Glenn X

To those who think that writing to the Redskins is a "waste of time" because "they don't care what I think" or "they prefer the less-than-ideal status quo"? One never know until one tries, and it doesn't hurt -- not me, anyway. I certainly think it's better than your preferred approach to this issue: impotent kvetching online. And to those (e.g. superozman) who enjoy the current, slapdash uniform combo and surmise that I'm being "out-voted" by fans of the status quo who are writing letters of support to the team's ownership? Not bloody likely. You have to understand human nature. In short, people rarely take the time to comment on things that please them or strike them as inoffensive. No, people are typically driven to comment on stuff that irritates or enrages them. P.S. "Has the Imperial Magistrate reached a verdict?" Thanks for recognizing my Quintesson profile pic, Taco Bell. :-D Every so often, I think of changing it. However, whenever I take a good long gander at it, I'm reminded of what I most liked about screenwriter Flint Dille's admittedly imperfect script treatment for the 1986 version of Transformers: The Movie: the dark and gritty tone of the writing.

Regarding contacting Bruce Allen about the uniforms, I sent him an actual type-written letter on this subject a year or two back. The response? I short, hand-written note thanking me for my "interest" in the team's uniforms and history, and urging me to continue to "Hail to the Redskins." While I appreciated Bruce taking the time to write the note to me, I would've preferred if he had spearheaded an effort to actually address this issue. I don't want anything drastic. Like Mr. Sinister said in post 7163, I'd be cool if they just took the gold pants and put two thick stripes on the sides, a la the burgundy pants' stripes. (Of course, the burgundy pants should be reinstated for road games.) Also, as Taco Bell observed in post 7178, the socks that are used with the gold pants are an overly-striped mess and should be ditched. Their replacement? The socks that are used with our white pants. See, Bruce? Nothing too crazy. So how about it? P.S. I think I may have to go over Bruce's head, and address my next letter on this matter to Dan Snyder.

For the color-wheel pedants out there, according to Wikipedia, the color that most closely resembles our pants is... yellow. (Gasp!) Please -- oh, please -- tell me this isn't so! Please point me in the correct direction, the direction that says our pants are the same color as Notre Dame's football helmets. (Or that Michigan's helmets aren't really blue and... yellow.) Please! P.S. Even if our current uniforms are, say, maroon and yellow (gasp!), I still dig 'em.

I wish the NFL commish would allow teams to sport more than one helmet per year, so we could trot out the 70th anny helmets in conjunction with the 80th anny jerseys, pants (which are more khaki than gold) and socks. I've long wanted to see those uniform elements combined for a kind of "composite" throwback. However, even then, these unis would only be for special occasions (like how the Chargers rarely use their powder-blue jerseys). I really wish the team would bring back the darker, Gibbs Era pants for road games. Having said that, I could learn to love the team wearing canary yellow (or gold, as some call it) pants all the time, even on the road, if they tweaked their unis' striping a bit. Nothing radical, mind you. As examples, I think that Southern Cal and Iowa State (who both wear cardinal red/white jerseys and canary yellow pants -- er, gold pants -- kinda like us) look fabulous in their uniforms. To be specific, I'd make the following changes: just one gold stripe on the helmets, losing the two white stripes; one stripe on the left and right edges of the shoulders on the jerseys (gold shoulder stripes at home and burgundy shoulder stripes on the road), losing the jersey-sleeve stripes, with solid-color/no-trim numerals (all-gold numerals at home and all-burgundy numerals on the road) and matching-color nameplates (all-gold text at home and all-burgundy text on the road); two thick burgundy stripes on the gold pants, losing the middle white stripe (i.e. "thick" pant stripes like those used by Southern Cal, Iowa State, the Colts and the Jets); and just two gold stripes on the burgundy portion of the socks, losing the five gold-and-white stripes. This approach would de-emphasize the use of white on our uniforms, which isn't an official team color, after all. Also, I think those thicker burgundy stripes on the pants and fewer stripes on the socks would go a long way toward making the road uniforms more palatable, as I never find myself kvetching about the road unis of Southern Cal and Iowa State the way that I do the Redskins' road unis of the last few years.

