I thought there was, but cannot find, an article from The Master wherein he explained a difference between uniforms in baseball and football; In baseball the home team wore a lighter color and the visitors wore a darker one, whereas in football the reverse was true. The explanation for football being that a darker color was more advantageous in terms of hiding the ball.
I don’t watch a lot of football, but yesterday the (home team) NE Patriots wore white jerseys while the visiting Dallas Cowboys wore dark jerseys. That seems to contradict the plan.
Anyone know why this selection was made? (And “The Master Was Wrong” clearly would be rubbish.)
Supposedly, the Cowboys consider the dark jerseys unlucky, so the Patriots engaged in a bit of a headgame by choosing to wear white. I think the home team gets to pick light or dark, although most follow whatever tradition has been established. My local team, the Steelers, seem to always wear dark when playing at Heinz Field.
This is correct. In the NFL he home team selects which jersey they will wear (white or color), and the visitor has to take the other option (the decision has to be announced to the other team before they pack their uniforms for their trip).
The Cowboys and the Redskins are the two teams which have traditionally chosen to wear white at home (and, yes, teams have been known to opt for white at home when hosting the Cowboys). However, the Redskins now seem to be wearing their red jerseys at home (though I bet you they’ll wear white when the Cowboys come to town).
The Cardinals also used to wear white at home, though they seem to have switched to red at home when they redesigned their uniforms a few years ago. The Dolphins will sometimes opt for white at home, due to playing their home games in a city in which it’s often very sunny, hot, and humid – thus, forcing their opponents to wear dark uniforms in those conditions.
Back when they were in St. Louis, the Cardinals always wore white at home against the Cowboys. Given the relative talent levels of the two franchises during that era, the Cardinals needed to use every psychological trick in the book just to be able to take the field against the Cowboys.
The Cleveland Browns are another team that traditionally wears white at home, although recently they’ve switched it up so that sometimes they wear their brown jersies at home and sometimes they wear white. There hasn’t been any discernable pattern that I can find, except for this year when they are wearing white for each home game. Next year, who knows?
As to the Dallas Cowboys and their supposedly unlucky or cursed “blues” (blue jerseys), some people point to their lower win-loss record wearing the blues vs. wearing the whites and declare the blues unlucky.
If you think about it, the only time Dallas wears the blues is the rare road game against an opponent who wears white at home. The vast majority wear colors at home. Dallas wears white at home.
Dallas didn’t wear their blues at all in 2010 (the Redskins wore their colors at home in 2010). So people are comparing the team win-loss record in the blues (road games only) to the team’s overall win-loss record which includes home games. Of course the record in the blues is going to be worse than in the whites.
I’d like to see the Dallas overall road game record in whites compared to their road game record in blues (which is just their record in blues because all blues games are road games).
Some people point out Michael Irvin (a star receiver for Dallas) had a career ending injury while wearing the blues (the Eagles wore whites at home that day). How many Dallas injuries in whites? I don’t know.
In college, both teams have to agree in advance in order for the home team to wear white (or, for that matter, for both teams to wear non-white - and yes, they do have to make sure that the colors aren’t too similar).
As others have mentioned, the home team in the NFL does NOT automatically wear dark jerseys, but they DO get to choose which color they wear, and usually pick the color they think looks the best. More often than not, the home team will choose to wear their colored jerseys, which means the visiting team usually wears white jerseys.
But there are a FEW teams, most notably the Dallas Cowboys, that wear white jerseys for home games. White jerseys and silver pants are the standard uniform for the Cowboys, and since most teams wear colored jerseys at home, the Cowboys usually get to wear white on the road, too.
Back in the Seventies, it was noticed that the Cowboys had a GREAT record when wearing white, but a mediocre record when wearing their blue jerseys- especially in the playoffs. Now, did that really mean the blue jerseys were a jinx? Of COURSE not! It’s only logical and natural they’d have a poorer record when playing on the road against playoff-caliber opponents!
But a lot of teams like to play psychological games, so teams that normally wore red (like the Cardinals) or purple (like the Vikings) started wearing white at home, just to make the Cowboys wear their “unlucky” blue jerseys. That kind of gamesmanship continues to this day.
They wore throwback blue uniforms* at home on Thanksgiving Day 2010 (losing to the Saints), but it could certainly be argued that those don’t count. They aren’t their standard blue uniforms (worn in last weekend’s game on the road against the Patriots, as mentioned in the OP.)
Replicas of the uniforms the team wore during their first few years of existence in the early 1960’s, these incorporate no silver - only blue and white.
The Chargers have lately started wearing their whites at home in the early (presumably hotter) part of the season. Unless I’m mistaken, they won’t wear their blue jerseys until the home game against the Packers in Week 9.
Prior to 1957 there was no NFL rule that said one team had to wear dark jerseys and the other light. In fact, some teams only had one jersey to wear for all games. Thus you had many color-on-color matchups and some white-on-white ones. Many teams of this era preferred to wear white jerseys wherever the game was - see for example the league champion 1940 Chicago Bears. In the 1950s football began to be regularly televised and the league felt that TV viewers needed some contrast between the two teams in order to distinguish them on a black & white TV. So from 1957 to 1963 EVERY team had one colored jersey and one light, and the home team ALWAYS wore color. For the 1964 season the rule was changed to give the home team the option of which jersey to wear and so ever since then it’s been a general tendency for the home team to wear colored jerseys but always with exceptions as others have pointed out. The LA Rams were able to wear white jerseys exclusively through the whole season a few times, I believe, in the late '60s/early '70s