You will not recognize the Pro Bowl this Sunday. And that’s exactly how the NFL wants it. Looking to spice up what’s become a stale exhibition, the league is giving its annual Hawaiin fete a serious shake-up, in both look and logistics.

Last fall, the league unveiled their new Nike-designed Pro Bowl uniforms, the Nike Elite 51. Gone are the traditional red and blue of the AFC and NFC, respectively. In their place, a light-colored uniform with total orange trim, and a darker one with volt trim.

“We’ve been very open about the fact that the Pro Bowl needs new energy,” says NFL Senior VP of Consumer Products Leo Kane. “We think these uniforms bring new energy. They get you away from thinking about the two conferences.”

That’s the idea, because there are no more conferences. Teams were picked earlier this week by “captains” Jerry Rice and Deion Sanders, lending a kind of school-yard superstar approach to the game.

Kane says Nike and the league worked together closely to integrate the uniform changes with the Pro Bowl’s new look. They also wanted to tie in the new design with the idea that the Pro Bowl is the first event of Super Bowl week. Kane says the silver trim is a nod to the Lombardi trophy and the total orange color is reminiscent of the pylon, which all players cross on the way to end zone glory.

“You have the silver fill that has texture and gives a richness to it,” says Nike Creative Director for Football, Todd Van Horne, who says the league approached the company about a year ago with the idea for a Pro Bowl uniform change.

“I think people would be disappointed if they turned on the game and there was this new format but the uniforms looked the same,” Kane says. “This gives them the visual clues that this really is going to be a different Pro Bowl.”

The perennial knock on the Pro Bowl is that the quality of play is less than stellar. But the NFL isn’t like the other major sports. There are only 16 games for a reason. NFL players spend four months knocking the bejeezus out of each other in weekly warfare for the entertainment value of the masses. No wide receiver is going to risk his substantial pay check for the coming year by going full-speed over the middle to catch a pass and risk injury in a meaningless game. So can we forgive these guys for not going 100% all out pedal-to-the-metal when the season is over in an exhibition game in Hawaii? Maybe, maybe not.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell hasn’t held back his criticism of the game in recent years, saying during the 2012 season that if the quality of play didn’t improve, the league would consider axing the game altogether.

TV ratings for last year’s game dropped to a 7.1 last year, down eight percent from the year before. Its 12 million viewers was still higher than the All-Star games in the other three major U.S. sports and close to the average for ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcasts this year (13.7 million). Yet it lagged far behind the average viewer numbers—which were typically above 20 million—for regular season games on CBS and FOX.

“Pro Bowl is an area that we’ve told Nike we really want them to come to us with innovation…we want to use that as a testing ground for new ideas that we might be hesitant to put to our [teams],” Kane says.

The Super Bowl will also be a kind of Nike design showcase, with one of the teams competing, the Seattle Seahawks, having just gone through a uniform re-design by their Pacific Northwest neighbors before the 2012 season.

While some have criticized the ‘Hawks unis as looking too much like the new-age college uniforms popular with teams like the Oregon Ducks, Kane thinks the new design maintains the team’s traditional look, while giving it a modern day update.

“The Seahawks are a great example of that. I don’t think anyone turns on the TV and says it doesn’t look like the old seahawk. It’s just an updating of what was already a fabulous look,” Kane says.

Seahawks jerseys are certainly selling, with three uniforms (Russell Wilson, Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman) among the league’s top 10 best sellers. Of course, cool redesigns are great, but nothing is better for business than a great product on the field. The Seahawks get it. NFL executives are hoping the Pro Bowl follows the same trajectory.

Brief Take: The NFL is trying to spice up the Pro Bowl with new uniforms and a new format for team selection. Whether it will work remains to be seen.

Tags:


  Save as PDF