While recently perusing an old thread regarding images of Redskins logos, I found mention of a vintage football helmet site called HelmetHut. Once there, I discovered an interesting factoid -- which is quoted below -- that offers an answer to the old "Burgundy, or not Burgundy?" question. So there you have it. No, we don't wear "burgundy" or "plumb" as part of our base color-scheme anymore. Yes, we do wear (depending on the year or era in question) some species of cardinal. Which is so obvious when you look at something like, say, this shirt with the throwback Chief Red Cloud logo versus this shirt featuring RG3 -- both of which I happen to own, and the differences in color are plain to the naked eye.

I have to give Gizmo 3squire and HtownRocks111 credit for coming up with (or pointing us in the direction of others who came up with) uniform redesigns that allow for the team to wear gold pants that actually look good with the white jerseys as part of our road uniform combo. It seems as if Bruce Allen is determined to make us wear gold pants as much as possible, even though our current road uni combo doesn't look nearly as nice as our current home uni combo. But this idea can be accomplished, as the above efforts demonstrate. (Or, for real world examples of said concept, look at the Southern Cal and Iowa State football programs.) So kudos on the good work, gents.

If we were to go in a new direction with our uniforms, this idea by httrMP is the most interesting one I've encountered. For one thing, it has the upside of not requiring a separate pair of pants to go with a white/road jersey, as this shade of bronze-ish "gold" would work perfectly with white jerseys. (Hell, those tan pants from last season's 1930s throwbacks would work fine with white jerseys, too. And we'd have the distinction of being the only team in the NFL to sport tan pants, even though tan pants used to be the industry standard back in the early part of the 20th century, after Notre Dame had popularized them. But I realize that most Redskin fans don't dig them because they're not really any kind of shade of "gold.") One of the things I've always liked about this jersey is the use of the burgundy stripe that runs vertically at the edges of the shoulders. If we were to decide to sport gold pants all the time, we'd need something like this to add more burgundy to what is, after all, a mostly white jersey. I think that's what seems so off to me about when we sport the 1970s road uniform combo: the pants are so gold and the jerseys are so white; it's just a weird juxtaposition, in my opinion. If there was more burgundy on the jersey, as in the above image, I think that would do the trick. However, if our official road uni combo were to feature burgundy pants -- whether of the dark "red wine" or lighter "cranberry" variety -- you wouldn't get any complaints from me. As of this moment, though, I think I favor a kind of limited, middle-ground approach to altering our uniforms. This approach would feature us sporting the road unis we wore prior to Bruce Allen joining the Redskins' front office (read: the burgundy pants and white jerseys of the Gibbs I & II Eras), and the home unis would look virtually identical to those of the past few years (read: the '70s-inspired gold pants with the current burgundy jerseys). However, I would swap out the five-striped socks for the socks that are worn with the white pants, which feature a thick band of burgundy and a thin stripe of gold at the tops. Yes, this doesn't harmonize the overall number-of-stripes discrepancy on the home unis. But at least it kicks to the curb those annoyingly-distracting, overly-striped socks. And this minimalist approach doesn't require the team to petition the commish for permission to do an official uniform change. I know I'm in the minority on this, but I've liked the Bengals' helmets ever since I saw them in Super Bowl XXIII. Their prior helmets were terribly blah. An orange helmet with the word "BENGALS" on either side? Well, whoopty-freakin'-doo. Moreover, I really liked their entire uniform combo back in the 1980s. But now? Their current unis, from the shoulders on down, are overly-complicated with way too many "design flourishes" for my taste.

