FanHouse Uniforms

Hey, at least if the Baltimore Orioles won't be making any big splashes in the off-season by making legitimate runs at some of the high-priced free agent talent, their fans do have something to be excited about.

The new road uniforms -- modeled here by young stud Nick Markakis alongside Adam Jones, who sports the "new" home uniforms -- have "BALTIMORE" on them! OMG!!

As I alluded to with the above quotations, don't the home unis look exactly the same? No matter, the real news here is the change on the away duds.

Boog Powell's jacked, so there's that.

"It's a really special moment," Powell told the estimated crowd of 2,500 today at an Orioles fan rally at The Gallery at Harborplace. "Even though I put it on for 17 years, I get just as much of a thrill putting it on this morning."

The road uniforms had said "Orioles" across the chest since 1973, so the nostalgic choice was to go old-school and put "Baltimore" back where it belonged.

In about six weeks, Tennessee and UCLA will kick off their seasons on Labor Day night in the Rose Bowl. An outsider might think that biggest question for Tennessee going into opening weekend is "how will punter Britton Colquitt's suspension affect the game?" or "what will Jon Crompton look like as UT's new starting QB?" But no, neither of those things matter. The important question is: "Will Tennessee wear orange pants?" After all, it is mid-July, and these things matter now, dammit!

Tennessee (and Alabama) blog 3rd Saturday in Blogtober has found some evidence that UT might in fact be wearing a slightly new uniform, including orange pants, if not against UCLA, then at least in the near future. Visual:

Those orange pants can be hideous or glorious, depending on whether you're outside or inside the parallelogram. The picture is supposedly one sent from adidas to EA Sports to help with the making of NCAA 09. If Tennessee actually wears the pants, it will somewhat of a big deal, as white tops and orange bottoms were a staple of the Johnny Majors era, but dropped by Phillip Fulmer in favor of white-on-white as he put his own stamp on the UT program in the early 90s.

Fashion is all the rage in college football these days. Well, actually the changing of uniform designs for sales and marketing purposes isn't anything new at all. From the incredibly ugly Orange arm Florida and Va. Tech uniforms to the 230 million combination Oregon uniforms, schools are producing new uniforms on an almost yearly basis. Most likely for the purpose of selling more jerseys. But in some cases, like Cal, for a visual improvement.

The new Nike designs feature bear claw - eque slashes around the neckline along with the Cal Bear Claw logo on the neck. The claw slash look also appears on the side of the pants.

This could have gone so wrong if they would have made the claw slashes more like what a real slash looked like. For some reason I'm thinking Cincinnati Bengals bad here. But the design looks sharp for the most part. I'm not in love with the helmet design, but this is an improvement over the current uniforms.

This should be of particular interest to West Virginia fans, and ostensibly Michigan fans, as the Mountaineer uniforms have followed the Cal design since as far back as I can remember. Maybe it's just the similarities in the school colors that is sticking with me, but West Virginia didn't get gold jerseys until Cal did. Or maybe it's one too many times of walking in front of the TV thinking the Mountaineers were on, only to find out it was Cal. One thing is for sure, these two team should never play each other again! The chance for interceptions would quadruple for any quarterback that isn't color blind.

Entering the season, a lot of people were comparing Alex Gordon to George Brett. Well, don't plan on seeing Gordon sporting one of those classic powder blue uniforms that Brett is wearing over there on the right anytime soon. Jeffrey Flanagan of the Kansas City Star explains:

For a brief moment this offseason, the Royals entertained the thought of somehow wheeling out those fan-friendly powder-blue uniforms of years past. At least for one night.

Alas, it's not going to happen, mainly because Major League Baseball won't allow road uniforms to be worn at home.

"We looked into it but the rules are very specific," said Mark Tilson, Royals vice president of marketing. "The only other option is if we happened to be part of someone else's retro night on the road. But that's kind of the luck of the draw."

For a league that generally embraces history and tradition, I'm a little surprised at how shortsighted MLB is being right here. What do they really stand to lose by bending the rules besides, I don't know, selling more jerseys to nostalgic fans?And besides, even if MLB wants to follow the letter of law, I don't understand why the powder blue unis still have to be considered road attire. Those things aren't being used, period, so why couldn't the team re-introduce them as strictly an alternate home jersey?

Hat-tip to Ben Maller

This is not the kind of picture of the new Nike uni in action, that I would think would encourage sales. No wonder all the pictures they have made available, featured the models wearing them standing perfectly still.

