A consumer’s guide to the best and...

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: Redesigning Uniforms, a Dark and Stormy Sight

Uniform uniformity is upon us. Watch any sports highlight show and the procession of teams looks like a suit rack in a men’s clothing store: Black, navy, black, purple, black, forest green, black and purple, black and silver, black and teal.

Or, just to mix it up, an occasional midnight blue and charcoal.

The Buffalo Sabres now wear black.

The Northwestern Wildcats now wear black.

The old Cleveland Browns (i.e., the new Baltimore Ravens) now wear black.

Already joining the Colorado Rockies, Dallas Stars, Orlando Magic, Jacksonville Jaguars, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Blackhawks, L.A. Galaxy, New York-New Jersey MetroStars, Houston Astros, Houston Rockets, Vancouver Canucks and, of course, the original villains responsible for this all-comers leap into the black hole, the L.A. Kings.

(You never like to kick a team when it’s down but, on second thought, it’s the Kings, so why not? When the Kings switched from ugly-yet-quaint purple and gold to move-that-product black and silver, dollar signs began dancing in the heads of marketing directors across the land. Copycats have been getting rich ever since.)

And if it isn’t black, it’s either dark blue, dark purple or dark green.

The new-look Angels wear dark blue. So did the old-look Angels, and they looked perfectly fine, but Disney had to tinker (it always does) and add periwinkle (no relation to Bobby Winkles) to the scheme and attach cute little wings to the big A and do whatever it could to turn Jim Edmonds into a Saturday morning cartoon character.

It’s one more phase in the corporate takeover of American sport. Now, the CEOs and the players they own get to wear the same colors.