I'm really, really surprised Kyle managed to not open his earlier article with one of his patented, lengthy comparisons between some sports-related event and some (hypothetical) relationship or "girl" story with expectations as high as they were. It would've practically written itself.
Of course, the high expectations were generated completely by Nike (and some widely circulated fan renderings made in the style of Nike's "Pro Combat" NCAA uniforms which were frequently and erroneously reported as "the 2012 Nike uniforms" well after they were confirmed to be fanmade), as there's simply too much money in the NFL to rock the boat. Patting myself on the back, I'll point out that I predicted the uniforms generally wouldn't change.
For what you care about, as far as we know from what we've seen so far, the Eagles uniforms aren't changing at all this season. Being that Nike only showed the green over white combination (more on this below) and it didn't change anything on that combo (in fact, according to Nike Corporate write-up for the Eagles, they "have chosen to stay with their traditional design aesthetic as well as their former uniform fabrication this year," it's safe to assume the Eagles other components (white jerseys, green pants, black alternates, assuming those ever make an appearance again) aren't changing either. That's it. End of story.
Photo: Nike
The best way to analyze today's event is to figure out what it wasn't.
Yesterday's event was not for football fans. Every fan wanted to know what their team's "new" uniforms looked like. Nike only showed one combination for each team. Of course, the reason for that is twofold.
1) With 32 teams and multiple jersey/pants combos for each team, there are simply too many combos to show in-person (the Rams have seven combos which they regularly trot out, for example), but even the Nike website and store show only the primary/color jersey for each. OK, maybe the merchandise/material isn't available yet (these are two of the largest brands in the world, get your stuff together), but computer renderings could have been made for publishing on the Internet, a la an official style guide. Oddly, there are some substantial uniform updates for 2012 which weren't even mentioned on the 3rd. The Jaguars will be adding a black alternate to their current set for the 2012 season, so there could be other notable updates for which teams want to control the release as opposed to Nike or the NFL.
2) There was nothing "new" about the uniforms from a fan's perspective (other than for Seahawks fans, of course). If recaps of the event included lines like, "And after showing the Rams 5th effectively unchanged combination of 7, this reporter's eyes began glazing over," it'd ruin the coverage. Instead, we get reporting(?) on how these uniforms will "usher in [a] new era of sportswear" (note: they won't).
Yesterday's event was not for the NFL. The event was a Nike commercial where they could push their brand values of performance, etc. in exchange for the $1.1billion they (reportedly) spent for the NFL license. That's all well and good (capitalism!), but that's all it was. Fans don't care that the new fabric is however many percent lighter or better at wicking moisture (unless they're materials science engineers). It's simply means to an end for associating all of Nike's products with "faster, lighter, stronger." Again, that's fine, but the "new" uniforms aren't a big deal to anyone other than Nike (or Seahawks fans). To talk about this "changing everything" or "the game never being the same"…geez, slow down, Nike.
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