Expert says the Arizona Cardinals have the worst uniforms in the NFL

Do the Arizona Cardinals really have the worst uniforms in the NFL?

I would say that any league that includes the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and their hideous gray-and-red mess, or the brown-on-brown disaster that the Cleveland Browns will be wearing this season, has many more-qualified candidates for the title.

But what do I know? I bow to Paul Lukas, a Sports Illustrated writer whose beat is writing about uniforms.

And he thinks the Cardinals’ uniforms are the worst in the game.

“I think you need to blow it up and start over,” Lukas recently said. “It’s not a good look.”

Eh. I always thought they were just kind of bland.

“I would say blandness is the least of their worries,” Lukas said.

What, then? Lukas’ basic problem is the mismatch of old-school and new-school elements.

“They’ve got a helmet that is a plain white shell with no stripes,” he said. “It’s got a gray face mask, which is a very old-school kind of thing. And there’s nothing wrong with old school. The (New York) Giants have a gray face mask. The (Dallas) Cowboys have a gray face mask, a couple of other teams.”

If you’re thinking there’s a “but” coming, you’re right. Or an “and,” at least.

“And then they’ve grafted that onto a very new-school, newfangled jersey and pants. They’ve got a jersey that has this weird striping on the sleeves that I don’t think anybody understood when they introduced it and still don’t understand it now. It looks clownish. They’ve got the side panel going down the sides of the jerseys.

“That intersects with the really weird and really awful piping on the pants, which sort of tapers, but then forms that black line that is supposed to go down the side of the pants. But depending on how the player wears it, if his pants shift just a little, then it’s like wrapping in front of his kneecap. It just looks awful. They’re probably the worst pants in the NFL, or at least in the running.”

Lukas is nothing if not detail-oriented. And if you think he likes the alternate black jerseys, think again. He thinks they look dated, “so late-1990s, early 2000s.”

There’s more.

“Also cardinals, the birds, are not black. ... To me it doesn’t make sense for the Cardinals to have a black alternate. All the things about their uniform that look bad in red to me look worse in black.”

The good news, if you agree with Lukas, is that improvements would be easy to make.

“Either get yourself a more newfangled looking helmet, or make the jersey and pants look more old-school,” he said. “But if they went the first of those routes, by having a more newfangled helmet to match the more newfangled jersey and pants, you’d still have the jersey and pants looking awful. The whole uniform would then be integrated, (and) consistently awful.”

Hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

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