Letters to the Editor
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Flag Colors and Unis
"I'm not the flag-wavinest Cub Scout in the pack but I think national teams should wear the flag colors."
The Oranje and the Azzurri would disagree.
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Are you missing something King?
Don't you know that the most important sporting event in the history of all sporting events was the Oregon State Beavers repeat victory in the College Baseball World Series????
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Patriotic Theme?
Why demand it? That just not cool today. As an American, I've noticed it's much cooler to bash America than to embrace it. 'Hip' folks would rather wear around a Che Guevara or Mao t-shirt than one with an American flag on it. We've deemed oursevles the great evil in the universe and I can't help but think that our soccer teams are reflecting that. Our soccer team played a game in Mexico, and our players had to listen to their amazingly ignorant fans chant, 'Osama, Osama!!!' What losers.
I think it's a self-loathing thing. We're too embarassed by our status as world leaders in economics, civil rights and foreign aid. Too frightened to wear the red, white and blue.
To all the America-Hating Americans, you should go to work on the 4th.
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Actually...
The US is not the world leader in civil rights and foreign aid. To say that shows a shocking lack of knowledge about civil rights, foreign aid, and American history.
Also, those gold unis are LAME!
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name a country
which hands out more than we do annually?
you won't find one. you've been tragically bitten by the ignorance bug.
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Sixers and USA unis
The yellow and red trim on the Sixers photo you linked were a special design for a game played in Barcelona. One shoulder had the Spanish flag (three stripes) the other featured Catalunya's flag (nine stripes).
And wrt USA's soccer duds, I think the blue in the flag is closer to navy than royal blue (pantone 281 if you're scoring at home), so the unis aren't far off. The third jersey is in fact a royal blue pinstriped affair, if that makes you happier.
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Mikes Pace
Mikes Pace is right, 'cause what says America more than empty symbolism? Run up that flag and then screw your neighbors. Stay home on the 4th and use that time to figure out how to better cheat on your taxes. Take an oath to defend the constitution and spend 8 years undermining and shitting on it.
Most of the team you mentioned, King, aren't national teams at all, they're local sports teams. Maybe the ones in DC could run with red, white and blue, but do you really want everyone wearing those colors? The Bills are still Red, White and Blue or are you saying Buffalo isn't American enough for you? The Titans and Patriots are technically Red, White and Blue, though I'm sorry if your delicate artistic sensibilites are offended by their choice of shade. The New York Giants are also Red, White and Blue.
Why would we want more teams wearing this combination? Shouldn't teams be allowed to find their own identity and display it as team colors? What fun would it be to show up at a game and have everyone wearing exactly the same combination, or should we all be looking and thinking "ok, he has blue stripes and I have red stripes"?
Heck, I'll stick with the Packer's green and gold.
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Holland
The Oranje and the Azzurri would disagree.
Can't speak for Italy, but Orange is a color historically linked with Holland. See William of Orange, the Low Countries revolt, and independence from the Habsburgs.
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Pat Patriot ditched for commercial reasons
I had always heard that "Pat" was ditched for Elvis because the Krafts do not hold the trademark for Pat, and thus would get more licensing revenue by creating their own new logo.
Alternatively some say the old logo is too "complex" and too difficult to reproduce on the myriad items that get stamped with logos these days.
It's also odd that the fans love the old logo more, but the Boston media seems to hate it. When the Pats played the Lions in throwback jerseys 4 years ago I remember the Boston press making snide remarks like "throw those red jerseys away."
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More Pace Misunderstanding
USA’s aid, in terms of percentage of their GNP has almost always been lower than any other industrialized nation in the world, though paradoxically since 2000, their dollar amount has been the highest. (Only since 2004 have they move up from last place, by just one or two places.)
Since 1992, Japan had been the largest donor of aid, in terms of raw dollars. That was until 2001 when the United States reclaimed that position, a year that also saw Japan’s amount of aid drop by nearly 4 billion dollars
All depends on how you look at it, doesn't it? We're not really a leader, so much as a trailer. And while we do dole out large amounts of cash, we still maintain protective tarrifs that prevent the "free trade" we claim we want, much to the detriment of the same countries we throw some cash at.
And how exactly are we leaders in Civil Rights when we are trying to roll back a woman's right to choose, deny homosexuals the right to marry, abolished slavery a century after Europe, didn't give women the right to vote until 1920 and kept segregation alive until the 1960s?
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The Flying Elvis
Up here in Beantown when the Kraft's introduced the new logo (god, more than 10 years ago now), one of the local newscasters dubbed it the Flying Elvis. And it stuck, in some circles.
I for one (not in the boston media) would love to see Pat Patriot back. Yesterday.
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Sorry J M F Q
The Oranje and the Azzurri would disagree.
While it may be true that those two colors are not on the national flags of The Netherlands and Italy respectively, they do have national associations in that they are the colors of the royal houses of the two countries. So they pass the test as national colors, even if they aren't, in King's words, the "flag wavingest" national colors available.
More importantly, however, every Dutch and Italian athlete in every sport wears those colors when competing for for their country. That makes them immediately recognizable, which is sort of the point in the end. The U.S. national soccer teams are, to my knowledge, the only U.S. national teams that don't always wear some variant of the flag colors, which menas they are never recognizable at first glance except possibly to the hardcore fan. Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of a uniform? And I don't buy the capitalism argument either. After all, the Italian soccer jersey undergoes subtle changes every two years, and these are usually enough to move the merchandise without sacrificing either tradition or the ability to recognize immediately the team.