An Important Update to My Color Rush Interview
Tom Andrich has clarified a key point.
Yesterday I published an interview with former Nike art director Tom Andrich — the man who created the NFL’s Color Rush program.
If you read that interview prior to about 5pm Eastern yesterday, you may have missed an important update that I added to the piece, so I’m sending out this short follow-up post to bring everyone up to speed.
Here’s the deal: As you may recall, at one point Andrich said that Nike stopped doing helmet designs shortly after taking over the NFL’s uniform contract in 2012. Here’s the relevant section of the interview:
Andrich: [Around 2013] Nike decided — or maybe it was brought in by the NFL, I don’t know — but basically, the bottom line was that we weren’t going to have anything to do with the helmets anymore. We’re not a manufacturer of helmets, and we don’t want to be responsible for all this bad press about CTE and all that. So the NFL took over all the helmets, as well as the design work on the helmets. So that was always kind of a disjointed design partnership.
Uni Watch [astonished]: Just so I’m clear on this, you’re saying that this was not just for Color Rush, but also for all the teams that you did new uniforms for? For all of those, you guys had nothing to do with the helmet design?
Andrich: Yes.
UW: I’m thinking of all the NFL teams Nike has redesigned over the past decade — the Dolphins, the Bucs, the Titans. Are you telling me that the Jaguars’ two-tone helmet —
Andrich: That was not a Nike idea. That was their idea.
But about seven hours after yesterday’s piece was published, I received an email from Andrich. He was very happy with how the piece turned out, but he wanted to revise that bit about the Jaguars’ helmet. Here’s what he told me: