The colors of Super Bowl LI are polychromatic trash and fans hate them

HOUSTON — The NFL has a longstanding relationship with several things. Here they are, ranked from most to least important:

“Teal?” You might be thinking, “As in the shade that falls somewhere on the color wheel between blue and green?”

Yes. Teal. The NFL must be, like, obsessed with teal, because what other explanation could there be for teal making its way into the color scheme of Super Bowl LI? There is no reason teal should be involved, given that the colors it accompanies are red, black, and some hints of neon yellow. All of the branding, buildings, and gear associated with this Super Bowl here in Houston boast this horrible motif that looks like it belongs on a 1990s starter jacket, or a more sinister version of a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper, or the Dolphins’ color rush uniforms.

Here, let me show you what I’m talking about. Check out this random pole outside the NFL Live fan experience downtown:

First of all, I don’t even know why that pole is there. I guess, technically, it’s more of a column, and I also guess that it’s probably home to broadcasting equipment, satellites, or a bunch of footballs stacked on top of each other in case we somehow run out over the course of a week.

Secondly, why is the pole so ugly? Answer: Because these colors have absolutely no business being anywhere near each other. Teal and black? Cool! Red and black? Dope! Black and yellow? Sure!

But teal, red, black, and yellow? Take a hike.

Granted, this is just my humble opinion. I’ve walked around all week cringing at the offending wall wrappings and restroom signs, but I wondered if perhaps I was being unnecessarily harsh. Maybe the NFL focus-grouped this strategy and most fans are all for it.

So, I headed to the NFL shop at the convention center that serves as Super Bowl home base to do some investigative reporting and ask some fans what they thought.

In order to get into the store, I had to wait in a line that felt longer than it should be for people who are trying to give the NFL their money. A woman was putting wristbands on fans as though the store was a concert, but instead of a concert, it’s just an even more cavernous space deeper in the belly of the convention center filled with incredibly ugly clothes, jackets, jerseys, and hats.

Here is a particularly bad hat featuring red, black, teal, and mesh that I found:

I spotted a couple browsing through a rack of polyester polo shirts that looked like something a little league coach from the 1980s might wear. I asked them what they thought of the color scheme.

“Ugh,” said the woman, whose name was Pat.

“It’s a little sketchy,” said the man, whose name was Matt.

I then stopped Stephanie, who was holding a sparkly shirt and was very much into the teal, but very much didn’t like the teal with the red. Here is Stephanie holding her sparkly shirt:

You can’t really see how sparkly the shirt is in that picture, but trust me. It was very sparkly.

I spotted one of the NFL store attendants whose name tag said Lovie on it. She was hanging up a fresh batch of teal shirts. I asked her what she thought about the colors.

“I like both of them,” she said. “But I don’t really like the teal with the red. Any other color would be better with either of them.”

Vinnie and Atoinette, whom I found by the sweatshirts, weren’t into the teal, either. They liked the red. And they liked the teal! But they didn’t like the red and the teal together.

Raoul, however, was my outlier. He was wearing a Dolphins jersey over a red sweatshirt, and when I asked him if he liked the red and teal theme, he said yes. I pointed out that his outfit incorporated the same colors, and he said, again, “yes.”

I headed over to the wall of hats, where Ellie and Earl, an older couple wearing Patriots jerseys, told me they didn’t like the color scheme. They thought it should be navy, red, and white.

“Those are the Patriots colors, though,” I said.

“Yes, they are,” they said.

And then, I saw it. The best jacket in the world, a coat that made up for every horrible motif, every awful teal-and-red-and-black-and-yellow striped pole. The piece of outerwear that redeemed the NFL of every hideous branding mistake its made during Super Bowl LI.

Here it is, for a cool 250 bucks (please ignore the bags under my eyes):

If someone wants to buy this jacket for me, I would be very much down to accept it as a gift (you can Google the Vox Media address in D.C. and send it there). I would also accept this chambray shirt with a beautiful patch of Texas on it:

But I digress. The point here, folks, is to tell you that, of the sampling of fans I accosted inside a convention center in Houston, most of them didn’t like the colors of the gear they were planning to buy. Further proof that the NFL doesn’t care about you, nor — and this is pure speculation on my part — do they understand the power of a good, old-fashioned focus group.