Sunday Morning Uni Watch

By Phil Hecken and the SMUW Crew
Follow @PhilHecken

I don’t normally cover games that don’t take place on Saturday, but on Friday evening, the Tulsa Golden Hurricane (who went BFBS) took the interesting step of placing a “Hurricane Warning” set of flags on their helmets. Now, a couple folks on the Twitter were like “TOO SOON,” and indeed, we should absolutely be mindful of the destruction recently caused by Hurricane Michael on the Florida Panhandle. The hurricane flags on the helmets actually looked a lot like the hurricane flags on the new Carolina Hurricanes sweater. Especially when rendered on the matte black hat the team wore. But hey, it turns out the Carolina team was totally cool with that.

It also reminded me that the Tulsa squad wasn’t even the first team to wear hurricane flags on their helmets. That honor belongs to the Miami Hurricanes, who wore this element in the 1960s and revised the look with a throwback in 2005.

who "technically" copied it from the Miami Hurricanes. It's a Hurricane Warning set of flags. No one "owns" that. pic.twitter.com/wj4mbsYHRC

— Phil Hecken (@PhilHecken) October 13, 2018

Looks familiar 🤔 pic.twitter.com/GwDeZQKcKJ

— Joshua Escobar (@JoshuaEscobar23) October 12, 2018

It also got me to thinking… and I’m not sure why I never delved into this further before … how did the Tulsa squad get its name? They’re a landlocked (like, by a lot) city, and while it’s possible that a hurricane has stretched as far north as Tulsa, it’s not like the city is particularly affected by these weather phenomena (certainly not like the Carolinas or Miami, or, unfortunately, the panhandle). So a golden hurricane probably doesn’t refer to the water-borne variety of storm.

It turns out there are actually two explanations. First, a “golden hurricane” nickname applied to tornadoes during the Dust Bowl days. A tornado was full of dust and dirt, hence, a GOLDEN HURRICANE. But the second explanation is even more interesting. The story can be found here, which I’ve quoted below:

In 1922 — 15 years after Kendall College moved to Tulsa and two years after it was renamed the University of Tulsa — the Tulsa football team sought an official nickname. They had previously been known as the Kendallites, Presbyterians, Tigers, Tulsans, Orange and Black and the Yellow Jackets.

Then-head coach Howard Acher (1922-24) considered calling his team the Golden Tornadoes after someone remarked in practice that Tulsa was “roaring through opponents” on their way to an 8-1 record in 1922. However, Georgia Tech picked the Golden Tornadoes five years earlier, therefore Acher “evolved meteorologically” to a hurricane.

In early October, a few days prior to their 13-10 win at Texas A&M, Acher solicited a vote from his team on the name Golden Hurricane. It was approved and has remained in place since.

Ironically, Georgia Tech would later drop Golden Tornadoes and become the Yellow Jackets. Tulsa could’ve been the Golden Tornadoes after all, which make far more meteorological sense.

So there you have it. Technically the hurricane warning flags on the helmet don’t even apply to the team, but I thought they looked really cool. The more you know.

And with that, here’s TJ with your…

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Sunday Morning Uni Watch
By Terry Duroncelet, Jr.

The action-meter was pegged pretty hard for Week 7, as there were plenty of throwbacks, GFGS and BFBS antics, and several Top 10 upsets throughout the college landscape. Shall we begin?

From Tuesday:

• App State looks fantastic in all-white (helmets are essentially flowerless versions of the Camellia Bowl helmets from a ways back), and even though the stripe thingy on the pants is a case of liked by some, damned by others, they have one of the more underrated uniforms in college football in my opinion.

From Thursday:

• Texas Tech wore sensational white throwbacks against TCU. Chalk me up as a fan!

From Friday:

• Tulsa’s all-black uniforms are laughable, although I do like warning decals on the helmets.

• Utah wore outstanding helmets against Arizona, and for good reason (from Tucson (dot) com: “Friday night marks the fifth-annual Ute Proud game, which honors people of the Ute tribe, who have lived in the west for centuries. The tribe owns 597,288 acres of trust land and 27,354 acres of fee land throughout Utah, Colorado and northwestern New Mexico. At halftime, members of the tribe will be honored and the Ute Pow Wow committee will perform a cultural demonstration on the Rice-Eccles Stadium field. The university is selling Ute Proud t-shirts, and all proceeds go to the Ute tribe’s scholarship and youth programs. Utah is celebrating its 125th season as a football program. Utah long ago received permission from the tribe to use Utes as a nickname.”

