Why Nike’s Color Rush Uniforms Completely Ruined Thursday Night Football For Some Viewers

For Thursday night’s Bills-Jets game, the NFL decided to use special, monochrome uniforms for each team, decking them out like a pair of enemy laser tag teams. The Jets were in solid green tops and bottoms with white trim, and the Bills wore all red.

Initial reviews were, shall we say…not great?

But some people liked them! Some people also realized they were probably wrong to like them, too.

https://twitter.com/RBWTrent/status/664997798316630016

But the biggest issue that the league ran into shockingly wasn’t a lack of Christmas symbolism or accusations of outright greed for selling yet another jersey. It was the fact that a large segment of the population can’t easily tell which teams are which.

Yes, that’s right, red-green color blindness is the most common type of vision deficiency, affecting just under 10% of all males and a much smaller segment of females. That means there’s a sizable amount of the population that couldn’t easily tell the difference between the Bills and the Jets while they watched the game. That is not good.

https://twitter.com/iamjoonlee/status/664994441078378496

If you’re curious about other examples of color blindness, you can test yourself and see how big a deal simply telling the difference between two colors can be.

Of course, another complication making things more difficult for color-blind viewers is the fact that both teams played like garbage, making it even harder to tell who was who.

https://twitter.com/BobbyBigWheel/status/664991844145700866

Here’s hoping the next attempt goes a bit better, NFL.