In the case of the Ottawa Senators, their alternate jersey became their road jersey. A few other teams have done that, too. It gives teams a chance to sort of test-drive a new look for a team, so instead of abruptly changing their graphics they can sort of ease into it. I think that's pretty smart. I'm interested to see if other sports try that. What baseball has done with their alternate jerseys is use the existing design, but in a different color.

What do you think of the basketball trend with the big wide sleeves, instead of the old tank-top style sleeves?

I don't personally like that look. I think that basketball uniforms are not as interesting as any of the other sports' uniforms. There's only two pieces, shorts and the jersey. I guess there's the sock issue to consider, the black sock or the white sock, high sock or the low sock -- but to me, the basketball uniform isn't as interesting.

Also, the whole baggy pants thing -- everything looking very baggy. I'm not too fond of where basketball has gone in the last decade or so. But I've got to give the NBA and, I guess, [commissioner] David Stern, some credit because they're the only league of the four major sports to have successfully resisted manufacturers' logos on the uniforms. You can have the team logo on your butt, or all these other crazy things, but there's no Nike swoosh or Russell Athletic R or Champion C or any of that on the uniforms that the players wear. They're on the merchandise, but they're not on the uniforms, and I have to give a kind of tip of the cap for that.

I think what's going on right now that's interesting is the Olympics.

I was just going to bring that up.

The Olympics are essentially individual, not team, sports. If you look at the individual professional sports, like auto racing or tennis or boxing, you have a whole different set of aesthetics going on. You don't have the team as brand, and often because of sponsorship, you have all sorts of commercial brands cluttering up your uniform. In auto racing it's right on the car; tennis players wear sportswear of their affiliated sponsor or sportswear manufacturer; boxers sell space on their trunks and stuff like that ...

Or the bottom of their shoes.

The bottom of their shoes, yeah, or their backs, on their skin, in Bernard Hopkins' case! What interests me most about the Winter Olympics is the figure skaters. You hear a lot about their outfits. You don't really hear much about the outfits of the skiers or the lugers or anything like that except to say, "Oh, he looks sleek in that get-up" or "Picabo Street's got that spider-web getup," but there's not a whole lot of chatter about it because basically they're just wearing some kind of skin-tight outfit and a number.

And that's the thing about the Olympics: Everybody has a number -- except the figure skaters. And I never understand that. Why can't they just wear a unitard and a number like all the other athletes? And you always hear the debate about whether figure skating is a true sport.

And whether they get judged on their outfits.

In fact, they clearly do. There was an article in today's Newsday -- hang on, I'm going to go grab it because I tore it out. Newsday's headquartered on Long Island, and one of the U.S. figure skaters, Sarah Hughes, is from Long Island, so it's like a big local story, and this headline says, "Dressing for Success: Hughes' Moves on Ice Are Tailor-made and So Are Her Costumes." And it's all about how some of her previous outfits got a less than warm reception by the skating establishment, whatever that means.

You know, the notion that you can be judged on what you wear, that it can affect whether or not you get a medal, is why people don't take figure skating seriously, or why some people don't. As someone who covers sports aesthetics professionally, I get into the notion that they're taking their aesthetics very seriously, but I think in a way that detracts from the sport's legitimacy.

Are there any other trends going on that have caught your eye lately?

In baseball, aside from the stirrups thing, there's been something of a return to basics. We talked about the Angels going back to a basic look this year. The Royals, I believe, have added a vest this year. The Indians are adding an alternate vest this year. The vest trend is slowly gathering steam. I'm kinda digging that.

I hate the vest look.

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