Away colours
Away colours or road colours are a choice of coloured clothing used in team sports. They are required to be worn by one team during a game between teams that would otherwise wear the same colours as each other, or similar colours. This change prevents confusion for officials, players, and spectators. In most sports, it is the visiting or road team that must change.
In many sports leagues and competitions, a team wears its away kit only when its primary kit would clash with the colours of the home team, while other sports leagues and competitions may mandate that away teams must always wear an alternative kit regardless of a potential colour clash. The latter is common in North American sports, where "colour vs. colour" games are a rarity, having been discouraged in the era of black-and-white television. Almost all road uniforms are white in gridiron football and the National Hockey League, while in baseball, visitors typically wear grey. In the National Basketball Association and NCAA basketball, home uniforms are white or yellow, and visiting teams wear the darker colour.
Home teams in some leagues and competitions may also have the option to wear away colours at certain home games, and the away team then has to wear the opposite. At some clubs, the away kit has become more popular than the home version. Replica home and away kits are usually available for fans to buy. Some teams also have produced third-choice kits, or even old-fashioned throwback uniforms.
In many sports, the colour contrast is only required for the upper body garment, and thus a team's home and away kit may both have the same coloured pants or shorts. It has traditionally been the opposite in Australian rules football where the home team wears dark shorts and the away team wears white shorts.
American football
National Football League
In the National Football League, most teams often wear their "official team colour" at home, with the road team being assigned to wear white in most cases. White road uniforms gained prominence with the rise of television in the 1950s. A "white vs. colour" game was easier to follow in the black-and-white television era. According to Phil Hecken of uni-watch.com, "colour vs. colour" games were actually the norm until the mid-1950s. Even long after the advent of colour television, the use of white jerseys has remained in almost every game.The NFL's current rules require that a team's home uniforms must be "either white or official team colour" throughout the season, "and visiting clubs must wear the opposite". If a team insists on wearing its home uniforms on the road, the NFL Commissioner must judge on whether their uniforms are "of sufficient contrast" with those of their opponents. The road team may instead wear a third jersey, such as the Seattle Seahawks' "Wolf Grey" alternate.
White at home, colour away
The Cleveland Browns wore white for every home game of the 1955 season. The only times they wore brown were for games at Philadelphia and New York, when the Eagles and Giants chose to wear white.In 1964, the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns, Minnesota Vikings and Los Angeles Rams wore white regularly for their home games. The St. Louis Cardinals also wore white for several of their home games. While most teams switched back to their coloured uniforms the next year, the Rams and Browns still regularly wore white until the 1970s, with the Browns even continung it until their temporary deactivation in 1996. Since returning in 1999, the Browns have on occasion worn white at home during the regular season, but for the most part have relegated it to the preseason while wearing brown jerseys for the regular season.
Until 1964, the Dallas Cowboys had worn blue at home, but it was not an official rule that teams should wear their official colours at home. The use of white jerseys was introduced by general manager Tex Schramm, who wanted fans to see a variety of opponents' jersey colours at home games and continues to do so today.
White has also been worn regularly at home by the Miami Dolphins, Washington Commanders, and several other NFL teams. Teams in cities with hot climates often choose white jerseys at home during the first half of the season in late-summer and autumn, because light colours absorb and retain less heat in sunlight. These hot climate teams include several clubs in the Southern United States such as the Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Houston Texans, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Dolphins in particular will generally stay white all season-long due to Miami's winter climate, typically only wearing their coloured jerseys for home night games. Every current NFL team has worn white at home at some time in its history, though the Pittsburgh Steelers, having last worn white for a home game in Pittsburgh in 1969 just before the 1970 merger, are the only team not to wear white in a non-neutral site home game since the start of the 21st century. The Seattle Seahawks had never worn white at home until their home opener against the Carolina Panthers in 2023.
