The Draw Play

*walks out on stage*

Hello everyone. Thank you for coming. I’m Shoes McSweatshop, lead NFL uniform designer and dream technician here at Nike. When Roger Goodell approached me with the idea of giving the officials a makeover to honor the CBA, I was surprised. But then I thought: why not?

Why do we never look at our officials with the same eye that we look at our uniforms? When was the last time you even spared a thought regarding our zebras? They have just always existed. But they are out there on the field at the same time, in the same place, on our screens. They are part of the NFL’s aesthetic. They are important visual signifiers.

Have you ever wondered why the officials look like they do? As you can see with our “historical Throwback” style, officials used to just wear all white with a black bow tie back in the 1920s. Players would confuse them for other players, so the stripes were added to make the officials more distinct. Why bring this back right now? Well, we think that in the 2020s players are highly trained specimens of football power instead of being a bunch of drunk dock workers who part-time with this weird violent excuse to hit people sport like in the 1920’s.  We will be using our throwback uniforms when other teams use theirs, to complete the historical image!

As for our brand new look, we decided to give our officials an implied flak vest of sorts. Our officials protect this game with their decisions and their enforcement, just like our military heroes and law enforcement. We won’t actually protect them of course, that’s extra money for padding, it’s just posturing. We are just really horny for tough guy branding.

As is tradition in the Nike offices, we of course have a black alternate that we call “The Eclipse Zebra” style. Officials are often supposed to be invisible, and we plan to introduce these in night games so that they are even harder to see! What could go wrong?

Of course, we can’t always hide our officials. Sometimes we must take pride! Our referees are known not just for their stripes, but for the flags they throw. Since no NFL team uses bright yellow as a main color, we have gone with Flag Yellow as our color rush option. As expected, these will be used exclusively on every Thursday Night Football game.

Then of course we have our Rivals uniform, aka where we have a bunch of ideas we don’t know what to do with, so we just throw them on a uniform and call it a day. Since officials are often at odds with what players truly want to do, we thought: why not make them at odds with your visual cortex as well? Dueling diagonal stripes and nonsense patterns will be sure to result in all kinds of chaos!

We thank the NFL for this opportunity to experiment and we look forward to possibly redesigning the uniforms for the sound guys with the big microphone dishes next.