Now that Nike is the official sponsor of jerseys across the NFL, a lot of buzz has been created regarding what some perceive to be a backwards Nike swoosh symbol. If you look at the photo above, you may be inclined to say that the swoosh on Tom Brady’s jersey is backwards while the one on Drew Brees’ jersey is facing the correct way. The Twitter world was in an uproar on Thursday night with fans ripping Nike and the NFL for botching the jerseys and stitching a backwards swoosh on the right sleeve of everyone’s jersey. But the swoosh is indeed facing the right way.
As Pigskin Buzz pointed out, Nike requires that the swoosh always face forward, with the pointed end flowing back as though it were blowing in the wind. We are used to seeing the swoosh displayed this way on the right side of a Nike sneaker, so we don’t even think twice about it. In reality, the way the swooshes are displayed on the sides of Nike sneakers is exactly the same way they were sewn on the shoulders of the new NFL jerseys.
While we have featured a number of epic jersey screw-ups here on LBS that include misspelled names in advertisements and on actual game jerseys, this is not one of them. It may take some getting used to, but based on their policy of displaying the swoosh the Nike logo is facing the proper way.
