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The Tailgate Candidacy

In yesterday’s Ticker I noted that someone had shown up at a Jeb Bush campaign event with a very SEC-esque “Jeb” sign (shown at right; click to enlarge). I figured the sign had been made by the person holding it, but I was wrong: It was produced by the Bush campaign, which has slapped that SEC-style logo on assorted campaign promotional items and merchandise. That activity has now drawn a rebuke from the SEC, which has told the campaign to stop.

According to that story, the Bush campaign’s attempt to leverage an SEC connection goes beyond the logo. For example:

• “Bush recently has appeared at tailgating events prior to football games at the University of Georgia and the University of Tennessee. He’s scheduled to do the same before games in November at the University of Alabama and Mississippi State.” The tailgating events were promoted with the SEC-style logo.

• “The Bush campaign website also has been carrying a video titled ‘Jeb’s SEC Favorites,’ in which the candidate discusses — among other topics — mascots, rivalries, and his pick for which teams will play in the SEC championship game. [What, no talk about uniforms? ”” PL] As Bush speaks, the logos of Alabama, Auburn, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Florida and LSU alternately appear in the background.” At least two of those schools, Alabama and Mississippi, expressed mild concern about their logos being tied to a presidential candidate.

This is all particularly interesting in light of the larger tussle over intellectual property and political campaigns. As you may have heard, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler recently told Donald Trump to stop playing “Dream On” at campaign events. That made Tyler the latest in a long run of musicians who’ve told candidates to stop using their songs without authorization, a well-established trope that dates back at least to 1984, when Bruce Springsteen disavowed Ronald Reagan’s repeated use of “Born in the USA.” To my knowledge, though, Jeb Bush is the first candidate to run afoul of a sports conference.

One might say this incident reflects the aesthetic disarray of the Bush campaign, which has been a laughingstock in the design world since introducing that logo with the exclamation point back in June. But the dust-up also reflects the strength of the SEC logo — seriously, how many other conference logos are recognizable enough to even bother ripping off? The Big 10’s, I suppose, but most of the others are either too blah or have changed too often to establish themselves visually.

Still, it would be interesting to see other conference logos adapted for some of the other presidential candidates. Maybe the Pac-12 for Carly Fiorina? The B1G for Bernie Sanders? If someone wants to take a crack at it, I’d be curious to see what you can come up with. It can’t possibly be worse than most of the official campaign logos.

Meanwhile, there’s another White House aspirant who’s pushing the SEC angle. That would be Rand Paul, who was wearing a University of Kentucky logo belt during a campaign appearance yesterday at Drake University in Iowa:

For all I know, maybe he wears that belt all the time (he represents Kentucky in the U.S. Senate, after all, and I’m told that his son attends the school). If so, though, I hadn’t noticed it until now. Are Bush and Paul destined to hold competing UK tailgate events this fall? Stay tuned for the exciting (read: not at all exciting) answer!

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White whale update: Longtime readers may recall our lengthy investigation into the Broncos’ early-1962 helmet decal. Was it brown, as most databases indicated, or was it actually blue, as several folks insisted, including our own Rick “Ricko” Pearson? About four years ago we finally had our answer: It was blue.

But even that conclusion was based on a series of half-century-old recollections. Granted, the recollections were all from reputable sources, and they all matched up with each other. But we still didn’t have a smoking gun in the form of visual evidence.

Until now (click to enlarge):

That photo was posted yesterday by the excellent Twitter account Sports Paper, which specializes in old programs, photos, and related ephemera. As you can see, the Broncos were playing the Titans, and Sports Paper’s tweet said the game was played at the Polo Grounds. That means it was this game, played on Sept. 30, 1962.

The Sports Paper guy tells me the photo was posted on a Polo Grounds Facebook group and shared on a vintage NFL Facebook group. Turns out two more photos from that same game were also posted on Facebook. They’re not as good as the first one, but they’re enough to confirm the color of the helmet logo (click to enlarge):

(Big thanks to Leo Strawn Jr., Gene Sanny, and Phil for their contributions to this section.)

