Breitling unveiled 32 limited edition Chronomat B01 42 models, and it just so happens each one has a different color on the dial that corresponds to an NFL team’s official Pantone color. Dadgum it! Does the NFL know this? There’s no way this could be a coincidence.
Hold up. I squinted and looked closer. Each one of these luxury chronographs has a picture that looks exactly like the NFL teams’ logos. Right there on the left subdial. Outrageous. I expect this from Chinese knockoffs. Not preeminent Swiss watchmakers!
News Flash: The resemblance of these luxury watches to NFL team’s colors and logos is not some conspiracy theory. It’s a conspiracy fact. Breitling and the National Football League partnered to produce officially licensed NFL watches. This is according to Forbes, a reputable news site, not infowars.
The NFL’s 32 teams each has a limited run of 104 Chronomat B01 42 watches. These finely crafted Swiss timepieces are available on a steel rouleaux bracelet for $9,200 or a black rubber rouleaux strap for $8,800.
My incredulity meter is pegged! America’s gritty working class sport has teamed up with a luxury Swiss watchmaker. Is this the clown world telegram has been warning me of?
I’m old enough to remember the Sports Illustrated sneaker phone. It was from a bygone era when sports memorabilia was the most fragile plastic junk imaginable. Slam that sneaker phone down once and you’ll never make a prank telephone call from it again.
That was the 80’s when you couldn’t watch the NFL on the television set if the live game didn’t sell enough tickets. And my New England Patriots didn’t often sell out after the 1985 Super Bowl loss to the Bears. So my dad brought us to a game at Foxboro stadium. We parked the Dodge Caravan on the side of the road in the mud and trudged through a field to the most ramshackle stadium a professional team has ever played.
Seriously. Most high schools today in Texas have a better stadium than the Patriots had back then.
I had friends who were sports nuts. I’m thinking of one who memorized how many passing yards Dan Marino racked up each game that year. And next to his bed was a Miami Dolophins desk lamp. No kid would go to Caldors’ to buy a lamp. But if that lampshade had his favorite football logo on it he’d bug his mom for it. Probably ask for matching bed sheets too.
So my impression of NFL merchandise is that it’s chintzy, excuse my yiddish. But the NFL would slap their logo on absolute junk to get fans to buy it. And these items would live in a kid’s bedroom or maybe a dad’s den downstairs by the washing machine until they’d disintegrate and we’d bag them up and haul them to the town landfill.
Football was the sport of the blue collar man and his son. The best coverage of the games were in the big city’s tabloid newspaper. Stadiums were in the industrial side of town and the bleachers were filled with fowl mouthed men with dirty fingernails cheering the brutality that occurred on-field.
My dad would watch the game in our living room decked out with rugs and furniture bought from the Sears Roebuck catalouge. His wrist watch was one he picked up on a tour of duty in Vietnam. In his hand was an ice cold beer in a can.
That’s football to me. A can of American beer. And what’s a Breitling luxury Swiss watch? A warm Chardonnay poured into crystal wine flute in some Alpine village where they yodel and watch soccer!
$9,200 for an NFL watch?
Before if you asked me what watch brand would team up with the NFL for officially licensed merchandise I would say they’d take a $50 Timex, slap an NFL logo on it and sell it at the mall for $300.
I know what you guys are going to say to me. Times have changed, old man Jim.
Yea, you’re right. That Foxboro stadium was torn down to make way for Patriots’ Place. A megamall of luxury goods, at luxury prices, where they watch football games from luxury suites. So maybe it’s not so incongruous to see the NFL logo on a luxury timepiece.
And now that I think of it, my buddy who was a sports nut pulls in an executive salary and travels the world for his big time corporate job. I bet if I found him on Facebook he’d be wearing one of those 104 Miami Dolphins Breitlings in his profile pic.