The Uni Watch Super Bowl LVII Preview
The Uni Watch Super Bowl LVII Preview
Amaze and annoy your friends with these fun facts about this year’s Super Bowl uniforms.
After a long season, an exciting month of playoffs, and the obligatory extra week of hype, Super Bowl LVII is almost upon us, with conference champions Philly and Kansas City set to face off for the Lombardi Trophy this Sunday in Arizona.
The NFC is the designated home team this year, which means the Eagles had first choice of which uni combo to wear. They’ve opted to go with their standard green helmets, green jerseys, and white pants (plus I’m assuming they’ll go with white socks, because that’s what they wore in their playoff victories in the divisional and conference championship rounds). That means KC, as the visiting team, is obliged to wear white jerseys, and they’ve chosen to pair them with their red pants, resulting in the uniform matchup shown above. Not bad — this should be one of the better-looking Super Bowls. (The two teams had a similar uni matchup when they faced each other during the 2021 regular season, except that Philly wore black-topped socks for that game.)
Now, the average fan might just think, “Okay, Philly in green, KC in white — got it.” But as a Uni Watch reader, you are clearly not the average fan! On the contrary, you’re the type of person who can appreciate all the uni-related storylines and subplots lurking beneath the surface of this Sunday’s game, and that’s where the Uni Watch Super Bowl Preview comes in. In this article you’ll find a wealth of deep-cut fun facts and historical arcana about this year’s Super Bowl teams and their uniforms. If you commit this info to memory and recite bits of it at appropriate junctures during your Super Bowl gathering this Sunday, your friends and relations will no doubt move to the other side of the room, or maybe out of the room entirely be highly impressed by your sophisticated command of nuanced uniform minutiae. No need to thank me — knowing that you’ve cemented your social status as an annoying know-it-all as a master of entertaining uni-related trivia is reward enough for me.
Ready to dive in? Here we go with the top 10 things you need to know about this year’s Super Bowl aesthetics, plus a boatload of additional notes and details.
1. White Is Right — Right?
Teams wearing white jerseys have won 36 of the 56 previous Super Bowls, including a staggering 15 of the last 18. So if you believe that haberdashery is destiny, you might think wearing white would give KC an edge. But it also turns out that the two most recent teams to win the big game while wearing colored jerseys are, in fact, the Eagles (who wore green while winning Super Bowl LII) and KC (red in LIV), so both of this year’s teams have bucked the prevailing trend. What will that all mean this Sunday? Probably nothing, but it’s still interesting to ponder.
2. Shirt of a Different Color
Sunday will mark KC quarterback Patrick Mahomes’s 15th career postseason game. Notice anything unusual about the previous 14 (shown above)? That’s right, the team was wearing red jerseys for all of them. So this Sunday, somewhat amazingly, will be Mahomes’s first postseason appearance in white. (It will also be KC’s first time wearing white for the big game since way back in Super Bowl I, as they wore red for Super Bowls IV, LIV, and LV.)
