One would guess that the Seattle Seahawks need to sell jerseys. If they insist on wearing color combinations that can be seen from space, the Vikings should hark back to a time on Earth when football was played without the fluorescence–literally and figuratively.

The National Football League has turned into the International Offense League under the feckless rule of Commissioner Roger Goddell. Goodell, a lawyer by trade before coming upon the pot of riches called NFL ownership, has never seen a revenue stream or offensive advantage in the game he didn’t subscribe to.

We now have two teams in Los Angeles where fans don’t come to games and contests every year in different parts of England and Mexico. We have rules where receivers and quarterbacks can hardly be touched when plying their delicate craft in a game of collusions and a new deal on the table to extend the regular season to 17 games while adding one more team to the playoff tournament.

Goddell and the “trusty” owners have also seen fit to allow NFL teams to almost arbitrarily to wear different uniforms each week. What started in college–and has become an absolute absurdity of colors and designs week in and out–has now spread to the NFL where the L.A. Rams get to dabble with their retro 1999 look (all yellow and blue) and their ‘new’ retro helmet (blue and white) and kind of new uniform-look (blue, white and gold).

12th Man, 12th Jersey Change

In Seattle, the Seahawks are now in the Trust of the late Paul Allen. Whomever is in charge there (the chairman is Jody Allen and the Executive VP is John Schneider) loves to play with the traditionally drab colors of their team, just like Allen did. They don’t change them altogether; no, no, you see, that would be missing the point–and opportunity–to cash in on all those wonderful children asking their parents for the sundry of luminous designs that NIKE puts out for the world to wear.

They have an all-gray uniform, all-blue and all-white uniform, as well as a combo of blue, grey, white and lucent green, first unveiled in 2009, that hangs around. The question is why?

Insert chuckle from the bean-counters here.

Gotta have that new Seahawks jersey! Before they go away!

In a handful of days, the Seahawks will be playing in their ‘NEW’ “Action Green” uniforms as they face the Minnesota Vikings on primetime Monday Night Football.

What a coincidence that they would unveil such obnoxious glowing costumes in a stand-alone game! It’s almost like the executives are marketing those (once again–NEW) Seahawks jerseys!

NIKE Should Not Be The Name Of This Game

If the Seahawks want to honor the cashbox in their Roger Goddell sanctioned pop-up store, let them. The Minnesota Vikings should in turn honor something; a bit of tradition in the game of football. They could even put a name to it–Fred Cox, their beloved placekicker of the 1960s and ’70s.

A guy who kicked through four Super Bowls for Minnesota, played multiple positions for the Vikings practice squad and was considered by his head coach, Bud Grant, to be an irreplaceable part in the history of his team.

Cox didn’t make much money playing football and he didn’t see a lot of uniform changes. The Vikings wore purple in Met Stadium and white on the road. Surely, design was part of the game and uniforms were fashioned to be remarkable. But if you told professional football players in the 1960s or 1970s that guys would be dressed in nearly-phosphorescent colors someday, they might just believe you–but they’d certainly be disappointed to hear it.

Vikings vs. Lions, in Detroit, 1970. Not a lot of color left out there.

Not Just Old School

On Thanksgiving, let’s give a thought to those guys that slugged it out in the mud, took the beating that the greatest American game gave to them, and may or may not have been lucky enough to get a completely clean uniform the next time they lined up to clobber each other.

Those guys played the game without the big money, but nonetheless the biggest hearts. Seriously, how else could they have survived?

They also played football with any dazzling glow on their uniforms–just plenty of grass stains and mud.