Revisit history: Valley teams would look better in uniforms of the past
May 25, 2020, 11:00 AM | Updated: 7:48 pm
Recently, a tweet by the Arizona Coyotes caught my eye.
The Kachina jersey is the greatest of all time.
Don’t @ us. pic.twitter.com/kd7mPa3UjP
— Arizona Coyotes (@ArizonaCoyotes) May 21, 2020
While I don’t necessarily agree that the above statement is true, the Kachina jersey is really distinct and beloved. It got me thinking.
If the organization’s official social media account is putting this out there, then why don’t the Coyotes just switch their uniform look back to the original kachina design that had a lot of people talking in the hockey world in 1996?
The Yotes brought back the original look for Kachina Saturday promotions starting in 2018, and that jersey is far more beloved than the current bland look the team switched to in 2015.
Then it dawned on me that each one of the Valley’s big sports franchises is in a similar sartorial pickle — fan bases of each would be over the moon if they’d just switch back to a uniform look from their past.
Don’t believe me?
You don’t think D-backs fans prefer the original purple and turquoise color palette over the current Sedona Red, sand and black?
Suns fans believe that the team’s Charles Barkley-era jerseys of the mid 1990s are the greatest basketball threads of all time (and they might not be wrong).
And Cardinals fans (and their quarterback) have grown tired of the club’s uniform identity worn since 2005.
In the midst of a global pandemic, every sports website in the country has produced uniform-related content to fill the void. To be clear, I’m not pointing fingers, because look what I’m doing right now. But, a lot of those posts have been current uniform rankings. The Cardinals, in a random battery of six websites that published such rankings, averaged 27th in the NFL pecking order.
The Cardinals’ visual identity was strong when they moved to town in 1988, with a traditional look highlighted by a new touch — the presence of the distinctive Arizona state flag, a trend that has become very popular in logo design for many companies in The Grand Canyon State.
(Getty Images)
The Diamondbacks, even though they simplified and lightened their look for 2020, recently ranked 25th in Uni-Watch.com’s ranking of MLB teams.
“They’ve at least climbed back to some semblance of aesthetic respectability. But no further than that,” Paul Lukas, the website’s expert, wrote.
The D-backs have been celebrating Throwback Thursdays at Chase Field, with the team donning the original color combo, for the past several years.
Meanwhile, the Suns’ Barkley-era alternate black uniforms recently ranked 11th on ESPN’s list of the 74 best NBA jerseys of all-time. The team has failed to identify a signature look nearly as strong in their three major makeovers since 2000.
In March, thehockeywriters.com ranked the Coyotes’ alternate black kachina look as the seventh-best in all the NHL.
You get what I’m saying. Front offices shouldn’t make a habit of listening to the fans and website rankings when it comes to player personnel decisions and coaching staff hirings and firings, but on the topic of fashion? Yes, they absolutely should.
Revisit your uniform past, Valley sports teams. You know what they say, “look good, play good.”
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