NFL responds to color blindness issues with “Color Rush”

The NFL’s “Color Rush” was meant to add excitement to the Bills/Jets game on Thursday Night Football. Too bad it didn’t account for color blindness.

The NFL had one of its better Thursday Night Football games of 2015 in Week 10, when the Buffalo Bills beat the New York Jets 22-17 at MetLife Stadium in Rex Ryan’s highly anticipated return to the East Rutherford, New Jersey. This was also the first of four games that the NFL was going to use their “Color Rush” jersey promotion, with this game featuring the Jets in all green and the Bills in all red. Too bad this was a television nightmare for the 8 Million men in America who suffer from red-green color blindness.

ESPN’s Darren Rovell revealed the NFL’s tactical broadcasting error.

Deadspin mocked the NFL’s lack of judgement.

The Associated Press’ Michael A. Giarrusso let the world know how this “Color Rush” game would create serious problems for men with red-green color blindness.

The notion that a red-green “Color Rush” would offend people who suffer from color blindness had to have come up at some point when the NFL first proposed this event. Couldn’t the Bills have just worn all blue instead, would that have helped? Perhaps this wasn’t the right game to debut “Color Rush” in general?

While red and green are contrasting colors for most viewers, the NFL is such a big brand that it needs to account for the millions of sufferers of color blindness. This is another situation gone haywire under the watch of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s watch.

Christmas time is usually awkward visually for red-green color blindness sufferers. Being either a Bills or Jets fan has its own areas of struggle. Thinking that playing a game with teams in all red and all green weeks before Christmas is a major rivalry game seems a bit alienating for people with this condition. Really just a poor lack of judgement for the millions of people with red-green color blindness.