In California, a girls basketball team was disqualified, and reinstated after appeal, from their tournament because of illegal uniforms. We were interested and then aghast after seeing the reason why. Girls’ Basketball: Narbonne is Removed From Playoffs After Wearing Illegal Uniforms While there is a problem in sports in general with uniforms, this is not
In California, a girls basketball team was disqualified, and reinstated after appeal, from their tournament because of illegal uniforms. We were interested and then aghast after seeing the reason why.
Girls’ Basketball: Narbonne is Removed From Playoffs After Wearing Illegal Uniforms
While there is a problem in sports in general with uniforms, this is not where the problem lies. The problem is teams who wear uniforms with non-contrasting numbers which make them hard to read. Such as wearing yellow on white, blue on black, blue on red, red on blue, etc. What is worse is when a team wears the dominant jersey color over the same color, with a small piping. In recent years, this has been common in college sports which has also filtered to high schools and younger.
While this may look cool up close, it can be a nightmare for anyone who needs to quickly identify a player or number.
The only sport that we’ve encountered that strictly enforces legible numbers is racing. While we were announcing Florida Karting Association races, drivers were required to have highly readable numbers on their karts with contrasting colors. Using red or black on white or yellow was perfectly ok as long as the placard could be read easily and from a distance. While this may have changed or be different in other states, this rule made it much easier to follow the karts around the track and not lose track of someone.
The other issue with uniforms we have, numbers that look like other numbers. Some fonts don’t allow much spacing in the number and there are some in which a 0 could also be a 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 or 9. That’s seven different numbers all looking similar. And the biggest problem with these fashion faux pas? The parents and fans who get upset at the announcers for getting names wrong because we couldn’t easily read the numbers.
We are very much in favor of cool uniforms, but not at the expense of identification.
1 comment
1 Comment
Jim Malone
March 16, 2015, 9:47 pmI have been announcing Basketball, Football and Baseball since 1970. Uniforms have become a big issue over the last 10 years. Teams and designers are looking for flash and sizzle, and don’t understand that uniforms are not just clothing, they are game equipment, just as much as a ball, a bat or a glove.
REPLYI’ve had football games (in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness) with teams in Pink with white outlined numbers, others with drop shadows that look real cool from 6 feet away, but from the press box it looked like the team was playing in a torso deep mud-bowl with totally unrecognizable numbers. I always keep handy a wireless system with 100 yard range so as to be able to call the game from the sidelines where I may have a better shot at seeing the info. Maroon on Black is another great combo. I had that from 2 teams this basketball season, 1 was a NCAA D2 women’s team, the other a Canadian Minor League Pro Squad. But here is the next trend that I encountered in Football….Fluorescents combined with Metallics! Under the lights…near impossible to make out. I was lucky that the stadium had full video with instant replay. I used the monitors to pick out the numbers.