From Saturday:

• Illinois went GFGGS (Grey For Grey Ghost’s Sake) over the weekend, and wore the newest version of their Grey Ghost uniforms against Purdue. The design accommodates the Illini’s simplified uniform set for 2018.

• Ohio State hosted their “Pink out” game against Minnesota, and wore pink accessories, including pink ribbon decals on the back of the helmets (h/t to Andrew Lind).

• Pitt wore the white version of their rad throwbacks against Notre Dame.

• Tons of contrast in the San José State vs Army bout. Steve O’Dell sends this in: “Re: Army uniforms. They like to mix up real Army unit patches. Sometimes the seniors wear the patch related to the branch they’ve chosen. Sometimes there’s a theme based on coach’s team goals. So, today, they’re at San José, and they’re wearing Black Widow 7th Infantry Division patches, which is kind of weird. The 7th Infantry Division doesn’t even exist anymore. Used to be at Fort Ord, not far from San Francisco, but now it’s just a planning headquarters, 250 people located somewhere in Washington state.”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t pull up anything apart from the uni reveal that Army posted on Twitter.

• Boston College wore throwbacks against Louisville. While not visually-groundbreaking by any means, it is a nice change-up.

• Alright, so this isn’t the *absolute* worst grey v. white game I’ve seen, but I’d still would rather do without.

• …You want to know the saddest part about the BFBS Iowa State unis? It’s not a bad uniform in a vacuum. If you applied this to a team that actually has black in their team colors, then it’s actually pretty nice. I’ll even go one step further in saying that if BFBS were an acceptable thing in the uni-verse (it’s not, but follow me for a second), then I would say that it’s actually one of the nicest-looking BFBS uniforms that I’ve ever seen. But again, I’d rather everyone and their mothers crack USC doppelganger jokes than see… THIS. Signed, a Lakers fan that knows this song all too well.

• In lighter (and brighter) news, Cal wore some fantastically-fun throwbacks against UCLA (also note the pink mouthguard in that first pic).

• Grey pants for Colorado State. I almost want to call this “The Grey Area Season”, but that can easily be said about any of the previous seasons since 2011.

• Ole Miss wore all-white again against Arkansas.

• And speaking of white, UNC wore all-white at home against Virginia Tech. *side-eyes Penn State wondering why they can’t do this when they have a “whiteout” game*

• Miami (OH) made well on their promise to wear the multi-ribbon helmets teased earlier in the week.

• Northern Illinois wore new pink BCA decals (h/t to Blaise D’Sylva). From NIU’s Twitter: “Today our decals will honor the mothers, sisters or grandmothers of players, staff, or administration who have been affected by breast cancer. Each player who has had someone in their family with breast cancer will have that name on their helmet”.

• And now for the (not so much this season, apparently) seldom FCS mention: Duquesne wore Pittsburgh Steelers decals on their helmets in their victory against Robert Morris (Duquesne is based in Pittsburgh). MASSIVE thanks to Rich Donahue for bringing this to my attention. Here’s another action shot, complements of Korch. Although, I am curious as to why they chose to wear it on the left side instead of the right.

• October 8th, 2018 had its highs, and it also had its lows. The latter being that George Taliaferro, who was the first African-American to be drafted in the NFL (Round 13 by the Chicago Bears) passed away on Monday at the age of 91. Given that he played his college ball at Indiana, the Hoosiers wore #44 decals (his jersey number at Indiana) on the left side of their helmets in their game against Iowa.

• Mizzou broke out the gold helmets again this season, this time against Alabama.

• Between the Ｗ　Ｉ　Ｄ　Ｅ numbers and the highlighter bodysuits that look like something out of Sonic the Hedgehog (VOLUME WARNING, PLEASE turn your volume down to at least 40% before clicking), you literally could not miss Oregon on the field if you took out your own eyes, put blackout contact lenses on them, and them chucked them into the farthest black hole you could find.

That’ll do it for Week 7, and WOW, was it a lot to unpack! (in a good way, of course) There’s undoubtedly a number of things that I missed over the weekend, but nevertheless, a HUGE thank you to all that mention me or Phil in tweets every Saturday. This whole weekend, in all of its surprises and antics, is what college football is supposed to be: FUN. I’m exited for Week 8, which I will see you all for, well, next week. See you then!

• • •

Thanks, TJ! Make sure you give Terry a follow and tweet your uni news directly to him every Saturday!

