Uni Watch: When the sport world was laughing in the purple rain

10:00 AM ET

The uni-verse has had a bit of a blast from the chromatic past lately. First, the San Jose Sharks announced that they’d be wearing teal at home during this season’s NHL playoffs — a change from their previous four postseason appearances, when they wore black. Then the sports world was awash in purple as a memorial tribute to Prince. And just a few days ago, the Sacramento Kings unveiled a set of logos featuring a new, deeper shade of purple.

If all this left you feeling a bit of déjà vu, it’s probably because those two hues — purple and teal — evoke a very specific time period in sports design. Simply put, they were the signature trendy colors of the 1990s. How trendy were they? By Uni Watch’s count, there were 22 teams in the Big Four pro leagues that either came into existence or were reborn with a new team name in the 1990s (including the Sharks, who hit the ice in 1991). Of those 22 teams, half of them — 11 out of 22 — used purple and/or teal in their inaugural color schemes:

Updated Chart: Of the 22 new or renamed teams in Big Four pro leagues in the 1990s, 11 used teal and/or purple. pic.twitter.com/7MfaLN8vq0

— Paul Lukas (@UniWatch) April 25, 2016

And that’s not counting several established teams that adopted purple or teal during the 1990s. We’ll get to them in a minute.

Although this was largely a ’90s phenomenon, the purple and teal revolution really began in the previous decade, when the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets were born in 1988. Their uniforms, designed by the menswear magnate Alexander Julian, featured purple and teal. The newfangled color palette turned out to be tremendously popular with fans, and sports bigwigs took notice. By the turn of the decade, all the pieces were in place to make purple and teal the colors of the ’90s.

That turned out better in some cases than in others, because while some of those 1990s designs have held up pretty well, others look hopelessly dated. To get a sense of that, let’s take a look at how the teal and purple reign unfolded on a sport-by-sport basis. We’ll start with MLB, which had four new expansion franchises in the 1990s. All four of them used at least one of the trendy colors, and one existing MLB team got on board the teal bandwagon as well:

All four of MLB’s expansion teams in 1990s – Marlins, Rockies, Diamondbacks, Devil Rays – used purple and/or teal. pic.twitter.com/O5u6SqdWcA

— Paul Lukas (@UniWatch) April 25, 2016

Mariners also adopted teal in the ’90s. (Yes, I know, it’s technically “Northwest Green,” but come on – it’s teal.) pic.twitter.com/USjhIN5gzW

— Paul Lukas (@UniWatch) April 25, 2016

The NFL had two expansion teams in the …

continue reading in source espn.go.com