Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Feast your eyes on some really cool, and really ugly, green uniforms

As everyone knows, the St. Patrick’s Day tradition is to wear green. While Ray Ferraro and the 1989 Hartford Whalers did this for every road game, what can a sports fan pick out of the closet to garner the luck o’ the Irish and avoid the dreaded pinches for those who forget to don the right apparel? Here are the best options…

It’s fun when Jonathan Toews takes to the ice for St. Patrick’s Day in a green jersey, but you’ll note that when Chicago actually plays games on the holiday, they still switch to their regular red sweaters. These things are purely made for marketing purposes, and if you have one, well, you’re a sucker, but sure, go ahead and wear it on the one day it’s appropriate. You look like a complete dumbass on May 22 in the bleachers at Wrigley.

This year’s new “Reverse Retro” jerseys are hit-or-miss, and while P.K. Subban can make anything look good, the Devils’ new duds are more Christmas than St. Patrick’s Day, not to mention that they didn’t really make the green bright enough. It’s more clearly green in person on the rack at a sporting goods store than in any photographs you’ll see, but it feels much too close to being “Reverse Current” of New Jersey’s red-and-black motif.

We have a similar problem here in the United States, where we have uniforms for national teams that include a color from our flag, but the wrong shade. This should be extremely easy to avoid, yet Nigeria won the 2019 AfroBasket tournament in Senegal looking like the Philadelphia Eagles had a hoops team.

Cam Talbot can’t save the forever too-busy uniforms of the State of Hockey, where the Wild’s logo is so bad, even their brilliant Reverse Retro look (which doesn’t qualify here because it’s primarily a white jersey — sorry also to Celtic FC’s classic green-and-white hoops) can’t save it. Again, Merry Christmas.

It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s been more than a decade of corporate logos where your eye expects a WNBA team name to appear — Swin Cash and Lauren Jackson had a Bing sponsorship where Seattle now sports a Swedish Medical Center logo. Copying from the late-model SuperSonics color scheme, the Storm has had a number of solid uniforms, but never looked quite as brilliant as they could. Fashion-wise, that is, because on the court, Seattle has been incredible.

Perfectly acceptable for drinking the other 364 days of the year, too.

Zenay Jordaan got her kicks wearing the national team’s jersey against Kenya in 2019, but the side stripe simultaneously doesn’t do enough and does too much for the shirt.

The late 1980s Spartans under George Perles had a simple, classic look. Nothing wrong with that… right up until they put “MICHIGAN STATE” on it, like they always do. Football uniforms with words on the front just don’t look good, at any level. Sorry, Sparty.

Is it a traditional green for Jessika Nash and the Australian W-League side? No. But you can’t say it doesn’t pop. It also shows that green can be complemented by blue, which really isn’t seen enough in the sports palette.

When the Bears went to the 2005 College World Series, Paul Witt tied the entire look together with the high socks to go with the phenomenal green pinstripe pants. The yellow accent does just enough, too.

A.J. Dillon knows how to put his best foot forward, and if it happens to be snowy by you for St. Patrick’s Day, a nod to the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field always works.

Djibril Cissé forever. Especially when he dyed his hair green to match his 2010 Greek Cup champions’ kit.

Previous comment about words on the front of football jerseys notwithstanding, “THE HERD” is so ludicrous, as is the font it’s in, that it actually circles back around to being wonderful.

Speaking of things that are so bad, they’re good… the Bulls’ toxic slime look comes all the way home with the way the actual green pops.

Only if you have the turnover chain, like Gregory Rousseau.

Deng Geu can throw down a dunk and a look.

The Fighting Irish have ever-changing iterations of their green jersey, but the one Dexter Williams wore in 2018 is the runaway winner. It’s so good that it gets to the top 10 on this list even though it’s a Notre Dame jersey and if you wear a Notre Dame jersey on St. Patrick’s Day, you’re an insufferable doofus.

Sam Bennett, the Irishman who won the sprint title at the Tour de France, might be the only person who can pull this off, but also, damn that’s good.

Blake Paul gives everyone an important lesson: you can and maybe should wear sleeves under a basketball jersey, and the shirt should match the jersey perfectly. The green-on-green look of the Green Wave here is outstanding.

Quarantine 15? No, we’ve all just spent the last year gearing up to cosplay as late-career Shaq on St. Shaqtriq’s Day.

You’ll have to go retro because the Eagles now wear a lousy jersey that’s their classic green mixed with sludge from the Delaware River, but who cares if you have to throw it back, because that means you can wear Randall Cunningham’s finest.

This has really been about tops to select, but if you can cop a pair of the duck shorts like Sabrina Ionescu, you go ahead and do that.

There has never been a better green basketball uniform, and there never will be. And if you disagree, take it up with Xavier McDaniel.

The defending Western Conference champions… wait, they’re not actually defending the Western Conference right now because there is no Western Conference this year, they’re in the West Division… huh, anyway, they haven’t looked great on the ice lately, except that they’ve looked fantastic on the ice since bringing back green home jerseys in 2013.

Sean Murphy and Marcus Semien aren’t the only ones who get to celebrate the return of Kelly green to the East Bay. We all do. It’s glorious.

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, after all, and who can argue with Roy Keane?