Dressed for success

Uniforms just part of players' Super Bowl superstitions

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Posted: Thursday January 28, 1999 01:38 AM

The Broncos have not lost a game in their blue uniforms AP

MIAMI (AP) -- Since their uniforms were redesigned last year, the Denver Broncos have never lost a game wearing their sharp dark blue jerseys with the orange piping.

Twenty-one games. Twenty-one wins.

Is there a pattern here? Quarterback John Elway hopes not. He's not good about superstitions.

"I started getting superstitious about being superstitious," he said. "As you get older, you stop remembering what it was you're supposed to be superstitious about."

Consider though that in Sunday's Super Bowl against Atlanta, the Broncos have been designated as the road team and will wear their white shirts. That's the same color they wore when they suffered their only losses this season, the last one in Miami.

Uhh-ohh.

Safety Steve Atwater smirked at the suggestion that jersey colors count. "The uniforms are no big deal," he said.

Shows how much he knows. When Jerry Glanville became coach of the Falcons in 1990, one of the first things he did was dump the team's namby-pamby red shirts for more foreboding black jerseys and black helmets, hoping perhaps to convey some subliminal message of strength to his players. The Falcons responded with a 5-11 record.

"We were totally illegal my first year," said Glanville, now covering the NFL for HBO and Fox Sports. "You're supposed to have a year's lead time on changing. They said we'd be fined every time we wore it. I was never noted for following a lot of rules."

Sales of Falcons souvenirs went from 28th to the top 10. "I think they dropped the fines when that happened," Glanville said. "If somebody paid them, they didn't tell me."

Then there was the matter of Al Davis, who threatened to sue.

"Davis thought he had the patent on black," Glanville said. "We went in there and beat the Raiders. We showed Al who deserved to wear black and who didn't."

That was in Atlanta's 10-6 season in 1991, when people began to think that maybe this black business was working. Then the color scheme went into a prolonged slump as the Falcons struggled through consecutive 6-10 seasons. Glanville was sent packing but the black shirts and helmets stayed and made an impression.

"Kevin Greene came up to me one time and said, 'Coach, you know the best thing you ever did in the NFL?'" Glanville said. "I told him I shut out Miami one time, held Dan Marino to 13 yards passing. He said, 'Naah, you brought the best looking uniform to the NFL.'"

Let others worry about jersey colors and subliminal messages. Linebacker Jessie Tuggle, who went from Atlanta's crimson shirts to Glanville's black wardrobe, thinks it's all fantasy.

"I'm not superstitious at all," he said. "I don't do anything the same way twice. I get mentally and physically ready before every game. That's my superstition."

Cornerback Ray Buchanan said some of the Falcons insist on little cosmetic touches before each game, making sure they look the same way they did the week before. "But it's not a big deal," he said.

And tackle Bob Whitfield said he had no superstitions, either. But when offensive line coach Art Shell suggests that on a given day the up-front guys all wear the same colors, why they all wear the same colors.

Atwater's casual approach to the matter of the blue jersey streak suggests that the Broncos are not superstitious. Not true.

"Yeah," Atwater admitted grudgingly. "I guess we have some superstitions."

There is, for example, the matter of where the players park their cars at Denver International Airport when the team is leaving on a road trip.

"We all have to park on the first level," Atwater said. "They know we're coming. They know we want to do that and they set the spaces aside for us."

At home, Atwater follows another driving regimen.

"I never go home from the stadium the same way I came," he said. "I always have to use a different route, even if it's out of the way."

There's no sense tempting the fates.

 

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