Ranking the BEST UNIFORMS in the 4 Major Sports: Part 4 – #60-41

We’re into the lower middle section of the countdown. Leg four out of six! Tonight’s blog is brought to you by our new URL and a couple ice cold Coors Lights. I might have abandoned the ‘who wore it best’ section but who cares, I know I dont! I’m getting a little more in depth as we get further into the nitty gritty and a little more critical as we get into the nicer uniforms. So lets get into it!

60. Atlanta Hawks

The Hawks have bounced back admirably from their uber modern neon triangularly obsessed uniform of the 2010s to something a little more tame and easier to stomach, with elements that make it essentially a modern throwback of sorts. On their own, the red jersey looks good, and the black jersey looks good. The problem is they don’t look all that great as a continuous set, as there is no black on the red jersey and the black jersey is mainly black and orange. The look verges on being a little too plain for my liking but they just got out of a relationship with the girl who is going clubbing every night in her mid thirties, puking from too many vodka redbulls at 4am on a Tuesday; so you can forgive them for wanting something with a little more stability and a normal job as a bank teller.

Atlanta has also recently featured an MLK set that’s good not great (talkin bout the uniform here folks, a true ‘separating art from the artist’ situation) and a peach inspired city uniform that is *muah* gorgeous, with a black base, a peach colored gradient in the numbers, and some swoopy retro font. Fantastic alternate unis there.

Lot of Trey Young in those pics. Just pointing it out so you dont have to.

59. New York Rangers

From one team that has a history of a little too much pizzaz to one that has stood firm in it’s “we just like diagonal lettering” stance in the New York Rangers. I appreciate their commitment to this middle of the road look. The shade of blue they use does pop off the ice really well and the red isn’t too dark, but the best element of the jersey is how heavy the white drop shadow on the rear numbers is; it is something that sets this jersey apart. From what I can see, their only alternate is the reverse retro jersey with a darker shade of blue and Lady Liberty herself gracing the front. It’s not very good. So these guys get points for remaining true to themselves and having a classy uniform, but lose points for it not being all that good of one.

58. Winnipeg Jets

The Jets are a great comeback story for a team that moved out of their city then made the prodigal son return to their far North home. They didn’t roll the team back out there with the classic Jets look but rather gave themselves a spruced up new getup. Like a few other Canadian teams, they stuck the maple leaf right behind the newly crafted Jet. It’s a much more modern approach without being sucked into the minimalistic pitfalls or trying to reinvent the wheel with something flashier, they just made a very CLEAN logo and the uniforms came together to be almost military-esque in how sharply designed it is. The colors, dark blue, light blue, silver, and red are classics, albeit a little overdone. The shoulders having the little alternate logo with the splash of red and the hockey sticks (to remind everyone what sport we’re playing) fills out the jersey very nicely. It just looks very balanced. Is it the perfect logo/uniform? No, but when you hear your team is coming back and they’ll have new uniforms, you have to kind of brace for the worst. The guys up in Winnipeg got something they can hang their hat on for years to come.

57. Indianapolis Colts

The Colts bounced around this list like a beachball at a nickleback concert, going from 24 to 62 back down to their final resting spot of 57. I just had to be honest with myself that just because they tweaked things slightly (literally just their number font) and it makes it look much better, my excitement for it cannot cloud my judgement. This list is about integrity and delivering absolute facts to my loyal readers. So with that, lets talk Colts. I generally never cared for their uniforms as they were just too plain Jane for my eyes. Some of that was probably tied to the fatigue of seeing Peyton Manning (about as non-flashy of a QB as one can be) toss slant routes to Marvin Harrison all the way to a deep playoff exit year over year. My eyes grew weary of the whole situation! But then a couple years ago, they modernized, and not in a big way. Their font got a couple extra kicks and juts to it. Simple as that. It was a very traditional font, now it’s a somewhat traditional font without ever feeling tacky or corny. These Colts have a new lease on life in my eyes.

Their throwback alternate uniforms from last year, where they moved the horseshoe to the back of the helmet, is also a great addition to their set.

56. Dallas Stars

The Dallas Stars are what youd hear in a Twitter schedule reveal where someone shows an unsuspecting lady on the street the Cowboys helmet. “oh, it’s the Dallas Stars!” ha ha ha, we’d all have a great laugh. I understand they got their name from the North Stars when they stole their team from Minnesota but hey I guess Texas needs their hockey more than Minnesota, right? Wait who thought that was a good idea? I dont know, I dont make these decisions. I dont know who does! The President? Is this Trump’s fault? Obama? Jimmy Carter?!

In any event I think they’re the only green and black color scheme on my list, or at least the only one I can remember a few beers deep. What am I drinking, you ask? It’s called Duck Beer by Brewery X, right here in Anaheim. I technically live in Orange, but hey, Anaheim is a stone’s throw away! I could hit the Honda Center with a baseball if my arm was warmed up. Just something to think about. Am I concerned how cavalier I am with giving out where I live on here? Definitely not. You can just google my name and find my full current address. How wild is that? I dont like it but do not care enough to do anything about it. So it goes.

