The Good, The Bad, The WTF

Another week has come and gone, and its back to the much more popular bad/WTF version of this column. This week we set the wayback machine for 1996, the first season of the MLS. As you can see in the above the fold picture, the shirts were almost universally dodgy, and this week's is definitely one of them. A bonus, again, for you, dear reader, in the addition of an eBay auction, meaning that you can, if you desire, get your hands on one of these sweet first-year San Jose Clash jerseys.


Get to it, there's only a little over a day left. How else will you be able to impress your friends with a shirt that features no less that four colors in the pattern alone? Look at those daring angles on the shirt! Try and tell me that a female in your appropriate age bracket would not be impressed when you wear this on a date. You can't, because it can't be done.

Alright, out of the hyperbole and back into the real(ish) world. There were many things wrong with the MLS at its inception. There were no sites with appropriate sized stadiums at the outset, they had that stupid hockey-style shootout to decide ties, and, of course, the eyesore uniforms. I think the league was trying to place itself into some sort of "extreme" sports land, betting the average American sports fan wouldn't follow it. Yep, that's just what I think of when I think of extreme sports--Route One football played in the day during the hot and humid mid-summer months meaning no human could possibly play at a pace rivaling European/South American leagues lest he die in the process. EXTREME!

Rant over, I guess. Before I go, I would like to point out that there was one team that got it right from the outset, and avoided having to move away from an embarrassing first jersey (save changing the Nazi-esque badge).