Sunday Morning Uni Watch

by Phil Hecken

There was LOTS of uni-action on the college gridiron yesterday, and my man Terry Duroncelet, Jr. will have that all for you in a moment.

But first — the absolute STAR of yesterday’s action was the Florida/Georgia (a/k/a “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party”) game. As expected, and for the first time since 1970 (at least according to the CBS broadcast), both teams wore their home uniforms, producing a beautiful color on color game.

As I said yesterday, I love the occasional color versus color game, especially when a game is a bowl or playoff or championship game, or when a game is played on a “neutral” field. This wasn’t the first (or only) color on color game yesterday, and it won’t be the last for the season either, but as long as they’re special (read: scarce), they’ll remain favorites.

With brisk temps and beautiful sunshine at the outset, the game was a beaut. I was able to watch almost all of it, and it actually looked even better as the shadows crept over the field. My only complaint (and it’s minor) is that both teams have similar colored helmets (orange and red), and both teams wore similar colored pants (white and silver). This made it somewhat difficult at times to pick up the teams, even with the distinctly different color (blue and red) tops. It probably would have been asking a bit too much for Florida to wear orange pants (they seem not to have much luck in those in past years). Still — it was a great looking game (sure to be the #1 in the 5 & 1), and I hope it’s the beginning of many more color-vs-color Cocktail Parties going forward. Feast your eyes on some game shots:

Beautiful, no? Let’s keep the color-on-color games coming, but keep them special and rare. And while we’re at it (I’m going to sound like THE here), let’s allow teams who have gold tops wear those as their “white” uniform (at least for home games), allowing their opponents to wear their dark (as long as it’s contrasting) tops. How about it, NCAA? Can we make that rule change next year?

I’ll now turn the rest of this segment over to TJ, who’ll bring you the rest of today’s…

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Sunday Morning Uni Watch
By Terry Duroncelet

Hello one and all to the 10th week of the 2014 college football season! I’m in a pretty good mood because of the recent drop in temperature over the weekend. FINALLY, we’re getting Autumn weather in my area. There was a fair amount of action in this week’s games too, including G.I. Joevember being in complete and utter full-swing. So, let’s go about this one at a time…

From Thursday:

• Louisville wore these… uh… yeesh. Awful, unreadable, unnecessary, but at least the grey was dark enough to contrast between them and Florida State, who FINALLY fixed the numbers on their white jerseys (here’s the before product), but as you can see, they’ve also switched the white top to the Nike Mach Speed template. In most cases, this would be a good thing, but the Seminoles have that really interesting pattern on the collars, and the switch to the Mach Speed template ruined the continuity of it, due to the triangle/homeplate thing at the point of the collar. Brutal. Not the good kind of brutal, either. This raises a lot of questions: why didn’t they just keep the previous template and simply asked for a number change? Is Nike trying to phase out the previous template? Will this change apply to the garnate and black tops as well? Did they deliberately chose this template, knowing full-well what the collar would look like, or did Nike force this upon them with little-to-no choice? One more note from the game: apparently, before Mr. Krabs became the owner of the Krusty Krab, he earned his business degree at Louisville.

From Friday:

• If you look at this pic, you could easily mistake the Tulane Green Wave for being the Tulane Bulldogs. Here’s the before. Credit to Douglas E. Smith for those pics.

From Saturday:

• Always love those red helmets for Wisconsin.

• I think Ohio State needs to do a bit of interior decorating. How long has the B1G logo been around?

• Iowa not only wore camo decals against Northwestern (I think that’s an older pic), but they have officially gone full-Steeler, but not only wearing one decal, but they kept true to the genuine articles by wearing it only on the right side! Also in that same pic, Northwestern wore white/white/purple. Don’t see ’em wear that too often.

• Assuming that this isn’t a trick of the light, Montana gave us a double-whammy on Saturday, as they wore camo decals with what look to be pink swoosh armbands. Or it could be that one particular player. Credit to Gorden for sending that pic in.

• I’m not sure if this qualifies as color-vs.-color.

• This does, however! That’s Stephen F. Austin against Sam Houston State in the 89th annual Battle of the Piney Woods. SFA in purple, Sam Houston St. in orange/blue. Big thanks to Chris Mycoskie & DJ Shafer for these pics.

• A player for Louisiana Tech was having some nameplate issues.

• TCU lookin’ good in all-white.

• USF wore S&S decals over the weekend.