55. Kansas City Royals

Kansas City’s baseball team follows the familiar MLB formula for uniforms, by having their home jersey just be their name in cursive across the front with a smaller number at the bottom. Their shade of blue and commitment to not adding an accent color is admirable, although after they won the World Series a few years back, their gold trimmed unis were just fantastic.

Thats not to say they havent had some clunkers over the years, experimenting with black as an alternate color, pulling such looks as these:

I’m not some purist that thinks black should never be a random one off alternate uniform, the Reds are pulling it off nicely right now, but it just doesnt flow well with the royal blue look. I’m glad they have abandoned that. I’m also glad that they brought back the full on powder blue kit. Just a fresh & vintage look that fits with their colorway perfectly.

54. Anaheim Ducks

The Ducks new ownership were put in a precarious position when they bought the team from Disney a few years back, where they wanted to shed the cutesy ha-ha we’re like the movie affiliation, while also still having their look represent a duck. Not the easiest feat, but I would say the mostly pulled it off with the webfooted rebrand & changing colors to a more intimidating, or at least less childish, black and orange. I’d describe this current look as ‘pretty good’, but where they gain points is when they toss the fans a bone with their throwback logo. They’ve been meshing it with their current colors (as seen below) and it’s a good nod to ducks of hockey past.

The best part about their looks through the years is how many merch options it gives the fans. Earlier this year I took the very short drive (could have probably walked, even) to the Honda Center to catch a Ducks game, and there were no less than 10 variations of Ducks jerseys from over the years that I saw. The next day when I was ordering my bootless chinese custom Ducks jersey, I almost couldnt decide on which version to pick! Settled on the reverse retro below, for those interested.

53. San Francisco Giants

The G Men have stayed steady with this sharp look for years, keeping the classic element of no names on the back. The flat black helmet works really well with the look. The home white is almost a creamy bone color that’s a nice shakeup from the norm.

Their alternate unis have a wide variance in quality, ranging from an orange jersey with a weird front (that doesnt match their interlocking SF or home GIANTS fonts at all:

To a black alternate that looks pretty good, maybe with a little too much orange going on with the piping:

To uhh…what the hell is goin on here? Why does the gradient start so low? Not great, Bob!

52. Jacksonville Jaguars

With the #52 spot on my list comes one of my favorite rebrands of the Nike era, the Jaggsonville Jags. Generally, I think their colors are pretty grating, but they’re owning it and it’s working better than it ever has. They’ve gone back to the glossy black helmets, and they utilize all their main colors for a lot of variation in their Sunday looks and most of them look really great! The white numbers with no outline pop off the jersey and it makes for a very clean look. Thats not to say they dont have their quirks though, the black outline around the neck and the black shoulder patches just seem unnecessary and they break up the continuity of the look.

The white and black away look is just so sharp:

Where the black and teal variations leave a little to be desired:

Their older looks not great to ‘did you have an aneurysm when designing this?’, with the Mark Brunell era looking much better than the Blake Bortles and David Garrard eras.

Seriously, what on earth are they doing with these uniforms? What are those vertical stripes coming up the front?! Why did they seem to add every element in the book to the next generation of uniforms like it’s some sort of Madden create-a-jersey? I could do a breakdown on these but I dont think our newly minted dot-com website has the bandwidth, so we’ll move on!

51. Cleveland Cavaliers

The Cavs recently underwent a soft rebrand with a simpler version of their wine and gold uniforms, dropping the navy blue from their look and brining back the hoop logo in their home white unis:

Unfortunately, they also brought back the HUGE C logo on the front of their alternate unis, which just looks amateur and should have been left in the dumpster with their t-shirt jerseys of the past.

50. Dallas Cowboys

AMERICAS team finds themselves at the #50 spot of my rankings. If Ihad to describe their look in one word, I’d say “plastic”. Not great. Iconic, absolutely. A good look, for sure. But something about it, specifically the arm stripes and the off-silver pants just feels plastic-y. The slim black outline on the shoulder stipes is a continuity error.

Onto the positives, though. The way they utilize one main uniform with the white is definitely a choice, and generally its good one. When they do have to switch to their navy blue uniforms, it is a solid look. I know I said this section was focusing on the good but the shade of blue utilized on the all blue tops is different from the one used on the all whites, and I can’t help but wonder what either set would look like with the same shade of blue. Maybe they would look like the Colts with a splash of silver. Maybe that would turn out to be a bad thing. Who’s to say!

A modern twist they came out with this year is the all white helmet and boy howdy does it look fantastic.

49. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Clocking in at #49, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. These boys have had an interesting history with their unis, from the creamsicles to some of the coolest rebrand of the times, to one of the worst rebrands of our time, back to the one right before that.

