Remembering That Jets-Bills Game
Okay, let me tell you about something I remember pretty clearly. It involves that Thursday Night Football game, the one between the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills. This was back when the NFL started doing that whole “Color Rush” thing, where teams wore bright, solid-color uniforms.
So, I settled in to watch. The Jets came out in all green. The Bills were decked out in all red. On paper, maybe it sounded distinct. But watching it? It was rough.
Pretty quickly, I noticed something was off. On the screen, especially under the stadium lights and with the players moving fast in a pile, telling the green guys from the red guys was surprisingly hard. I found myself really having to focus, sometimes missing what happened because I couldn’t immediately tell who was who. Who made the tackle? Who recovered the fumble? It was genuinely confusing at times.
Figuring Out the Real Problem
At first, I thought maybe it was just my TV, or maybe the broadcast quality wasn’t great. But then I started seeing chatter online during the game. A lot of chatter. People were complaining everywhere.
It wasn’t just a little difficult to watch; for a significant number of people, it was apparently impossible. Someone pointed out the issue: red-green colorblindness. Boom. It made total sense.
Turns out, for folks with the most common type of colorblindness, those bright red and bright green uniforms looked almost identical. Can you imagine? Trying to follow your favorite sport when both teams basically look the same? It must have been incredibly frustrating, just a jumbled mess on the screen.
What Happened After
Well, the NFL heard about it loud and clear. They got quite a bit of backlash for that uniform matchup. It was a pretty big oversight, especially considering how many people are affected by colorblindness.
To their credit, they seemed to learn from it. They acknowledged the problem. In later Color Rush games, if there was a potential clash like that again, they made sure one of the teams wore white or a much more contrasting color. They started consulting experts on vision and colorblindness for future uniform designs, which was the right move.
It really got me thinking about how easy it is to forget about accessibility, even on a huge stage like the NFL. Something as seemingly simple as picking jersey colors had a massive impact on whether a whole group of fans could even enjoy the game. That Jets-Bills “Color Rush” game definitely stuck in my memory, not just for the football, but for that unexpected lesson in design and considering everyone’s experience.