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Royally speaking: As many of you have already figured out, the five remaining MLB postseason teams have something in common:

So regardless of who wins tonight’s Mets/Dodgers rubber game (and it damn well better be the Mets, or else there’s gonna be one very cranky uniform columnist around here, and a pretty cranky weekend editor too), we’re looking at a pair of all-royal league championship series and, of course, an all-royal Fall Classic. And aside from the color consistency, these are five very good-looking teams, so the rest of the postseason should be easy on the eyes — nice. Thank god the Rangers were eliminated yesterday, as their insistence on wearing the red cap with the blue-lettered home jersey was driving me bonkers.

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Read this: Yesterday’s entry about Steelers running back DeAngelo Williams wanting to wear pink for the rest of the NFL season prompted an unusually powerful comment by reader Peter Einersen. It was posted in the early evening, so many of you probably didn’t see it. I’m reproducing it here without further comment, as it speaks for itself quite eloquently:

As someone who lost my mother to breast cancer at 16, the NFL exploitation of the cause has long driven me postal. I get what drives the appeal to the pink campaigns”¦ why wouldn’t we all want to do something to make a positive out of a disease that affects so many and so many we know? Pink efforts feel fun and strong and proactive.

I fell into this trap early in the aftermath of my mother. I held an annual fundraiser in her honor, with pink to the max. And raised and donated significant amounts of money. I was appalled when I started to follow the money trail. The National Breast Cancer Foundation is easily the worst offender here. This organization is absolutely capitalizing on this disease. They use a high profile disease to drive a high income business for their executives while contributing the minimum they can legally get away with to the cause while still qualifying as a charity. I felt so ashamed to have sent the money of people who supported me and my cause to these profiteers.

Upon further investigation, American Cancer Society is better but not much. And Komen is the best of the bunch with respect to what portion of money goes to the actual cause”¦ but still not immune to the corporate salary structure. But at least I believe that Komen as an organization exists to try to address this problem. NBCF on the other hand absolutely exists primarily to make a handful of people wealthy while the bare minimum trickles down to the cause.

So, what’s the NFL’s angle here? Hard to say. We have all seen the critical articles outlining the cash flow on this. The most recent Huffington Post piece demonstrated that 3.5% of money raised by the Pinktober assault goes to the ACS, and remember that contribution will be diluted even further by ACS salaries and overhead.

The NFL has defended itself saying that it doesn’t see a profit. That whatever money is left in its coffers at the end is reinvested in the campaign. And the numbers breakdown that the majority of this money is captured by merch production companies and vendors.

Still many questions for the NFL remain.

1) Isn’t NFLshop.com the vendor profiting the most from this initiative? Hint: Yes, it is. Next in line, the individual teams.

2) As perhaps the most corporately savvy sports entity in history, are we expected to believe that if the goal of this campaign were actually to make money for Breast Cancer research, screening, treatment etc., that the NFL couldn’t develop a model with better than 3.5% yield for the cause????? Hint: Please

3) Aren’t there other important diseases? The truth is the disproportional shunting of money to breast cancer is a bit of a laughing matter in the medical community. I am not diminishing the importance of vigilance on breast cancer, the disease that took my mom, and threatens all of the women in my life including my sisters and daughters”¦ but we have bigger fish to fry right now, both cancerous and benign diseases.

And while it is not the NFL’s responsibility to eradicate world disease, I do not think it is a preferential interest in breast cancer vs. pancreatic cancer or diabetes or obesity or mental illness or domestic abuse or AIDS or lung cancer (the number 1 killer cancer killing Americans) or alcoholism or gambling addiction etc. etc. etc.

What makes breast cancer the NFL’s pet project is that it is easily the most marketable and most profitable. And while the “NFL” doesn’t profit per se, its vendors like NFLshop.com and all 32 teams, and its corporate partners do. Pure profiteering. And if a more marketable “cause” should emerge, Pinktober will evolve in a hurry.

It is devastating to me that they have gotten away with this ruse for so long. You want to believe that somewhere in the club of owners, there is a decent person who says no. Who refuses the cashflow or who publicly declares they are donating their cut as well to the cause”¦ to create awareness and put pressure on the others to do the same. But, this is pure naivete. Cash is king. And the well-meaning but incredibly gullible fans that buy into this scam year after year will continue to be exploited to maximum effect.

