The orange was more orange, or something. Two years ago the Browns threw a weird-ass party at the convention center to unveil their new uniforms, which were almost immediately mocked and panned. From the hue of the helmet to the “Cleveland” on the chest of the home jerseys, there was very little in Nike/Cleveland’s redesign efforts that fans liked.
The Browns, in ever Brownsian fashion, are in agreement it seems. Which makes sense for an organization that has faithfully fucked up damn near every decision in recent history and then quickly admitted, in some fashion, to the screw-ups shortly thereafter.
With the owners meetings happening down in Arizona this week there’s now confirmation that the Haslams aren’t huge fans of the team’s current duds and will probably greenlight another redesign in the near future. Some context on when that can happen: Teams are locked into their colors and combinations for five years, so, unless the NFL gives the Browns some special dispensation for seriously embarrassing themselves, we’re stuck with the current look through 2020.
What could the future bring? Tony Grossi has some early info/thoughts:
Besides the general busy-ness in some of the nine uniform combinations presently used, Haslam admitted there is a problem with the fabric and the tightness of the jerseys that make them uncomfortable for the players. She said the Browns internally have talked about a new uniform look. “We’ve talked about it, but we haven’t conceptualized what that might be, and we have to work with the NFL on it,” Haslam said. “We’re the Cleveland Browns. We stand for a certain thing. I can’t imagine doing anything too crazy, can you? I can’t.” A source has said that the Browns are seriously looking at replacing the plain orange helmet with a plain white one. The Browns wore white helmets from their inception in 1946 through the 1950 season.A white helmet, in our humble opinion, would be a stretch. And we’re most likely not talking about adding logos — we’ve long heard one of the requests from Randy Lerner to Haslam when he sold the team was to never add a logo to the helmet. So what does that leave? Another mish mosh of white, orange and brown, all of which will probably be different shades. And it will probably look awful. But hey, at least the Browns don’t have a racist red sambo caricature for a logo.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2017.
The uniforms appear to be saluting a muny league champion, but Jimmy and Dee seem to take sadistic pleasure in testing the patience of the loyal fans (and they haven’t mutinied, yet). Just go with the classic 1961 look — with the throwbacks going back to the 1946 AAFC season — and end the nonsense.
Still two weeks until the opener, but you just had to get that “racist red sambo caricature” snark in there, didn’t you?
As for the colors, if they keep going 5-11 ( one can only hope!) year after year, let alone 3-13 or even 1-15, who cares what shade of orange they are wearing when they lose and lose and lose? Make the helmets white instead of orange…as white is .the color of the white flag of surrender.
Better yet, make the helmets brown and the pants brown and the jerseys brown…because they’re the Stinky Browns…and brown is the color of…yeah…do I need to spell it (or smell it) out for you?
Until they have at least a 50-50 chance of winning on any given Sunday, I will continue to find something else to do with my time, which gets shorter and shorter when you’re a geezer, and is therefore more precious. Also, it hurts less when you care less…or when you finally quit caring at all.
Chuckles the Clown
Listen, as someone who is still pissed off by the Paul Warfield for Mike Phipps trade with the Dolphins, I can tell you it’s time to change the helmets and even the colors. To me the current helmet represents 53 years of failure. I know, I know lots of people in there 70’s and 80’s remember when the current helment represented Champions. But lets get real, the Browns remain one of 2 teams not to even reach the Super Bowl since the merger of the AFL & NFL. Time for a change already. Every other team has. Put a brown bulldog on a white helmet or something.