Demetris Nichols looks like his shorts have deployed as a parachute while taking a shot. Not sure if that's the look intended, that the billowing shorts will slowly lower him to the ground. That or the plan is to make the players look like the bad comic book characters of Rob Liefeld.

Previous Posts:

Syracuse's New Uniforms Almost Look Normal
Nike to Syracuse, The Color Orange Isn't Ugly Enough
College Basketball Teams

As Matt Glaude pointed out, yes Andy Rautins does have the torso of a 15-year old girl in the new 'Cuse unis. Still, I'm kind of stunned to report that the overall appearance on the real players isn't nearly so radical as the initial images that were leaked. Maybe it's that Nike used some really beefy man-meat models in their package of photos to better show off the form fitting features.

Of course, when the cameras get closer to the individual players rather than the wider shots of the action, the picture is less flattering.

From what I can see in the actual game with UConn right now (admittedly I don't have HDTV) they aren't nearly as dramatic. Yes, a little tighter at the shoulder and torso, but since none of the players are wearing a base layer underneath the jerseys, they look a little looser. I don't know, but I'd say they are wearing less snug jerseys then the model pictured is wearing. That and they are not as firmly tucked in the waist to make them look a little looser.

The shorts are definitely looser and longer. Possibly more disconcerting then the jerseys, though, it could simply be the stark contrast makes it look worse. It's not that they hang below the knee, it's that they billow more than I thought they would. Players definitely need to wear an underlayer for below the waist to avoid chaffing or flashing anyone if they hit the deck. I mean seeing Darryl Watkins and Terrence Roberts going against 7'3" Hasheem Thabeet is comical. You can see how much thicker Thabeet is compared to the other two, but the shorts on the Orange players make them look like they have toothpick legs.

Additionally the striping along the shorts remind me of a nautical flag. Guess I never knew the strong "traditional" nautical ties to superfund site Onondaga Lake -- one of the most polluted lakes in the US with Syracuse University. The choice of silver for the numbers and minimizing the Syracuse blue to just a couple blocks will on the side of the shorts will not sit well with Syracuse fans. It is not exactly keeping in the tradition of Syracuse that the Nike "System of Dress" claims to emphasize.

Back in the day when the NCAA wasn't so rule happy and quasi-repressive, competing teams were allowed to wear similar uniforms. Certain teams could wear their Saturday finest home uniforms, and their opponent could do the same. This was aesthetically pleasing and created something of a tradition between cross-town rivals USC and UCLA.

Those days are gone however, and we're left with NCAA Rule I, Article 3 (a):

Players of opposint teams shall wear jerseys of contrasting colors, and the visiting team shall wear white jerseys.

White jerseys per Rule I, Article 3 (b) are defined as follows:

A white jersey is one with only contrasting playing numbers, player's name, school name, NCAA Football logo, school insignia, conference insignia, mascot insignia, game insignia, memorial insignia or the American flag attached.

In other words if I'm home you're wearing the road uniforms or one of us is getting docked a timeout. To put it kindly, this is lame.

I guess the reasoning was that back in the day with people still owning black and white televisions it was difficult to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. Times have changed and the dinosaurs who before owned black and white TV's are now the ones who have yet to hop on HD train. With technology and the great American wealth machine doing the sport a favor, it's time to put the kibosh on this rule and restore a particular tradition within one of the game's great rivalries.

There's a famous painting of the 1967 USC/UCLA game well known to fans of both schools. In it, Trojan tailback O.J. Simpson is seen near the goal line amid a pile of football bodies. His home cardinal and gold complements the powder keg blue and gold of UCLA's players attempting to prevent a touchdown run. It's a beautiful scene and for a while was representative of the rivalry until the rule came into use some years later.

There's been talk in recent years of reviving this tradition, but neither Trojan coach Pete Carroll nor UCLA coach Karl Dorrell has been willing to part with timeouts to make it happen. This is tragic - but hopefully the NCAA can get around to either giving these teams an exemption or modifying the rule somehow to add just a little more tradition and prestige to this great game.

I've added the YouTube video of Simpson's famous 64-yard touchdown run below. The 1967 game was actually one of the better college football games ever played, matching number one UCLA against number two USC. The stars were UCLA's eventual Heisman trophy winner quarterback Gary Beban and USC's Heisman runner-up and 1968 winner tailback O.J. Simpson. USC would win 21-20 thanks to Simpson's run, catapulting them to the national championship.
Sorry, No Photos