Sunday Morning Uni Watch

By Phil Hecken

Back today with Week III of the NCAA Football Season, which means it’s time for another installment of Sunday Morning Uni Watch, featuring the stylings of Terry Duroncelet, with a couple of sides of 5 & 1 (by Joe Ringham), some Uni Tracking (courtesy of Rex Henry and Dennis Holt), plus a neat colorization and the Ticker. So, tis a full plate.

Week III is usually a pretty good (but dull) week for unis, since we don’t have the opening week “special” kits, and while a few teams have engaged in conference play, a few cupcakes are out there and teams go with their basic fare. It’s also not 9/11 (or close), Pinktober or GI Joevember yet (fortunately).

Now I’ll turn the main section over to our SMUW expert, TJ Duroncelet, who’ll take you through the unis and uni disasters of Week III.

Here’s Terry:

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Sunday Morning Uni Watch
By Terry Duroncelet

From Thursday:

• Remember those Long Island Iced Tea numbered, mini-Olde English player name white uniforms that Louisville against Auburn wore during Week 1? Well, much like Prometheus, there is (unfortunately) a sequel. I would say “This can’t possibly get any worse”, but we all know what happened the last time I opened my big mouth. Worst part is that in a vacuum, this isn’t too bad a look, and is at least marginally better than their whites. But the numbers shouldn’t be difficult to read in any scenario, much less a night game.

From Friday:

• It’s that time of year again where the Florida State Eagles face off against the Boston College Seminoles. Look, I understand that some schools in some conferences will have very similar color schemes, and that sometimes, those teams with very similar color schemes will sometimes meet up, but if you have uniform options to create at least a little bit of contrast, and you knew that you would be playing this particular team, wouldn’t you make a call or two to go over the semantics of what each team plans to wear so that it makes life for the refs and spotters at least a little easier? Yes, due to the dark red that Boston College wears (and the fact that this was a home game for the Eagles), it would’ve been ill-advised for Florida State to wear their yet-to-be-worn black alts, but at least wear the helmet! To my knowledge, Florida State does not currently have garnet pants that go with the uniforms they unveiled last year, which also would’ve helped. Even if Boston College were to go mono-dark red, that would’ve been better. Are little things like that too large of an order? Not even attacking, just curious.

From Saturday:

• Northwestern all-white with wore these helmets on Saturday.

• New Mexico State wore these rad helmets over the weekend. Article here.

• Although not a bad (or new) look by any means, I don’t think I’ll ever not get thrown off-guard whenever I see Nebraska in all-white. Also, here’s a close-up of their nose bumpers. One of Miami’s players apparently enjoys grilling in his spare time (credit to Joey Zurek).

• Despite what is shown, that is not Louisiana Fournette. That is LSU freshman Lanard Fournette, younger brother of Leonard Fournette. Given the nature of both first names, Lanard uses ‘LA’ in order to differentiate from Leonard (which I assume would be ‘LE’, although I haven’t had a good look of the back of Leonard’s jersey).

• Penn State safety Jordan Lucas normally wears #9, but he wore #5 over the weekend in honor of teammate Nyeem Wartman-White, who suffered a season-ending injury in the Week 1 game against Penn State.

• Texas Tech wore some sweet throwbacks against R-Kansas (just like last year), although it would’ve helped if the players actually wore the striped compression shirts. I mean, it’s not you have to wear them all season long, it’s for ONE game, and a NIGHT game, at that! One player for Texas Tech had a rip in his jersey, which was remedied on the sidelines.

• I haven’t talked about Indiana in a very long time, but the Hoosiers wore these helmet decals on Saturday.

• The Cincinnati Bearcats motto: “Double the America. Double the fun. #ThisHashtagMakesNoSenseAndDoesntEvenReallyExist #NeitherDoesThisMotto” Also, Andrew Gantz of the Cincinnati Bearcats wore decals on the back of his cleats bearing the surname and number of Ben Flick, a Cincy lineman who died in a car accident two years ago. I’m not entirely sure if this was done by just Gantz or more members of the Bearcats team.

• You doin’ alright there, Nevada? Closer look. The Dade font in the Nike Uniform Builder can only really be pulled off by the ‘Canes (who aren’t even with Nike anymore). Any other team that tries to use it just comes off as silly.

• There’s nein consistency with Cal’s numbers (fuzzy, but hopefully, you should be able to discern the two numbers). Also from that game, the new Mach Speed template that a good chunk of the Nike-outfitted schools wear these days is definitely an improvement in the sweat polygon department compared the previous iterations, but nothing’s perfect.

• Virginia wore their throwbacks against William & Mary.