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T-Shirt Club reminder: In case you missed it earlier this week, the Uni Watch T-Shirt Club’s latest offering — the amazing tequila sunrise design — is now available for ordering. As I explained a few weeks back, the design and production issues on this one were fairly complex, so we decided to have some samples made — so much better than just having a mock-up. Check it out (click to enlarge):

Not bad, right? Additional details here, or you can just order it here.

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Uni Watch Hit Parade: The Rolling Stones have always been my favorite band, and Keith Richards has always been my second-favorite Stone (after Charlie, natch). I no longer expect much from him artistically — he’s been a self-parody for at least 20 years (or, rather, a series of interrelated self-parodies: Keith the mystic, Keith the pirate, Keith the lovable rogue, Keith the junkie-survivor, Keith the asshole, Keith the anti-Mick, etc.). Still, it’s been a decade since the Stones’ last album — long enough, I hoped, for Keith to have written maybe three or four decent songs for his new solo LP, which came out a few weeks ago.

He came close: It has two and a half good songs. The first keeper is “Robbed Blind,” a slow, lounge-y, piano-driven tale of revenge that finds Keith delivering some surprisingly plush whiskey-soaked vocals (almost certainly enhanced and smoothed out by digital post-production trickery, but still):

Next up is “Trouble,” a straightforward rocker that could easily hold its own on a good Stones album. When I saw the title, I thought, “Oh great, another obvious cliché,” but in this case it’s not Keith who’s in trouble — the song’s about a friend who’s in jail. Good stuff:

The “half” a good song is the title track, “Crosseyed Heart.” It’s less than two minutes long and needs at least one more verse. (Keith apparently agrees: At the end of the track, he says, “Uh, that’s all I got.”) Stylistically speaking, it’s completely derivative — a boilerplate Mississippi blues that Keith probably learned to play while listening to Muddy Waters records in the early 1960s. But the title conceit of a “crosseyed heart” is a good one, and the two verses he managed to scrape together work quite well. What really gets me, though, is the opening couplet, where he says he loves this one girl but also loves another and then says, “Oooh, I’m a greedy mother” — a line he tosses off with such perfect nonchalant charisma that you remember how he and the rest of the Stones built their legend of casual vulgarity and self-indulgence. Dig:

The rest of the album ranges from forgettable to unlistenable, but whatever. Keith will soon turn 72 and like they say, it ain’t the years — it’s the mileage. He won’t be doing this much longer. Two and a half good songs? I’ll take it.

•  •  •  •  •

PermaRec update: The love letters shown above were written in 1915 and were recently found in the rafters of a house being renovated in Atlanta. How did they get there? Get the full story over on Permanent Record.

• • • • •

The Ticker
By Mike Chamernik

Baseball News: A Houston hospital wrapped newborns in Astros garments before last night’s ’Stros/Royals game (from Justin Shaddock). … During last night’s Blue Jay/Rangers game, LF ump Alfonso Marquez had a massive plug of tobacco in his mouth. … Rangers 2B Rougned Odor used teammate Mike Napoli’s bat last night (from Jordan Mayblum). … Also from Jordan: In that same game, umpire Dale Scott had an upside-down postseason patch above his shirt pocket. … The Twins have shown their new logo for Spring Training 2016 (from Steve Stoetzel). … Brown wore some great uniforms in the early 1900s (from Jonathan Daniel).

NFL News: It’s still not clear when the first color-on-color Thursday-night game will be, but we know it won’t be tonight, as the Saints will be wearing white over gold. … Steelers DE Cam Heyward says he was fined for wearing his father’s nickname on his eye black on Monday night. Cam is the son of former NFL fullback Craig “Ironhead” Heyward, who died in 2006. Between this and the DeAngelo Williams story, this is quite a week for the NFL players and the league butting heads over personal memorial gestures (from Andrew Cosentino).