I see that you've conducted a scientific poll to arrive at this conclusion, correct, "bro"? BTW, if they were so popular, then why were they out of circulation for approximately 30 years, until Bruce Allen dusted them off? "lol." The word "gold," like many words describing colors, is misapplied frequently, especially in sports. Some of it has to do with the fact that "yellow" has a negative connotation (i.e. cowardly) to it. Heck, my alma mater, USC, says that its colors are Cardinal & Gold. However, its colors are, depending upon the decade examined, dark red/maroon & yellow. Not only that, but the shade of "cardinal" that they sport is quite different from that of, say, their conference rival, Stanford. Moreover, from the late 1960s onward, the Redskins uniforms have looked quite a bit like USC's during the same time frame, so much so that when I was attending USC and watching an NFL Films documentary on Sonny Jurgenson, one of my dormitory roommates said to me something like, "What's this, old game footage of USC back when John McKay was the coach?" At first, I didn't know what he was referring to... but when I thought about it, I realized, "Wow, the two uniforms do have similarities, don't they?" As far as "gold" is concerned, I think it's inarguable that Notre Dame's helmets are gold, for instance. Heck, if memory serves, they use actual gold leaf on them. Now, compare that look to almost every other team in college and pro sports that claims to use gold, and tell me there's not a difference. "Oh, but that's metallic gold!" "Oh, but Photoshop says that Redskin 'gold' is gold!" Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Who you gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes?" Frankly, this particular part of the uniform controversy is utterly academic to me. I love our current unis. I could care less that they're closer to maroon & yellow than burgundy & gold. (Truthfully, I don't think we've ever actually worn gold -- or, if you will, Notre Dame gold. Look at the gold on our 80th Anny throwbacks. It's closer to... bronze, if anything. Not that I care. It's a nice look too.) "A rose by any other name," and all that. My real concern is that the "Photoshop gold" pants (does that description of them make you happier?) are being worn all the time, when they really only look best with our dark/home jerseys. We need to bring back the dark pants for use with the white/road jerseys. And if that means the throwbacks (70th and 80th anny, etc.) gotta go to make that change work within the league's stupidly restrictive uniform rules, then that's fine by me.

I was watching the UCLA/Washington Huskies game on ESPN last night, and I noticed that UCLA was wearing some atypical, alternate unis that featured gold facemasks. And I mean GOLD, not canary yellow masquerading as gold. It would be interesting to see something like that applied to our 70th Anny, spear-feather helmets, as I think it would serve as a nice compliment to the darker burgundy of those helmets. And those helmets, as previously stated, would serve as a nice compliment to the rest of the 80th Anny, 1930s-inspired unis we wore a couple weeks back versus San Diego. The only change I'd make would be to the pants, adding a single burgundy stripe down the pant legs, à la the single black stripe on the Raiders' pants. Then a white jersey could be added to that uni combo for a road game, and it would look great. A road game? Yeah, one road game. I'm still not sold on this suggested uni combo as our default uniform, just as a once-in-awhile thing. However, we gotta do something about our current look, particularly our current road look. I've tried giving the white jersey/"gold" pants combo a chance, but it just isn't working. As I was watching our game last week versus Minnesota, even when we were up by 13, I'm thinking, "Man, this uni combo is hideous." Now, there are ways of fixing it. Last Saturday, when I watched USC smash Cal, I saw a Trojans team, on the road, that made a similar uni combo (white jerseys with maroon-esque numbers and canary yellow pants with maroon-esque leg stripes) look fabulous. We could do the same thing -- but we'd have to pretty much eliminate white from our uniforms, meaning no white stripes or white numbers. I think that would look pretty sharp (I've always loved USC's unis, even when I rooted for the rival Huskies as a kid), but does the rest of the Redskins' fanbase agree? Somehow, I doubt it. I say bring back the burgundy pants for road games (with the white jerseys), and only use the "gold" pants for home games (with the burgundy jerseys). For those, like me, who love the burgundy pants and want to see them return, I implore you to write a letter (yes, an actual letter with a stamp and everything) to Dan Snyder requesting that he overrule Bruce Allen's decision to make the "gold" pants the default pants for the overall uniform combo. We can complain about this issue on here forever; but until the fans let ownership know directly how they feel, nothing will change.

Here's an idea. Take the 70th Anny/1960s-inspired/spear-feather helmets, whose shade of burgundy should closely match the burgundy of the 80th Anny/1930s-inspired jerseys, and team them up. So the throwback helmets from about 10 years ago with the throwback jerseys, pants and socks from this year. Again, just a suggestion.

I didn't dislike our look versus San Diego the way that most seemingly did. It was borne of the NFL's stupid decision to not allow teams to sport throwback helmets anymore. Yeah, the colors were off, but they were also off when we wore similarly inspired throwbacks during the 1994 season. I thought the stripes being ditched made for a sleeker looking helmet, and I've long dug the 1930s throwback jerseys because of the use of the old-school Indian-head logo on the sleeves. As I prefer the current team colors, I'd love to see the team devise a tweaked uniform combination with those colors in mind. Said uniform combo would feature jerseys with the current helmet logo on the jersey sleeves (with a gold dreamcatcher for the home jersey sleeves and a burgundy dreamcatcher for the road jersey sleeves), moving the numbers to the shoulders. I'd also like to see the burgundy pants with the gold/white striping return for the road unis, and altered gold pants with burgundy/white striping (as opposed the current burgundy/white/burgundy striping) for the home unis.

