In Memoriam: Attractive Uniforms

Classy, simple, and strong. Those are words you want to describe your uniform. Not gaudy, schizophrenic, and it looks like you're wearing a bra.

We've seen it all so far this year in college football. From awful retro jerseys to disgusting new ones to the horrible overuse of the color yellow to one asinine paint job on the field. In a sport where tradition is everything and current students and alumni alike get all riled up to play a team you've been battling since the 1920's, it is sad to see so many schools try to update their look and in the process one of the only good things they had going for them. However, that's not to say that when it comes to uniforms, old means good. Far from it. (I'm looking at you Cal and Notre Dame.)

This isn't Uniwatch, and I haven't followed every last detail and change in stitching pattern for every Division Bowl Subdivision 1-A Conference team, the following is simply an assortment of some of the unfortunate things I've seen this year in terms of bad uniforms.

These New Jerseys Are as Beautiful as... New Jersey.

Okay so let's say you're a designer and are in charge of designing the new threads for a local university's football team. What do you do?

A) Tweak the current jerseys to update them while keeping the tradition.

B) Start from scratch, designing the jerseys for both form and function.

C) Drink water from your septic tank, eat a box of crayons and then throw up on the drawing board. And then turn that in as your design.

If you're a designer in the state of Oregon, you've obviously picked C. (For those of you keeping score at home, the answer is anything you can think of that is not option C.) The folks at Nike produced the lovely assortment of Oregon Ducks unis last year. Not to be outdone, in-state rivals Oregon State came out with equally hideous jerseys this year. When these two play in the Civil War (Honestly? You guys weren't even a state during the Civil War. Hell I'm not even confident that you guys were a territory at the time.) I think I'm going to die a little inside watching two of the worst uniforms in college football play each other.

Mellow Yellow

Many schools use yellow, gold, or some variation of it in their school colors. And guess what? It's awesome. Look at how great Michigan or USC's jerseys look with yellow trim. Or how about Boston College and Notre Dame with gold accents and accessories. Beautiful stuff in my opinion.

Umm here's the problem with yellow. Some schools think yellow is such a good color, that they decide to use it as the primary color in their jerseys. The results are disastrous. I feel like more teams have fallen into this trap than years past. I've seen Cal, West Virginia, and Minnesota all get rocked by the brilliant idea to make yellow the main color of their jerseys. Tsk tsk. The LA Lakers are the only team in sports that can pull of an all yellow jersey. No one else should try else they risk such folly.

They Got Rid of Those Jerseys For a Reason

I love it when teams use throw-back jerseys. I think it's cool and you get to see some classic unis in all their majesty. That being said, there are some ass ugly retro jerseys and some dumb ass ways of using them.

We'll start with exhibit A: Notre Dame. They have one of the classiest and most traditional jerseys in college football. They also have some cool throwback jerseys. And yet they decide to pick these ones. Additionally, by declaring that they would wear the jerseys for the USC game before the season started, they guaranteed themselves a loss. This psychological ploy may have amped the Notre Dame players right after it was announced, but it's a rivalry game, why aren't your players getting excited regardless? This also made USC want to bitch-slap Jabba Weis and his poorly dressed team.

Conversely, there's Cal. Perfect use of the throwback, poor choice of throwback. Calvin, our resident Cal student, was a huge fan of the throwbacks, but he's not writing this post, so fuck him. The jersey itself is ugly and extremely dated, not a good combo for a jersey. However, I will give Cal props for their use of the jersey. It was a big game for them and they kept it secret until the team took the field. The crowd went crazy when they saw the threads, and there was electricity in the stadium. Cal had momentum before the coin flip! Well done in that regard. Unfortunately for them, the ploy couldn't make up for their best player disappearing, their QB making huge mental errors, and their general inability to stop big ol' Chauncey Washington. (FYI, I was standing in line next to Chauncey at Chipotle today.)

And lastly...

Dude How Did You Ever Think That Was a Good Idea?

This one is not related to football jerseys. It is however related to both football fields and basketball jerseys. I am referring to this. UCLA, in commemoration of the fact that they are the first university too win 100 NCAA national championships  (don't get me started on what a bullshit thing that is to brag about) have decided to paint the letter "C" in UCLA gold on both their football field and their basketball jerseys.

Now I've got beef with UCLA jerseys, mostly because I'm biased and I think that jerseys and logos and mascots should be intimidating and strong, but I honestly think that their basketball jerseys and all that shit is decently attractive. What is not attractive is having the rest of the country think you ran out of paint when painting your school's letters on the football field. It's not symmetrical, it looks out of place and haphazard, and it fucks with classy tradition. All no-no's.

UCLA design folk: You guys are dbags. You do your university shame.

So yeah that's that. I'm sure there will be further atrocities from the time I write this article until the end of college football season, but it hurts my eyes to look, so maybe if I write this now, no other teams will wander out onto the field looking like they were dress by a blind Liberace.