Fighting the "System"

The view from the Cheap Seats is being muddled by ridiculously long and billowy shorts. In a stroke of genius that could only come from an upstanding company like Nike, the men's basketball teams from Arizona, Florida, Ohio State, and Syracuse will be modeling what has been named the System of Dress. The uniforms will look something along the lines of...



What you may notice right off the bat is the shorts -- and I use the word "shorts" quite loosely. Quite frankly, they're huge. They're unnecessary. I haven't even mentioned the fact that when you pair really long and baggy shorts with a really tight, sleeveless jersey, you look like you're wearing a dress. I don't know about you, but I definitely don't want to see Joakim Noah or Greg Oden -- or any other basketball player for that matter -- in a dress.

Now, not all is wrong with Nike's latest pet project. One thing you may notice on the Ohio State in Syracuse jerseys is...nothing! After several years of stylized stripes going every which way on all of nike's uniforms (see: any picture of Ohio State's team before now), they have stripped the tops down to their bare minimum: a color, a name, and a number. Florida's uniforms are a little more complicated, with a ugly, yet subtle, gator skin pattern adorning the fabric. There are two possible outcomes of this once we get to see the uniforms on TV (these four teams will debut the uniforms during the Big Dance): the minimalist approach of the shirts will look really good, or it'll look like we're watching an intramural game. My vote goes on the first outcome. Stay Tuned...

Of course, there are all sorts of issues with these jerseys. Obviously, they are much tighter than the flowing jerseys that basketballers have been wearing since Michigan's Fab Five brought their hip look to the game in the early nineties. If you are a lean, mean, fighting machine of a small forward or point guard, these jerseys will do you all sorts of justice. However, even on the basketball court, not everyone is the greatest of physical specemins. If you're a power forward with a little extra weight on you, this is not something you're looking forward to wearing. I haven't even mentioned the fact that these things will be on sale to the general public -- you know, that overweight American public.

Another glaring aesthetic deficiency is those damn undershirts. Here is a simple fact for you: nobody wears long sleeves when playing indoor basketball. I'm going to assume that nobody in their right mind will wear the long sleeves, but you never know. The strangest sleeves are those underneath the Syracuse jersey. For one thing, I'm fairly certain that color-blocking that works so well on the jersey will definitely not translate to someone's arm. For another, there has to be some sort of rule against a design that complicated. I never did like the shirt-under-jersey look started by Patrick Ewing, and this is a whole new, scary evolution of that concept.

Of course, what more could you expect from the company that brought you this?