• aTm wore throwback uniforms with a refreshing approach to the winged helmet look. I. DIG. SO. MUCH. Also, this player “wanted” to go out with that helmet, but they quickly said “NOPE”. Spoilsports.

• I want to take a moment to thank all of the teams who understand what a game with good contrast does for the viewing experience. H/T to Florida/Georgia, Iowa/Northwestern, Kentucky/Mizzou, and Okie St./K-State.

• Speaking of Missouri, they wore these decals on the back of their helmets yesterday in honor of Coach John Kadlec, who died recently. More here.

• Pitt’s QB was hanging on by a thread against Duke. Well, his towel was, at least.

• Another rare combo that I don’t really see if WASU in white/crimson/white. Not bad.

• The jokes write themselves. Too bad South Carolina didn’t have a black helmet to go with it. Also a shame they wore the gross 2012 design.

• I guess it’s only appropriate to segway into Oregon State’s all-black look from last night.

• Fred Fuchs could not be reached for comment. Here’s another view from a different game, plus this article.

• That Navy decal, oh my! KEEP THEM PLEASE.

• This is going right into my reaction pics folder.

• Needs more Texas.

• UCLA showed up one day late to the costume party. These actually aren’t the worst things I’ve ever seen, but GOD, those numbers… Also, some of them had some fun with the eye black/face paint. Some (possibly inadvertently) took it a bit too far. Yikes.

That does it for this week, and an interesting kick-off to November. See you all next week.

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Thanks, TJ!

Catherine Ryan’s 5 & 1

Every Sunday, Catherine will give us the rundown of her best five and one worst uniform matchups from the College Football games played this week. Since it’s practically impossible to watch every game, you guys can help by sending your thoughts on “good” and “bad” matchups (and hopefully with photos from that game) by e-mailing her at UW5and1@gmail.com.

OK, here’s Catherine with this week’s 5 & 1.

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Happy Sunday, UniWatchers! This weekend had a lot of great games and putting together this countdown was harder than I anticipated! I tried to pick a few teams that I haven’t chosen yet this year. Let me know what you think!

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5. Kentucky vs. Missouri: I loved Kentucky’s blue pants on the road and I thought this game had great contrast between the unis.

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4. Northwestern vs. Iowa: I’m not usually a big fan of Northwestern but I really liked this match-up against Iowa. I thought both teams looked great!

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3. Duke vs. Pittsburgh: I really liked Duke in the black pants and Pitt looked fantastic. However, I could have done without the chrome embellishments on the Duke helmets.

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2. Washington vs. Colorado: These Colorado unis were gorgeous and combined with these equally as pretty Washington unis, this game was an absolute beauty.

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1. Florida vs. Georgia: I can never resist a color-on-color game! Anyone who reads this countdown knows I love the Dawgs and they looked great up against Florida in the classic home unis. How many pictures from this match-up is too much?

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+1 Norfolk State vs. Florida A&M: Wow this is awful.

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Thanks, Catherine! I pretty much knew before I even looked at this list what the #1 good would be! How could it not!!!

OK readers, how’d she do?

Duck Tracker

Each week, as we have done on Uni Watch for the past five seasons, we’ll be tracking the uniform combinations of the Oregon Ducks. Back for his third season is Tim E. O’Brien, who’ll show you what the Ducks wore in their last game, and add a few words of wisdom.

Here’s this weeks costume (click to enlarge):

. . . . . .

Here’s Tim:

The Ducks decided to go full ninja this week. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s the second time the Ducks have gone full ninja this season.

Just about a month ago Oregon wore almost the exact same uniform but in the old template and with pink highlights for breast cancer awareness.

At times this season, the Ducks’ uniform decisions have seemed lazy and less fun than previous years. Repeating a look in a season – especially BFBS – only continues this trend.

EPL Tracker

Each Saturday or Sunday, Alex Gerwitz will be tracking the kit combinations (shirt/shorts/socks) of the teams in the English Premier League from the previous weekend and the current weekend.

Here is the EPL tracker for Weeks 9 & 10 (click to enlarge):

Premier League Games
By Andrew Seagraves

KIA ORA! This is your UWFFL Premier League showcase game of the week and it is going to be a humdinger! We shall go to the Dirty Dirty where the Atlanta Flying Fleet will host the Hartford Whalers. These two teams are in a highly competitive division alongside the Miami Cougars and Birmingham Vulcans. The Whalers are finding themselves in unfamiliar territory after being promoted from the Minors with a 1-3 record. Two of those three loses have only been by a point with the third by four. Atlanta is in a similar situation as they sit at 2-2 so far on the season. Ahab and the crew of the Pequod are in their traditional white over green for their road game against the Fleet. The Cobb County Corsairs will break out their Gold/Gold/White combo for this Eastern Division affair.

