Red Wheelbarrow re: Football

If anything at all depends upon a Red Wheelbarrow, we need to talk about awful football uniforms. In the NFL, I know everyone hates as much as I do the NASCAR jumble of colors and stripes and drunken shoulder patches on the Buffalo Bills at home. Or were they away? Who could tell?

The Bengals, this close to something snazzy, have the fashionotsomuch to put a white stripe down the sides of the black jerseys when every other trim color is orange or orange and black. What the hell is the white stripe supposed to connect to? After all, the command is, "Only connect." Years ago, when the Bengals put those fake tiger stripes on the helmets, I knew it would lead to no good. I knew the denouement would be a long downhill slide, an ordained, epic, downward gurgle in the bathtub drain, a black hole to taste and common sense.

In college ball, surely we’d all agree that Oregon’s damned dumb Ducks—oddly representing a progressive state and good team—have a lock on the worst-dressed title. Yesterday they donned fashionable black and wore no green, their principal color. Is it so extreme that it's camp? Do we care about camp?

On the subject of black, can it be true that there's no law against black socks? Black shoes demonstrate kinship with the cosmos, an appropriate sense of tradition. Black socks indicate a black hole in IQ.

I wonder, too, who is paying for all the Duck uniforms. Can it be that alums are giving their money for polka dots on shoulder pads instead of financial aid or faculty salaries? Or white socks?

In addition to their ducklings, the Ducks are followed in offensiveness by Texas Tech, the Red Raiders who wear nothing but black except for an anorexic red stripe here and there. Another sell-out, and I don't mean season tickets.

Please assure me that Tennessee’s Volunteers will never again wear their pumpkin orange jerseys and pumpkin orange pants all at once, at home, or anywhere. Just a little pumpkin goes a long way.

Should I explore Division 3 in this context? Do I dare to eat a peach? Maybe Oregon's next helmet color will be peach.

In case I don’t get back this week (papers to grade), Happy Halloween, the dumbest holiday on the planet. Anyone who likes it can bite my pumpkin.

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