Uniform-ity

 Watched a bit of the Colts-Lions game yesterday, and of course the Colts lost. The final score was 24-6 -- about right for a game between a "meh" team, and a team circumstantial evidence suggests is the best in professional football right now.

But the crabby old guy who lives inside me suggests there might have been something more esoteric involved in the outcome.

"You're gonna wear THAT?" he said, as the teams lined up for the opening kickoff. "No wonder you're going to lose this game."

Crabby Old Guy's comments were directed at the Colts, who broke out alternate uniforms for the occasion. Head-to-toe blue, to be specific, with black helmets.

The head-to-toe blue Crabby Old Guy could live with. The black helmets, however ...

"The Colts should never wear black helmets," he crabbed. "Never, ever, ever, ever."

This of course is a recurring theme for C.O.G., but it's not a blanket condemnation. The alternate uni thing has been around for awhile now, and C.O.G. gets that its purpose is to widen the revenue stream. He even thinks some of the alternates are sorta cool.

The Bears, for instance, broke out their 1930s Bronko Nagurski line -- orange stripes on the helmets, old-timey socks and jerseys -- for their game Sunday with the Vikings. These being the Matt Eberflus Bears, of course, the throwback duds didn't infuse them with Bronko Power. They still jacked around and lost per usual.

C.O.G. also has no quarrel with the unis Army and Navy unveil every year for what's annually the most iconic rivalry game in college football. This year, for instance, Navy is honoring its Jolly Rogers fighter squadron with helmets designed to look like flight helmets. Pretty awesome.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, the crabby old guy who lives inside me thinks Oregon should maybe think about wearing the same uniform combination more than twice a season, just for  branding's sake. And he has a few thoughts about what Notre Dame should do with the unis it showed up wearing for its Shamrock Series tilt vs. Army in Yankee Stadium Saturday night.

My suggestion: Make a bonfire out of them. And the sooner the better.

Those things were awful, and not just because the gold lame numbers and stripes didn't go well with charcoal gray. Elton John can pull off gold lame, but a storied football team, not so much. Saturday night's all right for fighting, indeed.

The main problem, however, was that between the gold lame and the ancient gothic typeface, you couldn't read the numbers. This drives the ink-stained wretches who occupy press boxes batty. Or at least it always did me.

(The worst: The trend toward outlined white-on-white, black-on-black or dark-primary-colors-on-black jersey numbers. If I weren't opposed to capital punishment, I'd say whoever thought those were a good idea should ride the lightning. But I'll settle for life without parole.)

Anyway, I felt deeply for anyone who was covering Army-Notre Dame. Of course, I got that N.D.'s duds were a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Four Horsemen game immortalized by Grantland Rice ("Outlined against a blue-gray October sky ..."), and that practicality will always take a backseat to Notre Dame's fervent embrace of its football hagiography. But good grief, people.

"Somebody should do jail time," Crabby Old Guy observed Saturday night, trying to tell if that was a gold lame 78 or a gothic 76.

I bet even Granny Rice would agree.