In the latest attempt by sports franchises to get people in the stands, the West Michigan Whitecaps will wear emoji jerseys to battle Great Lakes.
Sports programs using special jerseys to garner hype around their teams is not a new concept.
It was popularized with the Oregon Duck and their approximately seven billion colors, including but not limited to: green, yellow, black, white, chrome, pink, a different shade of green, and yet another different shade of green.
Themed jerseys are becoming slowly and slowly more parallel with pop culture, as evidenced by the Kalamazoo Growler’s selfie jerseys they unveiled in 2014.
The West Michigan Whitecaps might have topped all the rest with these specialized emoji jerseys.
Tomorrow is #socialmedia Night and Whitecaps will be wearing these Emoji Jerseys! #wcaps pic.twitter.com/4NNGlucJf4
— West Michigan Whitecaps (@wmwhitecaps) June 29, 2016
They have everything from the monkey covering his eyes emoji to the crying laughing face emoji. These jerseys are great, and the Whitecaps just made a PR power move by having their players wear these. I just have a few simple questions:
If you win, will you keep wearing them?
Why not just use the baseball emoji only?
Or the wave emoji only, you know, the one that looks like your team name?
If you lose, do you shelve them forever, or press on with jerseys guaranteed to get fans in the stadium?
I’m a personal fan of these jerseys. I love the intersection of sports and pop culture, and when sports franchises don’t take themselves too seriously. Sports, by and large, are fun. They should remain fun.
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