What happens when good science meets bad planning? Well, just take a look at the National Hockey League's new uniforms.
The debacle began a few years ago, when league commissioner Gary Bettman decided that the NHL needed to update its look. That Bettman had this idea should have been reason enough to reject it: a former NBA legal adviser who probably didn't know what a hockey puck looked like until the NHL started paying his bills, he'd guided the league from a legitimate Big Four sport to an athletic afterthought with TV ratings lower than those of poker and professional bowling.
Bettman negotiated a deal with Reebok to produce the league's uniforms. These were, he said, in sore need of improvement. Not because the league needed a boost in merchandise revenues -- of course not! -- but because the current uniforms were inadequate to the modern game's demands. "It was done for performance and safety," he said. That the players themselves had never complained about them didn't matter.
The new uniforms, dubbed the Rbk Edge Uniform System, debuted during last season's All-Star game. Reebok's website draped its new products, made of a Willy Wonka-esque variety of
"technologically advanced materials" that would "enhance the NHL
athlete's performance," in a mantle of scientific validity.
"In addition to Reebok's extensive in-house research, research and development teams at MIT and Central Michigan University performed unprecedent independent tests further validating the improved performance of the rbk edge uniform system," the company proclaimed.
The jerseys used "the most innovative fabrics ever made." Compared to the old jerseys, they weighed 14% less when dry; possessed, as shown in wind tunnel tests, 9% less drag; absorbed 76% less moisture; lasted twice as long; and were 4 to 10 degrees cooler.
These claims were dutifully and uncritically regurgitated by sports journalists around the United States and Canada. To pick a couple particularly representative examples, USA Today's reporting read like a
Reebok press release and featured a company executive claiming that players would "go from driving a Ford to a Ferrari," while ESPN quoted
Gary Bettman calling the advances "an evolution of our uniform, taking into account where we are in the 21st century."*
But what did Reebok's numbers actually mean? Well, 14% less meant a jersey that once weighed 670 grams now tipped the scales at all of 575
grams -- a whopping savings of just over three ounces. The lowered wind resistance of 9% was another number that sounded impressive until you actually thought about it: never did the company explain just how significant the wind resistance was in the first place.
Imagine, for example, sprinting in a t-shirt, and again in a t-shirt that's one size smaller. The latter ought to have at least 9% less drag -- but are you actually 9% faster? Of course not.
You probably don't even notice the slightest difference. Nevertheless, Reebok's pseudo-scientific promotional videos showed a mock race between two skaters, one in the old jersey and one in the new, with the latter finishing while the other still had 9% of the circuit to go.
As for the reduced absorption, the company didn't give any figures for how much additional sweat weight the average hockey jersey actually gained during a game. Nor, apparently, did they ask where water that was once absorbed by jerseys would go. But more on that later.
Reebok did at least produce a specific figure to illustrate their uniform's doubled durability: a jersey that once wore out in 20 games would last for forty. How they decided on that number is hard to know, since the jerseys weren't actually tested by players in games, but only in a handful of practices.
Actual game testing was reserved for this season, when it was already too late to call the jerseys back. And that's when players pointed out something that Reebok might be forgiven for failing to anticipate, but can't be excused for not learning through real-life testing: just because jerseys don't absorb sweat doesn't mean the sweat disappears.
Instead of being absorbed by jerseys and socks and evaporating, the sweat gathered underneath them.
By the end of pre-season training, players around the league vocally denounced the uniforms. Sweat, they said, now soaked their equipment, literally pouring into their gloves and skates, filling them like buckets and making it hard to play with the skill that Bettman and
Reebok promised to "enhance." Unsurprisingly, players said the unbreathable uniforms were uncomfortably not. So much for 4 to 10
degrees cooler.
It also turned out that much of the savings in weight and drag came from making the uniforms more form-fitting than before, which in turn required the jerseys to be much more elastic. That makes it possible for players to pull jerseys over each other's heads during fights -- a very dangerous situation. But that's only when the fighters can actually get a grasp on the slippery fabric. When they can't, fights continue longer than before, rather than ending in a wrestling match -- again, a dangerous situation. Even if one feels that fighting doesn't belong in the game, it's there now, and isn't about to go away. For these players, the jersey puts them at increased risk of injury.
So what's Reebok going to do? At first, they and the league acted like nothing was wrong. Only after Sidney Crosby, the boy superstar on whom the NHL has placed its fading dreams of American success, complained did they say that the uniform system would be tweaked, though neither
Reebok nor the NHL have been specific about any changes.** A return to the old, perfectly good jerseys is, however, unlikely.
A decade of painful decline -- in the quality of the NHL game, the interest of its fans and the economic health of its teams -- has shown that Gary Bettman is incapable of learning from or admitting his mistakes, of which the new uniforms are merely the latest. Reebok's assorted scientific comparisons also left out the most important number of all: the new jerseys sell for twice as much as the old ones.
*
Images: Middle, Sidney Crosby, wearing the Rbk Edge Uniform System. Top, Wayne Gretzky. Back when he played for the L.A. Kings, the NHL didn't have a "uniform system," but at least it had fans. Bottom, Alexei Kovalev wrecking Darcy Tucker. Nothing to do with jerseys, just wanted it there. Watch the video on YouTube.*
* One hockey journalist who managed not to act like a lemming was
ESPN's E.J. Hradek. Maybe there were others, but I haven't found them.*
*** Update: Reebok "says it has developed a treatment that permits sweat to escape through the fibers, yet still manages to stay reasonably dry." And they've already given up on the socks. *
