Color me in surprise. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had the first choice to choose their uniform combination for Super Bowl LV in their home stadium, and instead of going with the historically more intimidating red (or tin) jerseys, the Bucs opted for white jerseys next Sunday. and tin. That means defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs will slip into the same uniform they wore last year when they won Super Bowl LIV – the famous red jerseys and white pants. Do sweater colors really matter? By the smallest margin, yes.
Last year I wrote a long piece about the very first red vs. red Super Bowl. No Super Bowl before last year had two teams, with their dominant color being red. Now it’s happening for a second consecutive year. Instead of copying and pasting last year’s story and eliminating the 49ers for the Buccaneers, that would be self-plagiarism! – I’m refurbishing the piece into a much shorter piece for this year’s Big Game.
Super Bowl LV is almost here, and you can watch it for free in the CBS Sports App.
The color red is an important color as long as we understand colors. It means blood, passion, aggression, activity, romance and assertiveness, and its significance for us as humans can be traced through tens of thousands of years of human evolution. A study from more than a decade ago showed that judges favor the athletes who wear red and consider the athletes to be more dominant.
Last year, I asked Mark Frank, who wrote a study on the impact of jersey colors on sports, and Russell Hill, an evolutionary professor of anthropology, whether the Chiefs wearing red have an advantage over the 49ers in white. will have.
“Let’s see. How can I put it? Yes, but it’s small,” Frank said. ‘It has a slight advantage, but an unsophisticated gimmick erases the advantage. A pass that is wrong. One arm hit while being thrown is likely to dominate the advantage it would have. ‘
Hill agrees, and he does so as he paints a picture of Sunday night.
‘The way we would probably expect it to work anyway is not building the game, but on the field itself … athletes who are at stake, versus another. They face each other a lot while the ball is cracked. “Hill said. ‘I think in the specific contexts where it could have an impact on the San Francisco players, those athletes who all look at red-clad athletes, each displaying this color that this evolutionary association with power and domination has.
“It is in that particular context and in those very fine margins that we expect it to make a difference. If it only decreases one or two percent of the extent to which these players work, the energy they spend on it, and these games are good margins, which can be enough to tip the balance between winning and losing. ‘
Tom Brady, Bruce Arians and Jason Licht certainly read this story. Why then do they decide to go against this advice and harm themselves?
I have some premonitions. The first is that the Bucs in their week 12 loss against the Chiefs (who were in white jerseys and red pants) wore red jerseys and tin pants. In short, they tried it the first time and it did not work.
More globally, the Buccaneers were much better in white jerseys than their red or tin jerseys. Tampa Bay is 9-2 in white tops this season, 3-2 in red tops and 2-1 in tin.
Specifically for this jersey combination, however, the Buccaneers are unbeaten. The Bucs won 5-0 in white jerseys and tin pants this year, with two wins over the Panthers, Lions, Saints and Packers.
Meanwhile, the Chiefs won 9-2 in red jerseys (including 8-2 in red jerseys and white pants) and 7-0 in white jerseys this year.
And now the decision to be in white jerseys is becoming clearer to me. The Bucs evaded the slight unconscious advantage the red jerseys offered them and instead decided to put on the uniform they had achieved most of the season. After that, they forced the Chiefs in a uniform that they had less success this season, but won a Super Bowl last year, which could create a false sense of comfort in the game.
Oh, yes. The psychology – and reverse psychology – of Super Bowl uniform combinations.