I watched a minor college football bowl game last night — the Motor City Bowl in poor, depressed Detroit, between Florida Atlantic University and Central Michigan University — and I noticed something that prompted this post. There are basically two types of college football uniforms — call them “traditional” and “designer” — and we’re in a visually awkward transition between the two. (FAU exemplified the former, CMU the latter.) An aficionado of athletic garb who went into a profound funk when the The Village Voice discontinued its sports section a few years ago, and with it, the crucial feature “Uni Watch,” I’m of two minds about recent developments.
But first, let me explain what I mean by “traditional” and “designer” uniforms.
Traditional uniforms have jerseys and pants of a single color each, with only their numerals and stripes (over the shoulder, around the sleeve, or short sleeve cuff) in a contrasting color. The only colors used in the uniforms are the school colors, e.g. blue and gold, with white permissible as a non-color. The numbers are block and stand straight up and down. Stripes are of a minimum width and, on the pants, run parallel down the leg. If full-calf socks are part of the uniform, they more or less match the jersey, while the pants more or less match the helmet. Which is to say, gold helmet, gold pants, blue jersey, blue socks. Helmets are either an unadorned solid color, or have a parallel center stripe treatment, and/or have a modest logo on each side. Teams sporting traditional uniforms include Notre Dame, UCLA, Auburn, and the almost militantly plain Penn State. PSU’s unis remind me of the 1960s University of Texas coach Darryl Royal’s remark about the relative drabness of the Longhorns’ getups: “Football uniforms are workin’ clothes.”
In designer uniforms, things have gone all pointy (the stripes on Southern Mississippi’s helmets, the gusset-like panels on a whole lot of schools’ jerseys and pants), slanty (Boston College’s numerals), and asymmetrical (last year’s Virginia Tech one-orange-sleeve jerseys). Thin, contrasting piping has appeared all over the place, making many jerseys look like 1980s K-Mart parkas. And the dignity of solid-color (save for stripes and numbers) jerseys has been shattered by side panels and stripes-plus-piping that roam all over the place (e.g., the University of Miami’s jerseys), and the names of the schools or their nicknames that appear in baseball-uni-size above the numbers. Finally, black can be inserted into any school’s uniforms regardless of its official colors, e.g., Northwestern and Texas Christian. The ne plus ultra of designer uniforms are Oregon’s, courtesy of the lavish patronage of Nike’s founder, Phil Knight. They add to the designer aesthetic a dizzying number of combinations of “alternate road” and “alternate home” outfits, lettering running vertically up the pant legs, and a kind of safety-tread-plate pattern on the shoulders.
I generally prefer traditional uniforms — relatively restrained and consistent (two fonts, one for the numbers and a second for the helmet logo, are my limit) — over the new designer regalia. But times do change and, with a few exceptions, traditional uniforms can start to look a little dowdy.
Over the last few years, I’ve gotten used to side panels and pointy stripes on helmets. Designer unis could even push the envelope a little more. Helmets, for instance, have changed their physical configurations, for safety-engineering reasons, but they’re still decorated in obliviousness to those changes. A single contrasting center stripe, which used to be painted naturally on a physical strip of material inherent to the headgear’s manufacture, still appears on many of the new helmets lacking that strip. I’m not suggesting hockey goalie headgear here, but helmets could use a few paint jobs based more on their form.
Here are some specific suggestions:
USC and Michigan State: Get rid of the picture of a helmet on a helmet.
Miami: Since you took the silhouette of a passer out of the logo, the “U” is meaningless (or defensive, e.g., “Hey, we really are a university”); change it.
Ohio State: Ditch the little buckeye merit-badge stickers that clutter up the helmets; besides, they look like cannabis leaves.
Alabama: retro-chic or not, take the numbers off the sides of the helmets.
Iowa: quit trying to look like the Steelers; Pittsburgh isn’t in Iowa.
Texas Tech: All black looks high school.
Air Force: Lightning bolts are difficult, and a gander at the San Diego Chargers might help.
Everybody: Don’t substitute patches for stripes; over-the-shoulder or on the sleeves, they should go all the way around.
Everybody: Try a little consistency; don’t combine traditional jerseys with designer pants, or vice-versa, and don’t use six different fonts just because you can.
Myself: Get a life.
The greatest football uniform design element of all time (other than the outlawed 1920s deception of sewing flattened leather footballs on the fronts of a team’s jerseys) is rather “non-traditional”: the ram’s-horn helmet originally designed for the professional Los Angeles Rams by running back Fred Gehrke in 1948. Versions of it are now used by Colorado State and Rhode Island. It’s beautiful and it’s visual onomatopoeia.
I hope it comes as no surprise to anyone who made it all the way to the end of this post that I, Laurie Fendrich, didn’t write it (I’m barely cognizant of football’s existence). My husband, Peter Plagens, did. He’s been nagging me for a while now to let him have a shot at blogging. Letting him write this was a kind of Christmas present for him (he got me a new iPod to replace the one I lost in September). He probably owes you a new iPod as well.