College Football News: With Steve Spurrier’s retirement, here’s a good look at something he helped pioneer: the coach’s visor. That story includes an absolutely amazing shot of a visor-clad Vince Lombardi, by the way. … Washington will wear purple jerseys with gold helmets and pants on Saturday. … A Wisconsin alum is collecting all of the school’s homecoming buttons since the event began in 1911 (from @SoCalMindset). … “I sometimes check out stadiums on satellite and recently discovered how Michigan makes the M in the stands,” says Alex Putelo. “Here, you can see the M in action, and I circled a type of ‘fill in the blank’ seen in the empty Michigan Stadium.” … Phillip Tutor saw this Memphis helmet at the school’s sports hall of fame. It’s from the 1971 Pasadena Bowl, and it appears to be made by Bell, a motorcycle helmet company. “Look at the black edging on it,” Phillip says. “I’ve never seen that in football before.” ”¦ Oregon’s student newspaper has had enough with all the new uniforms.

Hockey News: Coyotes rookie Max Domi wears No. 16 in honor of Hall of Famer Bobby Clarke. Domi was a fan of the Flyers growing up, and Clarke is a diabetic, like Domi (from Mike Engle). … Since the Oilers have new orange jerseys, here’s a good gallery of the team’s uniform history (from Phil). … A Maple Leafs fan created Babsocks: socks with a picture of the team’s new head coach Mike Babcock on them. They’re apparently a very hot item in Toronto. … The Blue Jackets have been producing retro game posters (from Patrick Thomas). ”¦ Here’s a look at this season’s masks for the Milwaukee Admirals’ goalies.

Soccer News: The paint company Valspar is the new jersey sponsor for the Chicago Fire (from Phil). … FC Dallas is adding the National Soccer Hall of Fame onto its stadium. It will be ready by 2018.

NBA News: The Kings will wear these Stance socks (from Phil). … “Spotted this logo on a sweatshirt on a mannequin at at Dick’s Sporting Goods in the Portland Metro area last week,” says Benjamin Kochman. “This was the only item in the store with this logo, and it was not for retail sale. I’ve never seen the pinwheel rendered quite this way. Is this the new, updated Blazers logo we’ve heard rumors about? Or, possibly, the red background version of the logo? If so, I’m excited!” Anyone know more? By the way, in researching the Blazers’ logo tonight, I’ve come to realize just how marvelous it is.

College Hoops News: UCLA’s new shorts feature pyramid striping in honor of late coach John Wooden, a proponent of the Pyramid of Success. … New uniforms (and trim) for Wisconsin (from Blake Geschke). … Also, new unis for South Carolina (from Joel Mathwig).

Grab Bag: A Syracuse pizza shop is using pink boxes this month (from Tony DiRubbo). ”¦ Public school students in Puerto Rico are required to wear uniforms. But now, for the first time, all students can wear either pants or skirts, regardless of their assigned or perceived gender, a move aimed at promoting LGBT acceptance. ”¦ Jimmy Fallon has proposed a line of sports apparel with logos positioned on the armpits — prime real estate, he says, because fans are always raising their arms in celebration.

 
  
 
Comments (93)

    FYI – Jeb has been using the logo with an exclamation point dating as far back as 1994, when he lost the Florida Gubernatorial Election to Lawton Chiles.

    An even greater indication of the Bush campaign’s “aesthetic disarray” is the fact that he’s at a Tennessee Vols tailgate with signage that’s in LSU colors.

    Wow. I was seriously just thinking yesterday there has to be a color photo of that Broncos helmet somewhere. Glad to see one finally surface!

    Proofreading:
    “Oregon’s studenet newspaper had had enough”
    “on a sweatshirt on a manakin” mannequin
    “I’ve come to release just how marvelous it is.” realize
    “new uniforms (and trim) for Wisconsin” Capital N

    Too bad the author of the Jimmy Fallon article didn’t know about the Lightning’s old victory stripes.

    Dodgers are the only remaining team who use the darker shade of royal for their hats. If the Mets win, all 4 remaining teams will have the lighter shade of royal. And they are the only 4 teams to use the lighter shade for their main hats. The only other team who uses the lighter shade in any facet is the Brewers for their throwback.

    We knew there’d be this kind of merchandise, but all things considered, it’s pretty restrained. There are some T-shirts with all-gold logos, but it looks like most of (if not all of) the other merch limits the gold to an additional outline.