. . .

. . .

Hartford

Atlanta

 

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Other key games for this weekend in the Premier will see the Seawolves of Vancouver head to the stables to square up with the Minnesota Mustangs, Birmingham will head to South Beach to take on Miami and the Reign Fire will try to scorch the Detroit Demons.

La Lega Internationazle will continue interleague play this weekend and here are a few of the matchups: The Arizona Miners are in the Far East taking on Metallurg Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky, the Iowa Corn are in Winnipeg taking on the Crown Royal Blacks, while Portland and Spartak Russia will wear Remembrance Day/Victory Day patches in their match. The lone In-league La Lega game will have the Tokyo Mammoths visiting London to do battle with the Monarchs.

What say you, those of spectacular taste? Which teams will come away with the victory this weekend? Well, head on over to uwfantasyfootballleague.com and make your voices heard”¦ or choices known”¦ or something like that. If you think you have a design that can make waves in the UWFFL, get on over to the Prospective teams Google+ page and show the rest of the league what you’ve got!

Uni Watch News Ticker:

NFL and College Football News: Reader (and frequent contributor) Clint Richardson conducted an interview with Russell Athletic Vice President of Design and Development Sarah Gholston — definitely give that a read! … The more things change…here’s a look at a 1966 Florida vs Georgia color on color game (h/t Dave Doop). … Nice spot by Matt Larsen, who, in looking at Chris Creamer’s website, saw the interlocking ND logo should be this, but look at what CBS thinks it is. … Do the Carolina Panthers have the old logo on the carpet in their locker room? (asked by CA Daniels).

Basketball News: As they did in their opening game (on the road vs. Indiana), the Philadelphia 76ers wore this patch last night (at home) for he late Caldwell Jones. … “Was looking at New Orleans Pelicans vs Dallas Mavericks Preview article for there upcoming game and I realized that ESPN has changed the logo for the Pelicans but they still haven’t changed the background color on their website,” writes Evans Haile. “So instead of using the new color scheme as a background for the logo they are still using the old teal color of the Hornets. I double checked and it looks like they still use that color for the background on all the Pelicans stuff.” … Xavier will have some black jerseys for the upcoming season. … Here’s a neat shot of the New Mexico Lobos 1924 basketball team (from JBird). Also from JBird, here’s the evolution of the Lobos mascot logo, which he found while watching UNM play at The Pit last night.

Hockey News: Reader Jav Sales notes that Tomas Tatar scored a goal against the Kings on Halloween and he didn’t have number decals on his helmet. … “The Journal News (the main daily paper for Westchester, Putnam, and Rockland Counties) used the wrong Winnipeg jets logo in today’s online edition,” notes Rob Yasinsac. “Twice, actually. And not only is it an old logo, it is the old, old logo, from the 1980s.”

Grab Bag: As you may be aware, New Zealand’s famous rugby squad, the All Blacks, have been touring the USA. Benji King grabbed this screen shot (of the USA) and wonders if it’s common to have the match name and date stitched onto the uni. I was informed, via tweet, “Quite common for big games, both in Rugby and international Soccer.” … “Went to a shopping mall in Spain today and saw this odd green/teal Michigan shirt in a children’s clothing store,” writes Jonathan Sluss. “The picture doesn’t really convey the color well but it wasn’t like the store was selling any other college paraphernalia.”

OK. That’s going to do it for this first Sunday in November. Enjoy all the NFL games today, plus there’s hockey and hoops now, since baseball has gone into hibernation for a couple months. Thanks to Terry, Catherine, Tim, Andrew, Rob and Alex for all their contributions as well. Everyone have a great week.

I want to also wish Paul’s mom all the best with her hip replacement surgery tomorrow — Paul (and his brother) are going to be busy with that (and they’re both very good sons!), but we’ll keep UW going strong.

If you didn’t remember to turn your clocks back (those of you who still have clocks/watches that need turning back) — make sure you do so now, OK? Oh boy, where did that “extra” hour of sleep go, anyway?

Follow me on Twitter @PhilHecken.

Peace.

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“When I was in that grade, I got knocked out of a late round of the Reed Middle School spelling bee when I went with ‘homoginized’ instead of ‘homogenized.’ To this day, I feel remorseful (and just a bit mocked) whenever I’m in the dairy aisle.”

–Hugh McBride