• TCU wore their purple scaly uniforms and helmets against SMU. I know what you’re thinking when I said “scaly”. Get your head out of the gutter. You know who you are. Also, the Mustangs are very close to becoming “Methodist University” (note the falling ‘S’)

• Jim Harbaugh is pretty peculiar about his choice of dress: khakis (usually pleated), some type of sweater (usually fleece) with the team logo in the middle, and apparently, team-colored watches??

• Colorado wore all-white against Colorado State.

• UCLA’s grounds crew apparently didn’t have enough paint to fill in some of the 2’s and 3’s (and probably other numbers) on the field.

• Ole Miss wore one my favorite helmets in college football against Alabama. Derrick Henry’s facemask was ripped off during the game.

• Oregon’s done the Zero Championships helmet thing, the goatse winged helmet thing, so what’s left? Oh, I know! Let’s put Donald on the helmets! Yeah, and let’s make one of the decals ferocious-looking (just ends up looking like Donald needs a ChapStick). Silly Oregon, if you wanted your mascot to strike fear into the hearts of your opponents, you should have used a decal of a duck penis (please love yourself and DO NOT look that up). And yes, I am aware that they did this last week with their white helmets that double as Christmas ornaments.

That about does it for Week 3. Oh, and unlike a certain Saturday Morning program that apparently approves of posting things that are rather problematic when you take two seconds to think about it, I have plenty of chill (I was listening to this and other music while I was writing this). Here’s the screenshot from my computer in case they take the original post down (which they probably might do), and the isolated image. Have a good day everyone, and I’ll see you next week.

. . .

Sweet! Thanks, TJ.

OK, now on to the rest of the SMUW fest…

NCAA Uni Tracking

Back again today with our new feature: NCAA Uniform Tracking.

Once again, it’s Rex Henry (tracking the ACC & SEC) and Dennis Bolt (tracking the PAC-12). I’m still hoping to round out the “Power 5” by adding a B1G and Big XII tracker (thought I may have had that this week, but not yet — hopefully soon). You can click on the images to enlarge and (where appropriate) click the link for additional information/resources.

Rex is up first today:

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ACC

More Here.

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SEC

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And now, here’s Dennis with the PAC-12:

PAC-12

More here.

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And that’s all for today — thanks Rex & Dennis!

Joe Ringham’s 5 & 1

It’s a NEW NCAA Football Season, and this year we have a NEW 5 & 1 decider — Joe Ringham — who has some big shoes to fill (for Catherine Ryan, who did the 5 & 1 for the past three years, and Jim Vilk before that) but I’m sure he’ll do just fine.

Last weekend there was some light chatter that Joe had Oregon at #2 and somehow “I” had something to do with that — trust me, these are Joe’s and Joe’s alone. (I don’t mind seeing Oregon in the “good” part of the 5 & 1, believe me, but I didn’t think last weekend’s all white made for a particularly good matchup against MSU. But that’s just me. With that out of the way…)

Here’s Joe:

. . .

Good Sunday, everyone! Hope everyone had a wonderful Saturday. Let’s get right to the countdown, shall we?

5) Central Michigan at Syracuse — I bagged on the Chippewas last week, making them the +1. But they surprised me by looking rather nice this week in maroon/white/maroon. Couple that with Syracuse’s orange/blue/orange look, and you have a game that was rather eye-catching.

4) Ball State at Eastern Michigan — If you can get past EMU’s grey turf field, you will see just a simple, sharp looking game. Even the unnecessary “Cardinals” down the right pant leg for Ball State gets balanced out by the little shoulder wings for EMU, a nice touch.

3) South Florida at Maryland — Love the green/white/green that USF went with here, yet another game this season in which they have looked great. Match that with the Terps’ state flag/red/black get-up and you have a game that surprisingly looked good.

2) Illinois at North Carolina — Loved seeing this game on my TV. Definitely the Illini’s best look of the young season with the orange/white/orange and it matched up damn near perfectly with the Tar Heels’ white/Carolina blue/white. A great looking match up on an early Saturday afternoon on Tobacco Road.

1) Auburn at LSU — Always one of my favorite uni-match ups. Something about LSU wearing white at home in Death Valley that just makes everything pop, and the match up against Auburn was no different. Just a beauty of a game.

Honorable mention — NC State at Old Dominion and Florida at Kentucky.

And, finally…

+1) Western Illinois at Coastal Carolina — I know the Chanticleers are ranked either No’s. 2 or 1 in FCS, depending on the which poll you look at… but those are hideous looking uniforms to go along with a hideous looking field.