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Joe Ringham’s 5 & 1

Following in the footsteps of the original “5 & 1,” Jim Vilk, and Catherine Ryan after him, Joe Ringham returns for 2018 to make his “5 & 1” (five good looking and one stinker) uni-vs-uni matchups. Sometimes he’ll have some “honorable mentions” and sometimes there will be more than one “bad” game. You may agree and you may disagree — these are, after all, just opinions and everyone has one. Feel free to let him know what you think in the comments section.

Here’s Joe:

. . .

Good Sunday morning, everyone. As a fall chill hits the air here, let’s get right to the list for this seventh week of the season…

5) Toledo at Eastern Michigan — A little MACtion to start the list this week. Absolutely loved EMU’s green/green/white home look this week. You pair that up against the gold/white/navy of the Rockets and you have one fine-looking game in Ypsilanti.

4) New Mexico at Colorado State — For some reason, while checking scores in the afternoon, I had a feeling about this game. Glad I was right, because it looked awesome. Really liked the white/white/cherry of the Lobos pairing up against the green/green/gray home set worn by the Rams.

3) Missouri at Alabama — Something about a team wearing gold playing against a team wearing some form of red that makes for some really nice looking games. This would be an example of that. Loved how Mizzou’s gold/white/gold matched up against the simplistic awesomeness that is the home uniform of the Crimson Tide.

2) Michigan State at Penn State — I’ll be honest, I didn’t think this game would look this good, but was glad by the pleasant surprise. Penn State always looks good at home, but Sparty surprised me here by going green/white/green on the road, instead of going green/white/white. That change made for some nice contrast, and made this game look much better.

1) Iowa at Indiana — Came across this game while coming back from an outing earlier in the day, and I knew immediately this could be tops on the list for the week. You already know how much I love the Hawkeyes’ unis, but the clincher here is the simple crimson/crimson/white home set the Hoosiers went with. Made this game look, from a uniform standpoint, just ridiculously good.

And, finally…

+1) Houston at East Carolina — There are times when going mono-purple works. There are times, though, when it doesn’t. This is one of those times.

Enjoy your football Sunday, and let’s do this again next weekend.

• • •

Thanks Joe! You can follow Joe on the Twitter and let him know what you think of his choices or make a 5 & 1 suggestion of your own!

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NCAA Uni Tracking

Uni Watch will again track the uniform combinations worn by the “Power 5” conferences. All of the 2017 trackers are back!

We’ve got Rex Henry (tracking the ACC), Dennis Bolt (tracking the PAC-12), Kyle Acker (tracking the Big XII), and Ethan Dimitroff (tracking the B1G AND the SEC). Rex, Dennis, and Kyle and are all returning from 2015, and Ethan is back after joining the NCAA Uni Tracking a couple seasons ago. Ethan continues his dual role of tracking both the B1G and the SEC.

Here are the Uni Trackers for the Power 5 Conferences:

+ + + + + + + + + +

Rex is up first today (ACC):

• • •

ACC

More Here.
Follow Rex on Twitter here.

• • •

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

PAC-12

More here.
Follow Dennis on Twitter here.

• • •

And here is Ethan, with the SEC:

SEC

And be sure to check out Ethan’s WVU Mountaineer Tracker.
Follow Ethan on Twitter here.

• • •

And here is Kyle with the Big XII:

Big XII

Follow Kyle on Twitter here.

• • •

And here’s Ethan with the B1G:

B1G

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Welcome to the 2018 Oregon Ducks Uni Tracker. This little project was originally begun way back in 2008-09 by Michael Princip, who retired after several seasons, whereupon the project was continued by Tim E. O’Brien. He, too, retired from the tracking, but the project has been ably kept up by the man who also tracks the Pac12, Dennis Bolt.

Here’s this week’s Uniform Combo for the Ducks (you can click to enlarge):

You can read about this uniform, and MUCH MORE, by checking out the Duck Tracker here!

Thanks Dennis!

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And Now a Few Words from Paul

Hi there. In case you missed it over the past week, big savings are on tap for both of our Uni watch caps.

First, our friends at Ebbets Field Flannels are offering a site-wide 20% discount with the checkout code PLAY18. That effectively reduces the price of our solid-green Uni Watch classic cap from $49 to $39. Order yours here.

In addition, we’ve reduced the price of our flex-fit Uni Watch alternate cap from $29.99 to $24.99. You can order that one here.

And while we’re at it, don’t forget that we have a great new T-shirt, designed by Andrew Harrington, that mimics the look of a vintage woven clothing tag. That one, which is available in a wide range of colors and styles, can be ordered here.

Finally, in case you missed it on Friday, my annual Uni Watch NBA Season Preview is now available for your enjoyment. Check it out here.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Phil-osophizing.