In general, I hate the NFL's narrow rules on throwbacks, and this latest episode is no exception. The NCAA allows football teams to have a million different helmet and uniform combos, and I've never heard that it violates any safety protocols. If the alternate helmets are built to the same specifications as the regular ones, why can't a player be allowed to wear two or three different helmets over the course of a season, a la the Oregon Ducks? No Fun League, indeed. However, we could make this NFL edict work for us by adopting a kind of "composite" throwback uniform that utilizes the current team colors and helmets. One, for throwback uniform games, replace the normal insignias on our regular helmets with the 1960s-era spear decal, adjusting the gold on it to our current shade of said color. Two, use the same gold pants that we've worn for the last two years. Three, take the 1930s-inspired jerseys from last year and alter the burgundy & gold on them to match the rest of the aforementioned uniform. Done.

As others here have said, screw UnWise Mike, a charter member of the P.C. Jagoff Brigade. He's no friend of the team, and those utterly speculative uniform and logo changes he posted online are proof of that. And who the heck are Ed McVey and Brittain Peck? (Hey, that rhymes! ) Probably loyal readers of Wise's stupid column who agree with his crusade to force the team to change it's nickname and uniform. So screw them too. If the team is to ultimately make a change (and I emphasize IF, as I want the team to keep the current nickname forever), I'd favor keeping the uniform the same and going with Warriors as the new nickname -- for two reasons. One, as far as I know, the team still has the rights to the "Washington Warriors" nickname as a Plan B, in case any of the various stupid lawsuits against the team (such as Suzan Shown Harjo's from about 15 years ago or the current one from some Harjo wannabe) are successful. Two, if the nickname is changed to Warriors, it sounds cool (in my opinion) and gives the team the fallback option of later changing the logo, should the caterwauling P.C. crowd remain unpacified. And the logo could be changed in a way that wouldn't make it look radically different from how it currently looks, in general graphical-design terms. For example, the Indian head image could be replaced with a profile picture of George Washington (who is the namesake of the city, after all, meaning that we'd become "George Washington's Revolutionary Warriors" ) and the feathers on the side of the dreamcatcher could be replaced with an 18th-century-style sabre. Other than that, keep the current uniforms exactly as they are. I've long thought about trying to incorporate the George Washington family flag (which is now the D.C. city flag) into a new uniform, but the inclusion of the flag's stars could make us kinda look like "Dallas Cowboys East." So forget that. By the way, if anyone from the Redskins' front office is reading this thread (yeah, riiiight ) and likes what I've come up with here, feel free to use it. I, Glenn X (if you want my real name on a real legal document, just private-message me), being of sound mind and body, freely give up any and all legal rights to the potential new team logo I've described, to be used by the owners of the Washington Redskins as they see fit, without any renumeration owed to me. I wouldn't want this to turn into one of those situations like the one from all those years ago involving that fan of the Baltimore Ravens who claimed he sent Art Modell a drawing of a helmet logo in exchange for Ravens season tickets for life; the team allegedly used said logo, disputed they got the idea from the fan in question, and a lawsuit resulted. There have been too many damned lawsuits against the Redskins lately.

I penned a letter -- yes, an actual letter -- to GM Bruce Allen this week, asking him to try to resolve the wonky striping issues with our uniforms and requesting that he bring back the Super Bowl Victory uniforms (white jerseys with burgundy pants) for at least some of our road games. I know he's a busy guy, so who knows when he'll even get around to reading it, much less considering it. Moreover, I freely admit that I'm a weirdo for having written such a letter. As for throwbacks, I didn't address that issue in my letter. I really wish the NFL would loosen up its rules on alternate uniforms, allowing teams to use a fourth uni combo.

After seeing the attached Sports Illustrated cover of RG3, I'm more convinced than ever that the best (and easiest) fix to our uniforms is to drop the gold/white/gold/white/gold stripes from the socks, leaving the upper half (approximately) of the socks burgundy and the lower half white. And we wouldn't even have to petition the league to make this small, less-is-more uniform change, as we already possess socks that look this way; we wear them with our white pants. If this change occurred, our home unis would definitely be the best looking in all of pro sports, in my opinion.