Rams and 49ers unis were once the magic thread in the fabric of the NFL

At first, the brighter blue and yellow of the Rams 2020 uniforms seemed in step with their recent rise. 

After all, things have looked up for Los Angeles football these modern times, harking back to the glory days of the late 1940s and early 50s. "Time to celebrate the good times!" ... a branding consultant to the club must have advised one fateful winter's day.

To be sure, chrome-tinged images of yesteryear hide whatever brightness might have existed in those earlier Rams unis. Only those who were actually there know how the sun bounced off those crew-cut era outfits inside the majestic L.A. Memorial Coliseum. 

To my eyes now, that old yeller was soft, and the blue more royal than anything else. Not so now, as the hyperactive, hyperintense, hyper-I-want-to-be-seen vibe takes hold across all of sports. Sure, in the Rams guide it's called royal blue ... but it looks more like Cool Blue Gatorade.

I'm just not sure what to make of the current get-up but it smacks of the sort of meddling only a mid-level marketeer with no sense of tradition could conjure up. Couldn't we get that kid on sanitary watch or something?

Why go brighter? Why? We can see the helmet, folks - the colors, the awesome Ram horn lines, even the facemask. I mean where does this end? You might as well move into shades of purple. At this point, ticking boxes for the sake of change seems more important than tradition. 

Now this all came to a head for me when the Rams recently faced the Niners, another team with a wonderful uniform - once upon a time. Today? Well, it's usually fine but sometimes, like against the Rams, the team dons a very bland all white - that's jersey, pants and socks - like a five-year old's pajamas. 

Hey, perhaps a kindergartener was interviewed for these uni designs, I don't know. No wait, sorry. I can't lay the blame for the black stripes and outlines of the numbers at the foot of an innocent kid - they'd be way more savvy with their Crayolas than to add black trim to red. 

The use of black as a primary color on NFL unis simply has to end. Did Roger Goodell sign a deal with Sherwin-Williams? What gives here?

I implore you to Google Roger Craig or Joe Montana - 'in the eighties': you will not see a finer uniform on the gridiron than that rich red jersey with three white stripes, gold pants and gold helmet. Forget the search, let me just paste one for you here ...

Magic. At least the current helmet is close to that older one but still has had the juice turned up on the gold because, you know, in 2020, really, really bright colors are so much more special. 

Maybe they should make the cleats rose gold while they're at it, because there's surely an uninspired graph on a frozen powerpoint slide somewhere that shows 11% of the population will just love it.

Let's get Monday Night Football back to being iconic

By J.P. Pelosi

*NFL's MNF started tentatively in 1964, untelevised 
*The 'spectacle' as we know it kicked off in the seventies
*First game saw the Browns beat the Jets 31-21, Sep 21, 1970

Football on Monday night seems a grand idea, no matter which way you dial it up.

Unless you're Tony Robbins or Hugh Hefner, most weeks start with a thud, a cold hard realisation that work awaits, the clothes hamper is festering and dinner might well be frozen.

Indeed, many of us need the relief of Monday night sports to ease us into the five day circus. But there's a problem: the ringmaster has found his way into our TVs to mess up Monday football, too.

Take the first two Monday games of the upcoming NFL season: Steelers - Redskins, Niners - Rams. Sure, they're interesting enough teams, and I get it, an east coast match-up complimented by a west coast clash. But this is the once legendary Monday Night Football!

Cossell, Gifford, Michaels, Madden. Marino. Plunkett. Montana. That freaking fantastic theme song... ba ba baaaaam ... babadum...ba ba baaaaa ...

How did it all become so, well, pedestrian?

Surely Giants - Cowboys would see more chips spat across living rooms. Chargers - Chiefs, too, would ignite some action. But there's a weird shift toward airing second rate contests, a trend that's making Monday sports fixtures feel blander than date night with Bill Belichick.

A rugby scrum of content

It's the same issue with football in my backyard, the National Rugby League (NRL). Instead of being a beer cracking, after-work barbecuing extravaganza, Monday NRL games are really an afterthought.

I'm not even sure most fans know it's on, and that's largely to do with it being a cable TV offering only. Perhaps the TV stations are just happy to lock big deals in with sporting codes and the games have become throwaway details. Or maybe with all the content flying around now, programmers simply don't know what constitutes a feature game anymore.

Either way, rugby league won't be played on Mondays anymore and columnists are already rejoicing. Given its soft crowds, Thursday Night Football could well be next.

Strength in numbers

The NFL can get away with a casual strategy because of the size of the US population, and more importantly, the sheer number of cable subscribers. NFL games attract massive crowds, both to the stadium and the box, so there's no real danger of losing fans over, say, a lazy Jags - Bucs game. Oh, they'll be watching, even with three sheets to the wind.

In Australia, however, cable isn't as prevalent. Even if it was, I don't think fans care enough about Monday's night of football because the fixtures are rarely appealing, and consequently, crowds a smaller than at local kids pantomime. It's not a good look.

Top shelf old boy!

One sporting competition that seems to have the gist of things is the English Premier League, which sometimes will serve up a Monday nighter for the ages. Take a recent affair between London rivals Chelsea and West Ham: The Telegraph called it a whizz-bang of a match. No messing around, just give the people what they want.

The NFL equivalent might be heated iteration of Pats - Giants, or Packers - Bears. Not the Rams (sorry LA), just because you have a new stadium to show off. Or the Skins because, I don't know, it's an election year?

Pretty packaging enough?

Listen, you have to love the nostalgic themed intro by Peter Berg that ESPN's MNF now uses. It's perfect. I'm in. But the scheduling needs work. It needs to draw a throng and fill the stadium. It needs to set digital recording boxes into a frenzy. And certainly test a few marriages.

The point of non-weekend football is to make it an event, right? You know, something you put your best undies on for that day. We have to want to rush home to kick off our shoes and fire up the grill.

Otherwise it just ends up being something we click on and move past, eventually landing on something with more action, like The Bachelor.