New Jersey Nets

The home version of this uniform wasn’t particularly terrible, but call it the era of acid-washed jeans or the after-math of day-glo, but the road uniforms were, for whatever reason, tie-dye.

16. Anaheim Angels Disney Uniforms

In 1997, Disney Corporation, already owners of the NHL’s Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, purchased the California Angels and what ensued was only the worst baseball uniform of the 90’s. Disney renamed the team the “Anaheim Angels” and took to the sharp and elegant navy and red kit with a pair of scissors and the classic Disney charm. The cutesy logo, cutesy number font, pinstripes at home and road (a baseball no-no), unnecessary addition of freaking “periwinkle”, and vested uniforms that weren’t actual vests (the blue sleeves were sewn on) all created a baseball uniform more suited for an independent league than the Major Leagues.

Chan Ho Park really hated them 

 15. Detroit Pistons Teal? Teal!?

The Detroit Pistons won back to back titles in 1989 and 1990 playing in basic non-descript uniforms. They were emblematic of the team and the city they played in. They weren’t flashy, but they were solid and they let you know who you were going up against. In 1995 they abandoned their red and blue history for the trendy color at the time, teal. Detroit has about as much to do with teal, a color normally associated with tropical water, as Alaska does with orange. The uniform featured 5 different colors, a large intricately logoed wordmark, and a chintzy hot-rod inspired number font. The team would return to their normal look in 2001 and almost immediately reemerged as an NBA power with a championship in 2004 and 7 straight appearances in the Eastern Conference finals. Coincidence? Probably, though the team did hold a bonfire where they destroyed any teal Detroit Pistons gear. If that doesn’t speak to the feelings towards this uniform, I don’t know what does.

14. Tennessee Titans

This is a case of a team taking something that was good, making a slight alteration, and falling into the pit of terrible. When the Oilers moved to the Titans moniker in 1999 they rebranded with unique and modern uniforms that weren’t over the top. They stuck within the basic NFL aesthetic while also delivering a new color scheme that had not been seen anywhere in pro sports in decades (and then the NBA and later the NHL jumped all over it). So what’s wrong here? Well the switch to the Columbia blue jersey for some reason means that the team must wear the navy blue pants rather than the white pants. This results in a look that features navy blue pants with navy blue socks creating a blue leotard effect. A bright Columbia blue jersey on top of the navy blue pants with a white helmet plopped on top of that and you're left with a bottom heavy look that makes the players appear slow. It’s completely unbalanced and it could all be saved by wearing the white pants with the Columbia blue jersey or by just going back to the Eddie George era duds.

 13. Toronto Black Jays

When you put a color in your nickname (or colour, in Canadian) then you pretty much resign yourself to using that as your primary color forever. That is, unless you want to be like the Toronto Blue Jays who in 2004 began using “graphite” and black (with small hints of blue). At the time adding black to your uniform was already a trend that had become tired. The Reds, Mets, and Royals had all tried it and the results were shaky at best. Jumping on that bad idea bandwagon would’ve been misguided enough to put the Blue Jays on my list, but the uniforms get worse. They chose to use a beveled curly script that simply reads “Jays”. I guess if you’re not using the color blue anymore then there’s no reason to spell it out on your jerseys. Team nickname abbreviations on official team jerseys get my irk, but it’s nothing compared to the hats. They inexplicably used graphite hats for the first two seasons, which made the players look like they were once wearing black hats, but then stood in the sun for too long. In year 3 they made a lateral move to black hats, but the only thing that’ll make these even remotely palatable, is if they go back to wearing blue.

 12. Houston Rockets PJ party

In 1996 the Houston Rockets celebrated back-to-back World Championships by signing Charles Barkley and outfitting their players in slumber party costumes. The pinstripes were so fat, how fat were they? They were so fat, if they were any fatter, they legally would not be allowed to be called pinstripes. The logo was a crazy over-drawn mess topped off by a toothed rocket. Yes, teeth. And the beveled number font and monogram alternate logo (found on the shorts) were in queue with the rest of the over-designed uniform. The area, however, that thrusts this uniform onto my 20 most hated list, is the use of gradients. The “pinstripes” are gradiented to make room for the logo and numbers. Even the stripe on the shorts uses a gradient. 

11. 1980-1984 San Diego Padres

Their colors were brown, orange, and mustard yellow!

stay tuned for numbers 10 through 1 and make sure to keep an eye out for future SHM articles. We'll put our own spin on the upcoming Baseball season and take a look back at the long strange trip that's been the Columbus Blue Jackets' 2010-2011 campaign. 

There you have it. If you agree, disagree, or have thoughts of your own. Share them with me at sportshatemeSHM@gmail.com OR follow us on twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/SeanofUnionBlue