During the successful Joe Gibbs era, Washington chose to wear white exclusively at home in the 1980s and 1990s, including the 1982 NFC Championship Game against Dallas. Since 2001, they have chosen to wear white jerseys and burgundy jerseys roughly equally in their home games, but they still wear white against the Cowboys. When Gibbs returned from 2004 to 2007, they wore white at home exclusively. In 2007, they wore a white throwback jersey.
The Dallas Cowboys' blue jersey has been popularly viewed to be "jinxed" because of defeats at Super Bowl V in 1971, and in the 1968 divisional playoffs at Cleveland, Don Meredith's final game as a Cowboys player. Dallas's only victory in a conference championship or Super Bowl wearing the blue jerseys was in the 1978 NFC Championship game at the Los Angeles Rams.
Super Bowl rules later changed to allow the designated home team to pick their choice of jersey. White was chosen by the Cowboys, the Redskins, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Denver Broncos, the New England Patriots, and the Buccaneers. The Broncos and Steelers normally wear colours at home, but Pittsburgh had worn white in three road playoff wins, while Denver cited its previous Super Bowl success in white jerseys, while being 0–4 when wearing orange in Super Bowls.
Occasionally, teams playing against Dallas at home wear their white jerseys to attempt to invoke the "curse", as when the Philadelphia Eagles hosted the Cowboys in the 1980 NFC Championship Game. Teams including the St. Louis Cardinals and New York Giants followed suit in the 1980s, and the Carolina Panthers did so from 1995 until 2006, including two playoff games. The Houston Texans did so in 2002, beating Dallas in their inaugural regular season game. More recently, the Patriots and then-St. Louis Rams tried the same tactic.
The originator of white home jerseys in the NFL at Dallas, Tex Schramm, said he did not believe in the curse.
Starting in 2014, the Panthers, who like many teams in hot climates typically switch from white to colour in October or November, have worn white at home in the postseason regardless of their opponent; the franchise has never won a playoff game while wearing coloured jerseys, including in Super Bowl 50, when the Broncos chose to wear white.
While they had only done so twice, both to "jinx" Dallas, during the 21 years they played in St. Louis, since returning to Los Angeles in 2016, the Rams, temporarily playing in the same stadium as they had in the 1960s, have worn white at home as a conscious tribute to the highly successful teams of that era.
Other leagues
Coloured road uniforms were used in the World Football League during its short period of existence in 1974–75, with the home team wearing white, and college football teams must base their road uniform around a white jersey.National Federation of State High School Associations rules, which are used by every state for high school football except Texas, require the visiting team to wear a white jersey and the home team to wear a dark jersey. The University Interscholastic League, which governs Texas public high schools, plays by NCAA football rules, which allow for white jerseys to be worn by the home team with prior notification to the visiting team.
Association football
While a team's primary kit rarely undergoes major changes, the second colours tend to vary over time and sometimes by tournament. Some away kits are a modification of the home colours, other away kits are considerably different from home kits.Several club and national sides have favourite away colours which might remain the same more or less continuously. Often these are colours that were used in famous victories; for instance Brazil and A.C. Milan. Many professional clubs also have an official third kit.
Some teams opt to wear their away colours even when not required to by a clash of colours, or when they are the home team and therefore get first dibs on their colour. England sometimes play in red away shirts, as the team wore red when it won the 1966 World Cup. A.C. Milan chose to wear all-white in the 2007 UEFA Champions League final as they considered it their "lucky shirt".
In some title-deciding matches, a team has won the game wearing its away kit, but changed to home shirts for the trophy presentation – most notably when Spain won the 2010 World Cup final, changing from dark-blue away to red home shirts to lift the trophy.
In some cases both teams have been forced to wear their second choice away kits; such as in some World Cup matches . During the 1998-99 UEFA Champions League, Manchester United had to wear their away colours in both of their group stage matches against F.C. Barcelona, not just away at Camp Nou but also home at Old Trafford too due to a ruling by UEFA that in the event of a clash, the home team had to change their colours.