Lovers of fashion and sports — and maybe stirrups on baseball uniforms — have long found a friend in ESPN’s Uni Watch blog. Written by Paul Lukas, the site had talked about everything from uniform rumors and concept art to misprinted uniform names to whether athletes removed the button (also called a squatchee!) off the top of their fitted 5950.
If you loved uniform design, you probably read Lukas well before he became associated with ESPN, but when Page 2 brought him on the column truly grew into its own. Which is why the news that Lukas and Uni Watch is leaving ESPN is equal parts surprising and sad.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Uni Watch will no longer be affiliated with ESPN, though the blog will continue on without the Four Letter’s backing. Lukas was interviewed in the story and said that the blog, which has been on ESPN since 2004, will continue in a different form.
Lukas said his relationship with ESPN will end in March of 2019.
Lukas said he isn’t sure what’s in store for Uni Watch, but he said the blog, which operates independently of his ESPN content, isn’t going anywhere. ESPN accounted for 76 percent of his income in 2018, he wrote on the blog Tuesday. He’s contemplating trying to find another media partner to replace ESPN, or posting only his blog, in which case he’d need to ask his audience to help subsidize the operation.
The WaPo feature is interesting and chronicles Lukas’ writing background before he started Uni Watch and where the blog has found a home, which has been a number of different places like Slate and The Village Voice throughout its time. His ESPN relationship has lasted 20 years, in which time he gave generations of sports fans a lens through which to view the business and aesthetic angles of sports apparel and jersey design.
“I care about that stuff,” Lukas said. “My career is that I, for better or worse, have a slightly eccentric perspective on things and I tend to notice small details. Not everyone likes or gets my work, but the people who do are really into it. That’s really the case for Uni Watch.
“And what I’ve heard thousands of times with Uni Watch fans is, ‘Thank God I’ve discovered Uni Watch. I thought I was the only one.’ It’s almost like these people get to come out of the closet and be their geeky selves.”
Lukas certainly wasn’t the only one, and he noted just how many different sites, this one included, now obsessively covers new uniforms and discusses good and bad design. Without Uni Watch, a lot of that attention and focus probably wouldn’t have happened. It would be a shame to lose it altogether.