    Curious that it’s not on the New Era caps, but it’s on Nike’s Raiders gear in that line.

    Maybe New Era was going with an early-season, still-sharing-the-Coliseum-with-the-A’s version?

    Raiders do not allow any thing to be done to there logo what so ever, so a gold outline go’s against there brand rules,

    there even now moving to allow only team colour logo’s on all product, ( solid black for example on a red cap ) no ‘fashion’ colours of there logo ( say a red logo on a black cap )

    i work for a nfl license holder.

    Same here. I’m not the greatest at spotting minor details, but they look exactly the same to me.

    Except for the white & gold striping on the bottom of the shorts being reversed (which is the only “pyramid” I see), the design doesn’t seem appreciably different from past years. Except for the shorts now “telling a story,” that is:
    link

    There’s nothing new about UCLA’s shorts. They’ve been wearing this design since the Wooden era and have carried it forward throughout.

    – Wooden-Walton: link
    – Reggie Miller: link
    – Tyus Edney: link
    – Russell Westbrook/Kevin Love: link

    The find on the color pics of the Broncos-Titans game from 1962 is a godsend. On behalf of my GUD cohorts (Bill, Rob, Larry et al) thanks to Sports Paper, Ricko and you Paul for bringing this white whale to light. That’s what makes doing what we do so much fun!

    Good story on visors, though I find them impractical. They shade your eyes, but you still leave the top of your head exposed. A cap will shade your eyes and cover your head. Advantage: Cap.

    A meshback cap allows for partial shading and ventilation. A truly bipartisan alternative.

    I think Chip Kelly’s Visor Club for Coaches membership has lapsed as he’s gone mainly baseball cap.

    As George Carlin once said, “who the hell wants to walk around wearing half a hat?” in reference to visors.

    How is it that Charlie is NOT everyone’s favorite Rolling Stone? I think you’re the one gots the ‘splainin’ to do.

    You are both correct that Charlie is the best Stone.

    Just wondering why Paul thinks so.

    My reason: I’m a drummer, so the drummer in any band is my first-favorite.

    I’m a drummer as well, and yes, Charlie Watts is the perfect example of what a rock’n’roll drummer should be.

    This from Keef’s autobiography “Life” is all the explanation anyone needs. (this is from on Wikipedia):

    “One anecdote relates that in the mid-1980s, an intoxicated Jagger phoned Watts’ hotel room in the middle of the night asking “Where’s my drummer?”. Watts reportedly got up, shaved, dressed in a suit, put on a tie and freshly shined shoes, descended the stairs, and punched Jagger in the face, saying: “Don’t ever call me your drummer again. You’re my fucking singer!” “

    My father was recently cleared of (pancreatic) cancer after undergoing a Whipple Procedure After Christmas 2015 and about 7 months of chemo. My family and I are starting to do walks and raise donations for the Lustgarten Foundation. I don’t know how well the donations are managed and how much actually gets to the research side of things.

    The exploitation of the NFL and “Pinktober” bothers me in the same way it bothers Peter. Why not other diseases? Obviously it is all marketing. Really just irks me, but breast cancer seems to be the sexiest (pun intended?) disease out there.

    That said, purple is for Pancreatic Cancer. I’m not too keen on wearing purple, but I will do it.

    The marketing angle aside (MLB has been in this boat for years with their “special caps”), what I find disturbing is how little money actually goes towards research, treatment, etc. It’s the same for a lot of the “relief funds” that get set up for earthquake victims and the like. The majority of the funds either get used by the organizations for their own purposes with a small percentage to the actual cause (or in some cases the money sits there unused for years).

    I agree, which is why I was so impressed with how much money actually came from the “Ice Bucket Challenge”. Something so simple that got around all the corporate BS made such a huge impact.

    I just hate when something looks as phoney as it usually does with the NFL and MLB. I dislike now they HAVE TO salute some troops in attendance at a ballgame. It just doesn’t feel genuine anymore.

    I would assume more good faith on the part of the NFL if, instead of contributing to bloated, borderline corrupt issue advocacy organizations, it identified actual care providers or research programs in each NFL city/state and gave the money directly to the people either actively providing care to the sick or actively researching treatments. Even the paltry 3% that the NFL deigns to hand out would do so much more good if given directly to nonprofit hospitals and clinics or university research programs. Orders of magnitude more good.

