Red Uniforms, Ranked

Some of my favorite sports uniforms are red. This has always been true, and my choices of teams to support have only reinforced that. (A chicken-egg situation?) Other than the Miami Marlins (who did have the snazzy Sugar Kings red jerseys a few years back), the Miami Heat, New England Patriots (god, I love those red throwbacks), Liverpool, Barcelona, and MY Florida Panthers all have red(-ish) uniforms.

I therefore feel uniquely qualified to contribute a ranking of red jerseys across the major U.S. sports to our Reds Week mania. I scoured the major leagues for a hint of red, drew up a list, then rated each uniform 1-10. Within each block of the same rating, I ranked them based purely on my reaction to their shades of red and design work, and after spending more time on this than I’d planned to, I came up with a ranking of 35 red jerseys, from best to worst. This is subjective, of course, but also correct, objectively. My blog, my rules. I do feel the need to explain some choices, though, so here are a few notes before I begin:

• Initially, I included alternates for every sport, but that made the number balloon to almost 50. The NBA was the prime culprit here, as a lot of teams have red alternates or City Edition jerseys. So, I decided to just scrap alternates as a whole. The only exception is for Major League Baseball, because otherwise every away jersey is just gray.
• With that in mind, the leagues included below are MLB, NBA, WNBA, NFL, NHL, NWSL, and MLS.
• Since this is mostly a vibes-based list, I made judgement calls on jerseys that are two colors. For example, Atlanta United’s jersey felt red to me, while the New York Red Bulls black-and-red jersey was definitely more black than red, so it is not here.
• I also made a judgement call on maroon; while I have always thought of it more as purple than red, Billy raised a good point by saying that the jerseys’ colors have names like “burgundy” and “bordeaux,” which are types of red wine. Count ’em!
• Finally, this wasn’t a rule, but more of an explanation: I tended to lean towards more classic looking jerseys than modern monstrosities. This is personal taste, but it might help explain some placements on the list, including my number one.