Reviewing the new Nike Pro Combat range

Nike has launched its second year of their 'Pro Combat' line of uniforms for various college football teams to the similar vague disinterest that their 2009 set mustered.

For those unaware, college teams in American football have for the most part retained very minimalist and classy looking uniforms for long periods of their existence, such as the blue on white of Penn State, and the crimson of Alabama.




In an effort to sweep all of that aside and line their pockets in the process, Nike last year introduced a set of uniforms for ten teams it provides equipment for to use in their rivalry games, traditionally the last week of the season.

The results were mixed, with Ohio State's white on grey throwbacks looking relatively stylish, Missouri's black on carbon looking like something out of Transformers, and others offering so little difference as to appear just plain unnecessary.



Clearly not content with producing fairly inoffensive first designs, Nike went back to the drawing board for this year intent on making jerseys that would be unavoidably garish and in your face, and the resulting sets are pretty vomit-inducing. Virginia Tech's burgundy stripes on black helmet is particularly sickly, but take your pick from Miami's orange pyjamas, Pitt's Dark Knight inspired robotic look and Boise's metallic grey.



There is something strangely appealing about the shamelessly bombastic marketing however. Wander around the Nike website and you are bombarded with images of players exploding out of fires, emerging from swamps to roar next to alligators, and taming wild Broncos. Accompanied by hyperbolic audio tracks that attempt to claim that Pitt's uniform is inspired by the tough guys from the steel city, the effect is laughably entertaining.





There is an element of frustration with Nike's constant website reminders that the uniforms remain true to the spirit of whichever city or area they represent, when in reality a designer in the office has been let loose to run riot with Photoshop and indulge whichever fantasy their mood provoked that day.

Graphically the production is spectacular, and if the designs remained mere concepts they would probably be perfectly palatable, but in the glare of a real game, they just look slightly out of place, like a child's crayon drawing that somehow found its way through the development process.



Maybe more importantly, at the Uniwatch website, ESPN writer Paul Lukas took issue with the use of comparisons between football and real military combat, arguing convincingly that such casual references for merchandising purposes are more than a bit tasteless.

A night of great drama

Two fascinating sports games were played out across the globe last night, with two extraordinary comebacks to boot.

In Angola, the African Cup of Nations finally got underway on the pitch, after the tragic events of last week have dominated the news headlines off it.

In the opening game, hosts Angola played Mali, and proceeded to take an emphatic lead, with a brace of goals from Flavio, before two penalties had given Angola a 4-0 scoreline in their favour and had apparently decided the result.

Whilst Barcelona's Seydou Keita pulled a goal back for Mali with just 11 minutes left, and Frédéric Kanouté added a second with a header in the 88th minute, it all appeared to be too little, too late.

Amazingly however, Keita expertly slid in his second to make it 4-3, and with just 16 seconds left on the clock in injury time, Mustapha Yatabare was on hand to turn in a rebound from a save, and complete one of the most unlikely comebacks seen in a football game.



Mustapha Yatabare equalises in stoppage time

Meanwhile, across the globe in the outskirts of Phoenix in Arizona, the host Cardinals dramatically rescued a Wild Card round playoff victory following an inspired comeback by the Green Bay Packers in an epic struggle.

The game, which comfortably lasted three and a half hours, played out like the best action thriller one could imagine, with drama, intrigue, heroes and villains, controversy and the most dramatic of endings.

The Cardinals had rolled out to a sizeable lead, but slowly and surely the Packers had clawed their way back into the contest, helped by inspired plays such as this Greg Jennings catch.

But with both coaches trying occasionally radical tactics to retain the ball, the game began to play out in basketball fashion, if you had the ball, you simply had to score before conceding possession. Thus the score rose as touchdown was met with touchdown.

The blows continued to be traded, the Cardinals took the lead, only for the Packers to restore parity. Defensive ability was nowhere to be seen, and the game was all the better for it.

It appeared, however, to be coming to a slightly anti-climactic ending, when a relatively easy field goal attempt by Neil Rackers looked set to send the Cardinals through with just 14 seconds to go.


Rackers attempts to win the game.

The miss was dramatic, but ensured that the game would go to overtime, as such a thrilling match-up deserved to.

So when the Packers won the coin toss in overtime, it looked as if they had the green light to drive and score the winning touchdown to seal an utterly improbably come-from-behind win. Instead, this happened:



It was a breathtaking spectacle, a marathon of emotions and draining physical plays, but it left you adrenalised just having witnessed it.

Two classic examples in one breathless evening of sport's ability to mesmerise.

7-1

And lo, it came to pass. Brett Favre returned to his old stomping ground Green Bay in a Vikings uniform in an event so ridiculously hyped that it blew a hole somewhere out in space.

Fox Sports decided it would be worthwhile having a camera focused on the quarterback for the entire duration of the game for reasons largely unclear to anyone else. They also happily showed endless loops of Favre emerging from the tunnel prior to the game as if he was enduring an unfortunate groundhog day episode in his mind.

The Fox commentators also did a useful job in contradiction, one minute musing that the Favre media storm may finally and thankfully be dying down, only to show the montage again 20 seconds later.

As a Vikings fan I am hopeful that the conclusion of yesterday's game marks the end of the media circus surrounding Favre, a circle that began with frankly embarrassing 'I'm retiring'/'I'm not retiring' fiasco following his 2007 season with Green Bay.

In the end it was a game that turned from being a blow-out win for the visitors, to the Packers coming within 5 points in the 4th quarter and leaving myself peering at my internet stream considering some form of self-harm at the prospect of throwing it away.

Thankfully Favre and Peterson righted the ship and in the end the Vikes won with a comfortable score of 38-26. It takes Minnesota to 7-1 and has fans, including myself, dreaming of something beyond a wild-card playoff game.

The NFL is horrifically unpredictable (except when the Lions are playing it seems) but the remaining season schedule looks reasonable, a trip to division rival Bears seeming to pose the most danger.

I always feel as if is fitting reward for five years of support I have given to the team, and then I remember that there are such things as fans of Detroit, Oakland and St Louis in this world whose suffering looks set to continue.

It doesn't stop me from feeling incredibly optimistic about the team's prospects for this season however, and if the purple and gold are anywhere near Florida next February 7th I will be unseasonably chirpy. Bring it on.

So what's my excuse this year?

So the NFL visits London for the third year running today, and once again I have spectacularly failed to make an effort to get myself to the game. There are several reasons for this, the cost of the ticket, the cost of getting to and from the game, but none of them particularly stack up against how big a fan of the sport I consider myself to be, now my second favourite behind football.

Instead every year I find myself hoping that the game will be a wash-out, that one side will completely have dismantled the other by the second quarter, and that it will rain, rain more heavily than it ever has done before in the capital and make it a truly miserable viewing experience in the stadium.

The reality always fails me, the two games so far have both been considered successes, and I have been left more embittered and annoyed with myself every time.

The great thing about British followers of American football is the cult support it has, and in the five years since I started following it this support has only blossomed further, and with the advent of the International Series, has finally broken through into the mainstream.

This has created an interesting demographic of fans spanning two generations both of which have grown up around the television coverage provided at the time, the fans that watched the sport on Channel 4 in the 1980s, and the more recent converts like myself, who have been fed on a diet of Channel 5.

It's disappointing to see that the BBC won't be showing live coverage of the game this time around, but part of me is glad. For some reason there is satisfaction in keeping the sport away from the mainstream. It is a strange and unique feeling to watch a fantastic game played across the Atlantic one night, and have nobody and no media coverage talking about it the next day.