The Road Blues of the Dallas Cowboys

Most teams have their "road whites" and their home colors.  Even teams like Miami and Cleveland that prefer to wear white at home (and generally have to wear white on the road as most teams do wear color at home) still occasionally break out their color jerseys at home, whether it be for a prime time or otherwise special game.  The Dallas Cowboys are identified with their iconic white uniforms (and the - as one commenter called them - mint pants) but this week they are travelling to Charlotte to play the Carolina Panthers and we will get to see the Cowpokes in the rarely seen blues.   Along with the Dallas blues, we will also be treated to two other of my favorite uniforms, the New England Patriots' red throwbacks and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' orange throwbacks.  The Patriots and Bucs have been wearing their throwbacks once a year for the last few years, while the Cowboys have sort of a tradition of not wearing the blues.  So opponents, even those that regularly don't wear white at home sometimes will, just to make the Cowboys wear blue.

Some say it started in the sixties, when they lost two NFL divisional playoffs¹ to the Cleveland Browns in 1968 & 1969, that the blue jerseys were cursed, some say it's even further back than that as they've wore white at home since the beginning of the 1964 season.  They wore blue in Super Bowl V and lost to the Colts.  In the 1978 season, the L.A. Rams wore white at home to force the Cowboys to wear blue in the NFC Championship Game (although the Cowboys prevailed to go to Super Bowl XIII), but Philadelphia also did it two years later, and the Eagles won and went to the Super Bowl.  Through out the 1990s both the Eagles and Redskins wore white at home to force the Cowboys to wear blue, and the Patriots did it last year.  On opening day 2009, the Bucs wore white at home against Dallas, however the Bucs usually wear white at home early in the season.  The Cowboys will wear a blue Thanksgiving throwback at home, however they never wear the regular blue uniforms there.

The Panthers, too, wear white at home early in the season, however by Week 7 we are getting close to the time when the early season WAH teams generally switch to their colors, and one can't help but wonder if the Panthers chose to stick with white this late just to make the Cowboys wear their unlikely blues.  I was actually expecting Baltimore to wear white last week, but they went with their normal colors, allowing the Cowboys to don their favored white unis.

The Cowboys and Panthers have met eleven times, including twice in the postseason.  In their second season, the Panthers surprised the football world by going 12-4 in the NFC West and they hosted Dallas in a divisional playoff and defeated them 26-14 in the two teams' first ever meeting.  The Panthers would beat the Cowboys in Dallas during the 1997 regular season in their second meeting and again in the 2003 playoffs on their way to Super Bowl XXXVIII, but other than those three games, the Cowboys would own this series, having won the other eight meetings, including the last four in a row from 2005 through 2009.

I happen to like the Cowboys' blue uniforms, and wish we would see them more.  They are certainly a favorite among fans, if you look at a crowd shot in new Cowboys stadium, you always see a lot of them, especially considering the team never wears them there.

One factor, we are still in pink breast month, I do think that shade of pink that they NFL has been promoting this month looks good with the Cowboys' dark blues.  This is the first time the Bucs' throwbacks have been worn in October, and I'm not exactly sure how well the creamsicles are going to look with pink accountrements.  We can only hope the Buccaneers follow the 49ers lead and keep the pink trim to a minimum, for I don't think we want too many Bucs' fans gouging their own eyes out.  (Enough of them did that during the final ten games of last season.)

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One last thing I wanted to mention, I came across an interesting thread over at Chris Creamer's Sports Logos site discussing possible throwbacks that teams could wear in 2019 when the NFL celebrates it's 100th anniversary.  There's a lot of interesting cross-franchise concepts that have been suggested, for instance this one of the Cincinnati Bengals as the Dayton Triangles.  I don't agree with all of the executions of them, but all in all it's a pretty neat thread with many neat concepts.  

Check it out here: http://boards.sportslogos.net/topic/89181-nfl-100th-anniversary/

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¹- I initially had those games listed as "Conference Championships", and not "divisional playoffs" because that is how the NFL Record & Fact Book has those games listed: 

Why is that? Is it just because they were at the "final four level" -- wouldn't the pre-merger AFL & NFL League Championship Games correspond to post-merger Conference Championships?