++1) Columbia at Fordham — Even though the teams are playing for the Liberty Cup, to honor alumni from both schools lost on 9/11, this is just a Star-Spangled mess of a uniform.

Enjoy the week, and I’ll see you next weekend!

__________

Thanks, Joe! Remember, the tip-line email (UW5and1@gmail.com) is back for any games you want Joe take a look at. Pictures of the game/games you want are very much suggested.

Colorize This!

Occasionally, I will be featuring wonderful, high-quality black and white photographs that are just begging to be colorized.

Back to colorizations on the weekends again. Today, I only have one, and it’s from Chris from ManCave and it’s a beaut (this actually was sent in last week, but I didn’t have time to include it at the time).

Click photo to enlarge.

Enjoy!

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Hey Phil,

Today, for the opening of the NFL season (which is when the Bears play their first game) I give you the NFL’s very first star and confirmed leatherhead, Red Grange. This is from 1925, his first season with the Bears.

Chris

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That’s it for today. Great job Chris!

Uni Watch News Ticker:

Baseball News: Crossover alert! At yesterday’s Tennessee Volunteers Game, #VFL Eric Berry of the Kansas City Chiefs was rocking an Orioles throwback Brooks Robinson jersey (nice spot by Jason Yellin). … Tweeter Alex Greenbaum noticed the Cubs’ Javy Baez has the MLB logo tattooed in the same spot it appears on the jersey. … “I’m attending the fifth and decisive game of the AAA International League championship series and noticed that the entire Indianapolis team has their pants high,” writes Steve Hartsock. “It looks so sharp to have everyone actually wearing the unis in a uniform matter. I was hoping the panorama would zoom, but no dice.” … Boo Radley (probably a pseudonym) asks, “Do the Nationals know WKU is using their logo?”

NFL News: It’s not quite pinktober yet (in fact, it’s still almost two weeks away), but that doesn’t mean the NFL isn’t ready to bust out the pink crap now (via Andrew Jenkins). … Self-proclaimed “Devout” Eagles fan Andrew Rader sends this article: “Love the Eagles Hype Videos? Meet the Branding Agency Behind Them.” … This is pretty random: check out this t-shirt with the never used 49ers logo in a shop in Fresno (from John English).

College/High School Football News: Reader Joshua Hanna notes that Google is still using Southern Miss’ old logo. … David Steinle writes, “Phil, I would appreciate it if you would highlight just how UGLY the new football uniforms are for Phillipsburg (Kansas) High School. The Panthers had decent uniforms in 2014.” … Whoops — that’s not Ole Miss’ logo, and it’s not even close (good spot by Joe MacQuarrie). … Holy crap — The fad of teams wearing the same color numbers as their jersey is spreading. Media nightmare. (Thanks, I think, to Chris Mycoskie). … “Guelph also added 25th anniversary patch,” says Patrick Thomas. “This one is a fact.” … The SEC Network is using the old UK and old Wildcat logo (from Brandon Owen). … This Alabama/Auburn soda display was seen in “Bumnum”, AL. That comes from Jerry Kulig, who adds, “Getting ready for the Iron Bowl.”

Hockey News: Oh Jeebus — check out these awful hockey jerseys that Arizona Hockey has unleashed. Submitter J. Walker notes, “maybe it’s good that UA didn’t get the NHL deal?” (Yes, those are made by Under Armour).

Soccer News: I’m not sure that soccer football in color vs. color is terribly noteworthy, but ted017 notes this matchup between Arsenal and Chelsea in the EPL is beautiful, and I’d agree. … Tim Cross says to note the @sockatyes advertising on the socks. More info here.

Grab Bag: Nice color vs. color matchup between Canada and Ireland in yesterday’s Rugby World Cup (h/t ted017). … This is interesting: The Jeb Bush campaign tweaked his logo at a UGA tailgate to look like SEC logo (from Kevin O’Connor). … Pinktober is spreading to license plates now (from James Gilbert). … Not sure this has ever made the ticker, so apologies in advance if it has: Jeremy Brahm reports TSV Herrsching of the German Volleyball Bundesliga, will be wearing a special uniform for the full season. Completely in lederhosen.

And that’s it for today — big thanks to Terry, Joe, Rex, Dennis, Chris from ManCave and everyone who sent e-mails and tweets my way. I’m covering for Paul for the next couple of days, so I’ll catch you guys tomorrow with another edition of Monday Morning Uni Watch. Until then…

Follow me on Twitter @PhilHecken.

Peace.

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“Any time something really uni-horrendous occurs, my first two suspects are Oregon and Louisville.”

— Jimmer Vilk