Back in July the Miami Dolphins announced that they would be wearing their throwbacks twice this season, including for the Christmas Eve home game against the Cowboys.
While that’s certainly a positive development (a) because they’re better than their current set; and (b) because it suggests a potential Super Bowl VI uni matchup, things got a lot more interesting today.
One of my secret vices, an obsession with NFL uniform history and details, especially my beloved Cowboys’, gets indulged through Uni-Watch. Today they posted about a little-noticed change in Cowboys uniforms. Above are the 2022 uni sets – the white jersey paired with blue pants (recently adjusted to eliminate the dreaded sea foam green) with matching royal blue stripes, and the navy with “silver” (actually gray) pants – which get navy stripes to match.
In this post, Paul Lukas noted that TruColor.net’s Donovan Moore — the uni-verse’s foremost color expert — noticed that the current NFL Style Guide shows the Cowboys’ silver pants with royal striping, instead of navy. Compare 2022 to 2023.
The easy assumption is that the navy blue jersey will henceforth be paired with the “Color Rush” white pants. Which isn’t surprising – while I’m not a fan myself, the players seem to like it. But it left people baffled why the former silver pants now had royal striping.
BUT NOT ME.
The history of Cowboys’ pants is a long one – detailed here. Before 1974, the Cowboys wore gray uniform pants. Actually, to save money the backs were gray, and the fronts were slightly shinier, but the difference is only rarely apparent in photos.
They changed to more of a blue pant in 1974, and in the 1980s more of a silver-blue because general manager Tex Schramm fell in love with the color.
Over the years the silver/blue became blue/green (the infamous “sea foam) – except it really didn’t. The color was always on the turquoise side, but it didn’t appear that way on traditional TVs – perhaps because of stadium lights in some cases. But when TVs started getting into the HD range the true color came out, and began to pick up detractors.
Showing how ridiculous it had gotten, someone showed what a “Color Rush” of the sea foam color would look like.
The above photo showed (left) the height of the Seam Foam era in 2020 when the pants bore no relation to the silver or blue and presciently hypothesized (right) what the silver pant would look like with the white jersey – and assumed all the royal blue was changed to navy. As you can tell – the pant does match the helmet a lot better.
The Cowboys finally changed the dye lot they were using in 2021 and went to the current light blue. While it at least doesn’t clash with the rest of the uniform, it does leave you longing a bit for the silver/blue (we thought) the Triplets wore. Or if you’re old school like me, gray.
Cut to 2023. With the striping changed to royal, there’s now nowhere for the pant to go except with the similarly royal-blue trimmed white jerseys. And why might the team do that?
Yep. January 6, 1972. My favorite day in football. What a great Christmas present.
Now if they will just wear the striped socks too …
0
0
Average Rating