Was the rebrand with the alarm-clock numbers really taht bad though? I feel like maybe not. If they just took out the lines in the middle of the numbers and made the shoulders the same color of the rest of the jersey, they would absolutely be salvageable. I’m definitely not the type to take issue with experimental number fonts, but the digitized lines in it look so dang goofy. Just do me a favor and squint your eyes at the below pic.

It’s not that bad, right?

Regardless, they’re abandoned that and gone back to the Mike Alstott duds. It’s a nice compromise. They even threw in a nice pewter alternate to keep the kids happy, and this year they’re throwing it back to the bright orange creamy unis as well this year which should look alright. They aren’t my cup of tea but they are a lot of other people’s cup. It’s entirely possible I’m just not a tea drinker at all and I guess I’ll just have to live with that.

48. Philadelphia Flyers

The Flyers dropped some new uniforms this year and they’re a simpler and more smooth version of what I’ve liked from afar for all these years. That logo is fantastic.

They’re the third orange, black, and white team in this little segment, so you can see how I feel about this colorway. More to come below (spoiler alert)

47. New York Knicks

The New York Knickerbockers fall into the #47 spot on the list, and like many others in this segment, we are looking at an iconic look, but a fairly generic one as well. The blue and orange are a fantastic scheme, but like a few other teams on this list, they dabble with black as an accent color. It doesnt work! Stop that! It looks forced and breaks up the flow of the scheme:

Aside from those clunkers, They do have some great looks with their white home unis and their deep navy alternates where they left the white at home.

46. Toronto Maple Leafs

Unlike other Canadian hockey clubs, Toronto didn’t just include the Maple Leaf in their branding, they made it their entire brand. Super simple look here with it just being a darker blue and white. The simplicity works well and lands them at the #45 spot.

45. Chicago Cubs

The Cubbies have an absolutely iconic look that they’ve updated slightly over the years and one thing is for sure, when you turn on a baseball game, you know for sure that you are looking at the Chicago Cubs. They don’t have anything that really jumps off the page about their uniforms, but the red, white, and blue with the pinstripes is a good look overall. That’s the good, so how about the bad: They switched away from their red brimmed cap a few years ago and now just roll with the mono blue cap. And their city connect unis (pic below) are not doin it for me. I generally don’t like the ‘nickname for area of team referenced on the jersey’ and this is no exception. Just not my cup of tea.

44. Baltimore Orioles

Another script font on the front of the jersey, I just like these guys’ colors better. They earn a bunch of extra points by bringing back that dang cute oriole on the front. Their away grays look drab as heck but also I’m realizing that I just dont like anyone’s away gray uniforms so maybe I should stop holding that against teams.

43. Las Vegas Golden Knights

I get it, we got some classic uniforms above this team. The Golden Knights are only a few years old. I get it. But listen, old does not equate to good, just as new does not equate to bad. Sticking with an older more traditional look doesnt mean that someone cant swoop in, which is just what the Golden Knights did. Their logo is clever, the gold and slate gray look is a unique scheme in a sea of navy blue and red, an the red accents give the look a little more life.

42. Los Angeles Lakers

I dont like the Lakers, but in the spirit of fairness, I am giving them my objective take. Truth be told, the Lakers dont have bad uniforms, at least in their home yellows. They’ve reverted back to a more classic drop shadow font for their numbers and there isnt anything disagreeable about the kit, despite the unlikeability of the fellas who ear it.

The white unis are sharp as heck with the yellow coming through nicely. This is their least traditional look, and they rarely wear it.

Their purple uniforms are bad, no bones about it. Their insistence on using black up the side is frustrating, and the white outline to the yellow letters/numbers makes it look like the numbers are just fatter than they really are, when viewed from afar.

There/ I said some nice things, I said some honest things. They have a good look that they dont utilize all that well but it’s good enough to slot into the number 42 spot on my highly regarded list.

41. Charlotte Hornets

Charlotte is a curious case. Absolutely fantastic color scheme with the aqua teal and purple, and some really interesting looks in their arsenal. Their font that they use has cute little spikes on it like a hornet stinger and those odd dual pinstripes are pulled off well. They have all the makings of a top notch uniform, but then they get weird.

The Cha Cha Cha unis follow the recent trend of basketball uniforms using the city’s shortened name as the main name on the jersey. Just a little odd.

A rule of thumb I like to follow in life is to not wear anything that looks like the word CLIT across my chest at first or even second glance. The Hornets clearly dont follow that same rule and I cant necessarily fault them for the bold choice, as it’s their life and not mine. Also, the coloring of this alt is another home run.

Buzz City is another odd look that they’ve had in the rack recently and it has big time ‘giving myself a nickname’ energy to it.

Point being, the Hornets have an amazing color scheme on their mains and alternate unis, but their execution its a little suspect at times.

We’re cracking into the top 40 next week, someone call Casey Kasum!

Sound off in the comments with what I got wrong