    I hope its not too late in the day for you to see this.

    Best wishes to your father. We went through the same thing about 10 years ago, my father wasn’t a candidate for the Whipple and we lost him within weeks.

    If its not offside uni-watch rules, post a fundraising link and I will contribute.

    Thanks, I appreciate it. I am sorry for your loss. We were sitting in the hospital in Philly before Christmas being told it might not be operable. One of the scariest moments of my life. It came out of no where for us, identified after he ate a garlic heavy salad that gave him bad indigestion that we thought might be a gallbladder issue. Luckily we caught it, but my family has learned so much about the disease in such a short time.

    I don’t know if it is against the rules either, or even if you are going to come back and check this post again. You can email me at todd(dot)cervini(at)gmail, and I will pass on a link. Thanks

    If Don had irked Steven Tyler about playing Dream On at his rallies, maybe he would’ve been less of upset if Trump had used Same Old Song and Dance

    The Twins Spring Training logo shown references Lee County, but the one on their spring training homepage refers to the city, Fort Myers.

    link

    I love those logos. If I owned a team in a major transportaion hub, I’d incorporate road signage of some sort on my uniforms. In fact I used to have a design for a PA-based team with player numbers inside the keystone logo they use for state routes.

    If the LA Express ever come back (better yet, if the LA Clippers re-branded and took that name), they should use the interstate logo.

    For Ontario, Canada you have this kind of ‘Kings’ in the signs (today’s signs have unfortunately have eliminated ‘The King’s Highway’ writing)

    link

    … or if the Lizard Kings of the ECHL has moved to Northern Ontario this extra Jim Morrison reference – sort of ;)

    link

    Speaking of artists and being pissed at candidates using their music, wasn’t there a kerfuffle with JCM & Little Pink Houses (think with RWR)?

    The wikipedia lists a bunch of political uses for Pink Houses. ABC News has RWR thinking about using Pink Houses

    link

    Thanks for the Keith Richards review/videos. I always enjoy it when some music coverage trickles into Uni Watch.

    I guess I’m not obsessive enough about sports – when I read SEC, I thought it was the Securities and Exchange Commission logo he was ripping.

    ed

    I knew it had to be some sort of U.S. college sports reference, but that’s about it without looking it up.

    Here’s a look at this season’s masks for link.

    The masks are fine, but I’m very disappointed to see that they’re going to be using the Brewers’ awful cap logo link. They’ve been sporting link exclusively since the last redesign in 2006.

    Seems appropriate with the topic of today’s post. A candidate for town board in a Rochester suburb is using this pizza inspired logo: link
    He owns a local pizza shop hence the logo.

    While I don’t usually enjoy the designs that Oregon/Nike comes up with, I usually think it’s kind of fun to have so many uniforms. And at their worst, they’re still better than anything Maryland/Under Armor comes up with.

    That said, I don’t think Oregon has ever looked better than in the link. It would be fine if they stuck with it full time.

    I don’t see a pyramid. I see UCLA’s traditional uniform, subtly modified with adidas-style block numbers and letters (like what they did with Indiana; there is a slight difference but it is really trivial unless you Get It).
    Also, I feel bad for South Carolina. They’re not CAROLINA on a national or even regional level (that would be UNC for every reason possible). They’re not USC either (because of Southern Cal). They have an identity crisis. But they’re not CAROLINA. Never will be either.

    The UNC Cheaters don’t have much to brag about besides decent uni’s , unless you consider indecent institutional corruption a sport. They could give the SEC a run for their money. Since that is what this is all about.

    Peter’s statement is spot on, heartfelt and is incredible. He stated eloquently what many of us think but can’t seem to get down into words. Thank you Peter.

    Pictures of the Hawks new home uniforms in action (and cheerleaders uniforms): link

    Frankly, I think the “neon” green looks fine. Actually looks more yellow than green. I like the Uniforms.

