A New Gold Standard?

Last Sunday, at Jacksonville's last game of the season, outgoing owners Wayne and Delores Weaver were given gold-plated helmets from the team as a thank-you for bringing the Jaguars to town twenty years ago.

The helmets were created for the team by Hydro Graphics Inc., the Portland-based custom painting company responsible for the chrome Nike helmets worn by the Oregon Ducks in the 2012 Rose Bowl.

But don't hold that against them.

The helmets themselves are interesting. This might be the wave of the future, as Nike prepares to assume the league-wide uniform contract.

The mirror finish is a little much for me, but I rather like the muted effect on the back bumper.

So, is this something we could ever see the Packers doing? We already know that Nike has some (perhaps) minor changes in store for the Pack when they take over the uniforms, so it's not impossible that the Packers. The helmet finish has already been altered at least once, when the Packers moved to the current metallic "pearlized" sheen in 2001. This could be the next step in their aesthetic evolution.

Okay, that's a "collectible" mini-helmet from a couple years ago. Maybe it wouldn't have to look as garish as all that. Perhaps something closer to the new Notre Dame helmets, which were designed to mimic the famous Golden Dome.

If a paint company can match Notre Dame's administration building, surely they could come up with a pretty good approximation of the Packers' shade of athletic gold. Perhaps in a satin finish, like this gold-plated saxophone:

That color's not too far off.

We can only wonder what Nike might have in store for us.