One clarification from the Made in Motown post about Detroit wearing Wilson jerseys. The Lions continued to wear Wilson in the early part of the 1994 season until their APEX jerseys arrived and were put into use.

The Wilson jerseys and APEX jerseys differ as follows:
1. The Wilson jerseys used in 1994 usually lack a sleeve logo. The Lions were under contract with APEX in 1994, so they hid or removed the exposed Wilson logos.
2. On the 1994 APEX jerseys, the APEX logo is usually prominent on both sleeves.
3. The Wilson numbers were screened-on.
4. The APEX numbers were sewn-on except for some of the linemen (mainly defensive linemen) who preferred screened-on numbers.
5. The lettering on the nameplate on Wilson (and Sand Knit jerseys used prior to the Wilson years), is a slightly darker shade of blue when compared to the APEX lettering.

Interestingly, the Lions recycled a lot of their 1994 APEX jerseys for use in 1995. APEX was defunct by that time, so the Lions switched to Reebok. They removed the APEX sleeve logos AND the APEX tail tagging on the recycled jerseys, and replaced them with Reebok logos and tagging. However, they left the year tags intact. That's the reason you will see Reebok labeled Lions jerseys with a '94 year tag.

Hope I didn't steer off course, but I thought that this information might be useful for Lions and Barry Sanders collectors. The above observations are based on information I garnered after making a bulk buy of over 800 Detroit Lions jerseys in 1999 that included a lot of jerseys from the early and mid-1990s (no Barry Sanders jerseys were included). There are probably some Lions collectors out there who can add to this. And as always, keep in mind that there were "exceptions to the rule" with the Lions jerseys I acquired.

Mark Hayne
Gridiron Exchange
gixc@verizon.net