Jersey winner

A new "For Pete's Sake" blog appears each Thursday on Profootballhof.com.

For more than two weeks this month we encouraged fans to cast their vote in our jersey showdown. The reaction was outstanding as we received tens of thousands of votes for 16 interesting jerseys we pulled from our collection. The winner was the 1993 Buffalo Bills jersey.

I must admit that I was a bit surprised some of the NFL’s older jersey didn’t fare very well.  I really thought football fans would be drawn to the jerseys from the 1920s that we featured from teams like the Canton Bulldogs and Duluth Eskimos. I was wrong. Way wrong! The 1922 version of the Bulldogs threads downed the 1965-66 Broncos but then was eliminated from the bracket by the Bills jersey. The 1926 Duluth jersey was pounded by the ’87 Seahawks.

The results of our bracket reaffirm something we already knew. Fans are devoted and passionate about their team. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised that some of the Bills fans who voted for Jim Kelly’s jersey might actually think that the ’36 Giants or the ’51 Packers jerseys are actually a cooler looking jersey. But, how does a fan vote against their team no matter what the issue might be?

Thanks to the help of some team websites and Facebook pages, these fans came out in droves and had some fun with our bracket. We even received some less than flattering posts about our jersey selection.

To set the record straight, the jerseys were randomly picked from our collection and spanned each of the NFL’s decades and had 16 different teams featured. Nevertheless, Cowboys and Steelers fans asked why they weren’t included. Some others were miffed that the Chargers’ powder blue jersey from the ‘60s weren’t featured either. Again, the jerseys in the bracket were picked in a completely random fashion.

But, now we want to hear from you. Add a comment to this story and let us know which ONE jersey is the most obvious to have been excluded from the showdown!