Black Uniforms and Aggression in Professional Sports (Nov-15)

The Theory

Teams wearing black uniforms were seen as more aggressive, which lead to higher amounts of penalties in contact sports, including hockey and American football. In the NFL there are two teams which have black home jerseys, the Oakland Raiders and the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The Observation

To test this theory, NFL penalty statistics were pulled from the sports statistic website, TeamRankings.com. I looked into two sets of stats. The first set of statistics which were examined was NFL team penalties per game from the 2016 season. The second set of stats were number of penalty yards per game from the 2016 season.

The statistics showed that the top two teams in each category is as follows:

Penalties/Game 1) Oakland Raiders (9.1)

2) Jacksonville Jaguars (8.1)

Penalty Yards/Game

1) Oakland Raiders (77.1)

2) Jacksonville Jaguars (74.2)

The Conclusion

My observation supports previous research that teams wearing black uniforms were seen as more aggressive, which lead to higher amounts of penalties in contact sports.