FOXBORO, Mass. New England Patriots’ rookie head coach Jerod Mayo could be excused if he looked a little bit tired following his team’s 16–10 upset win of the heavily-favored Cincinnati Bengals yesterday.
“We worked hard all week,” Mayo said to a sideline reporter as he walked off the field, “and it paid off in a big way.”
At his post-game news conference a sportswriter asked Mayo, the former linebacker coach for New England, how he found the Bengals’ Achilles’ heel in stifling Cincinnati’s high-powered offense.
“We watched hundreds of hours of film, often at slow motion,” he said to a room full of reporters. “What we discovered was that their uniforms are ugly–I mean really ugly,” he said, as reporters dutifully transcribed the words that would spark cries of foul from the Bengals’ locker room.
The Bengals chose their all-orange uniforms after reviewing a selection of prison and highway maintenance jump suits, finally settling on a look favored by inmates who escape during fall football season. “It’s easy to evade law enforcement during ‘leaf peeper’ season if you wear orange,” said Tyrone “2-Bad” Hairston, who has been in and out of several federal prisons over the past twenty years. “And with ‘Orange is the New Black,’ you can walk right into the most fashionable soiree when you emerge from the woods.”
Mayo took over this season from former head coach Bill Belichick, who was long criticized for his taste in sideline apparel as his signature grey “hoodsie” sweatshirt was compared to a homeless man’s wardrobe. “I find that really offensive,” said Ellen Stritch, executive director of Cincinnati’s Evening Outreach Shelter, which provides beds and meals to an average of 120 homeless men each night. “Every day I see men who have been neglected and forgotten by our society, and I rarely encounter one who looks as bad as Belichick.”
The Bengals’ uniforms have been described as what a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger might wear on Halloween, but Kimberly, the former Pink Power Ranger who hails from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, took issue with that comparison.
“That’s not quite right,” she said in a telephone interview. “It’s more like what Tony the Tiger would wear if somebody sprinkled LSD on his Frosted Flakes.”