    There is always that group… You know, those who must, under all circumstances find the negative in something. Case in point is the post by Peter Einersen which can be destroyed with one simple take which is: How about this… How about the NFL, the number one viewed sports league in this country DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Then you can be the one to bitch they aren’t doing anything to raise awareness.

    Did he suggest they do nothing? I didn’t see that. The way I read it, he’s simply dissatisfied with the *way* they’re doing things.

    Problem is, too many people who “just have to do something!” think they should be insulated from criticism because they mean well. Sorry, intentions only get you so far. If what you’re doing is ineffective, there’s nothing wrong with taking constructive criticism.

    That, of course, presumes that “doing something” is always preferable to “doing nothing,” which is one of the reasons there’s so much wrong in so many ways.

    But “ABSOLUTELY NOTHING” is what the NFL is doing for most things, including a number of diseases that kill far more people than breast cancer. (Full disclosure: A member of my immediate family is undergoing breast cancer treatment right now.) If “at least they’re doing something” is an excuse for Peter’s criticism, then it is also an even more sweeping condemnation of the NFL’s callous inaction on other, objectively worse problems.

    For the record, things that kill more Americans each year than breast cancer:

    Heart disease
    Chronic respiratory disease
    Preventable accidents
    Stroke
    Alzheimer’s
    Diabetes
    Influenza
    Kidney disease
    Colorectal cancer

    Snap quiz for the NFL’s Pinktober defenders: List three symptoms of kidney disease along with at least one method of self-examination. Repeat for warning signs of stroke, symptoms of colorectal cancer, and arterial blockage. If you can’t do so for each and every ailment on the list, then the NFL has just failed to make you “aware” of a greater threat to your own health and the lives of the people you love the most. So if the “do something” defense of the NFL’s Pinkwashing is logically valid, then it is necessarily true that the NFL is callously doing nothing about, and therefore actively contributing to deaths from, other deadlier problems. The “just do something” defense actually makes the NFL an accomplice in the deaths of more than a million Americans each year. Um, yay football?

    The Blazers logo is just a hand drawn version of their current logo. I can confirm this because I created it, along with hand-drawn version of all the other NBA logos.

    Oops, that’s Ricko.
    Don’t know how that “1” slipped in there.

    Was not a “We’re number ____!”.
    Promise.

    For the record, I always thought you were probably right. (And said so!) I just didn’t regard the question to be proved one way or the other absent either an extant artifact or a contemporary color photograph. Which we now have. Now that the case is closed, can we get a Law & Order DUN DUN?

    link

    This week’s Sports Illustrated takes the JEB/SEC logo six steps forward in a story titled “Prez Conferences.” In addition to Jeb Bush-SEC, there are logos for Ben Carson-Big 10, Chris Christie-ACC, Hillary Clinton-Conference USA, Bernie Sanders-Sun Belt, Marco Rubio-MAC, and Donald Trump-NCAA.

    Can you tell us the names of the Facebook Groups mentioned in the Denver Broncos/Helmet Horse section? Id like to join them.

    I had rooted for Cardinals v. Royals, when they play uni’s have an Arsenal v. Chelsea feel to it.

    I think the video of the Chicago Fire switching to Valspar as the kit sponsor may be alluding to a switch back to the more traditional white on the chest for the Fire. When they went with Quaker they switched to a navy hoop on the chest which matched up better with Quaker’s corporate branding much to the consternation of the Fire fanbase.
    Traditional White Hoop:
    link
    Quaker Oats:
    link
    Corporate Quaker Hoops:
    link

    Maybe Jeb should’ve borrowed the old diamond SEC logo, the one with the font from the titles of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, since the conference has decided to distance itself from that logo.

    Would anybody else be very happy if Roger Goodell issued the following edict:

    “Beginning next season, no NFL team or player will be authorized to honor any individual or promote any social cause by wearing special uniform decals or equipment.

    Players are encourage to do such things on their own time. Teams can promote causes with off-field activities.

    The uniform itself is sacred and to be used strictly for football purposes.”

    I remember in 2000 going to alot of SEC game. People were passing out stickers that said “Tigers for Bush” “Vols for Bush” “Rebels for Bush” ect…. They were in the color of the school. So you’d see Ole Miss fans and Tennessee fans with the same sticker, but in school colors.

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