The Kansas City Chiefs' uniforms will never need an update
You know what’s especially cool about the image of the Chiefs hoisting the Lombardi trophy as Lombardi trophy-shaped confetti rained down upon them atop a stage draped in Lombardi trophy-emblazoned Super Bowl 54 logos? Underneath the comically copious confetti and shameless corporate shilling, the Chiefs were wearing ostensibly the exact same uniforms the team was wearing five decades prior, when they carried Hank Stram off the field on their shoulders after winning Super Bowl IV.
For close to a decade, Nike has been spreading its perpetually embarrassing design philosophy around the league. A few weeks ago, I would have compared it to a virus, but that no longer feels apropos. Regardless, Nike is very much not good at designing football uniforms.
Of the teams getting redesigns for the 2020 season, the Buccaneers and Browns are both doing an about-face and ditching their overly-complicated abominations for uniforms that look a lot more like they did before Nike injected them with their poison. And yet, despite this obvious evidence of fanbases summarily rejecting what Nike has been serving up, they trotted out those new Falcons uniforms that are pretty close to the most hilarious disasters in Nike’s seemingly never-ending run at ruining the aesthetic of NFL franchises.
They seriously, unironically gave the Falcons a gradient uniform. The entire universe cackled at them for giving the Jaguars those silly black-and-gold gradient helmets, and like a real villain, Nike retreated to their lair, only to return with a gradient jersey with big, pointy drop- shadowed numbers and a massive “ATL” across the chest. I’d honestly demand a trade if I was shown those uniforms and told, “This is what you wear now when you play football in front of millions of people.”
The Chiefs, though, have maintained their look and feel almost exactly for over 50 years. Other than a few necessary modern tweaks, like the sleeve numbers moving to the shoulder in 2012, the Chiefs’ look has been their look. That tradition has created a through line that deepens the resonance of the teams’ (very few) ups and (very, very many) downs.
Uniforms used to be more-or-less utilitarian. They existed to differentiate teams from one another while (hopefully) having a color scheme that managed to both contrast and compliment itself. And if they sold a few uniforms in the process, that’s cool too. But the uniforms themselves were not designed exclusively to make money - that’s what everything else in the NFL was designed for. Yes, uniforms are one of the most important parts in creating a brand that people will want to spend their money to be a part of, but there was no real cynical, dollar-signs-for-eyes sort of money-hunger in the creation of the uniforms that have remained mostly untouched for the last 40+ years, like the Packers, Bears, Chiefs, Raiders, etc.
But the Nike redesigns are exactly that. They can couch it in “Oh, the dumb, weird little stripe thing on the Titans’ pants is supposed to be a sword in its scabbard!” or whatever, but the real reason is “We want to spark jersey sales, both from fans with bad enough taste to think this dumb, weird little stripe thing is cool, but also from the rest of the fans who we’ll piss off just enough for them to buy the throwback uniform to spite us even though our swoosh is on that one too.”
The fact that Patrick Mahomes exists and the Chiefs are winning is enough to sell jerseys. Clark Hunt may be a man so stilted in plain-saltine corporate jargon that I’m not entirely convinced he’s not robot built by the league to display their ideal for owner behavior, but his commitment to not selling out the tradition of the Chiefs’ uniforms for a quick Nike buck is something I legitimately respect. The last thing I need in my life is my team running around in jerseys with numbers shaped like fountains and some garish smoke/gradient helmet to “evoke the tradition barbecue” or whatever combination of buzzwords Nike would puke out to explain their stupid, stupid designs.
When the Chiefs won, they looked the same as when they lost. The uniforms they were wearing when they finally won the Super Bowl after a five-decade hiatus were the same uniforms they were wearing in every bitter, miserable, heartbreaking moment that built to that catharsis. That may not be something you think you notice, but I assure you, your brain does. It, in some small way, made the entire history of the team feel even more present in that singular moment, as the franchise finally did what they couldn’t do for so long.
And they looked good doing it.