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Uni Watch News Ticker
By Phil

Baseball News: “The website The Old Motor recently posted this great photo of a Cadillac baseball team posing with a 1930 V16 car,” says Jonee Eisen. “It doesn’t seem like they know if the team was representing a dealership or the manufacturer. Cool unis.” More photos and info here. … Remember when A-Rod was almost traded from the Rangers to the Red Sawx? Well, he finally got to wear a Boston uni, albeit not in the way he probably envisioned. Here’s a good comment string on that (from Mike Chamernik). … Milwaukee is decorating fire hydrants in Brewers colors, just like they did for the Bucks (from Alex Hider). … Yesterday evening, Astros fans at Fenway were all in (great spot by Todd Radom). … I mean, they were really all in (from Christopher Newbury). I’d wear the second, not sure about the first.

NFL News: We saw the Carolina Panthers try several new uni combos during the pre-season, and today they’ll wear white jerseys over black pants against the ‘skins. … Reader Joseph Vincent has a gripe: “Drew Brees breaks the passing yardage record and the official commemorative ball has Brees in a different jersey than he wore in the game (black instead of white). While I can force myself to overlook this because I’d rather remember Brees in black on gold, the two images side by side are of different flywire collars and it sticks out soooo badly.”

College Football News: As most of you know, many years ago, almost before the Internet existed, Jim Vilk was my original “5 & 1” guy. So you gotta had it to this twitter user for giving Jim 5 & 1 props. Not so fast says Jimmer, “Not only is this guy like 5+ years behind the times, he doesn’t know I wouldn’t put Wisconsin’s all whites in the top spot.” … Both Ohio State’s official shop and Buckeye Corner have a hidden webpage headlined “Buckeye Black Pack,” which features a description of Ohio State’s black alternate jerseys (from Anderw Lind).

Hockey News: Looks like we have some new sweaters for the Minnesota State Men’s Hockey team (r/t’ed by Paul). … Bowling Green Men’s Hockey have vertically stacked numbers on their helmets (from Pat Dougherty. Pretty cool! … Here’s a bunch of stuff from major junior hockey on Friday night from Wade Heidt: A few special jerseys worn throughout major junior hockey Friday night: (1) Some Pinktober in the QMJHL, courtesy of the Sherbrooke Phoenix and the Quebec Remparts. The Remparts usually wear red uniforms. They went black with pink trim. Also note the ads on the boards at Videotron Centre in Quebec City were all in pink for the game; (2) In the WHL, the Kootenay Ice wore Wilderness Camo jerseys. Proceeds of auctioned jerseys to ICE Education Fund, which helps support funding their players’ post-secondary education; (3) In the OHL, the London Knights ditched their green or black jerseys in favour of blue on Friday night. These jerseys were to help promote Dream Lottery & Children’s Health Foundation (more here); (4) Also another note from the OHL. Noticed the Ottawa 67’s have cool new helmet decals this season. Before the helmet decal was “Ottawa” in writing. Now the decal features the logo and incorporates their famous barber pole design. … The NJ Devils “player of the game” award is this spiffy painted helmet from Switzerland (from Mike Engle). … These are the “Opening Night” jerseys the ECHL’s Tulsa Oilers wore last night. They were auctioned off after the game and online on the Dash app (h/t Paul). … Yesterday evening, Every member of the Chicago Blackhawks wore a #2 Keith jersey for Duncan’s 1,000th NHL game. Said submitter Edward Burmila, “The effect of seeing them all at once is pretty strange.” … “I noticed that Jordan Staal’s nameplate wasn’t fully within the shoulder yoke on the Canes’ jerseys this year,” said Dan Burke. “In closer inspection, most, if not all, of the players have the same issue. Sorry for the poor quality photo.” … Good observation from MBD Chicago who says, “The Blackhawks red sweater collar makes it look like they’re wearing a collared shirt under an actual red sweater.”

NBA News: “I saw the ticker Item about the possible new OKC Thunder Logo. The Interlocking OK with the C looked very familiar to me,” says Mark Rybczyk. “I was in Oklahoma City a few years ago and the then Minor League OKC Redhawks used a similar logo on their hats.” … Dwyane Wade gave comedian Kevin Hart a toddler Heat jersey. Says submitter Mike Chamernik, “Hart is known for being small.” … The Atlanta Hawks are one of the few professional sports teams that participates in their city’s Pride Parade & Festival. Here’s a look at the special jersey the team created for the event. It’s the Hawks 50th year in Atlanta, hence the 50 on the back, and this is the fourth straight year they are participating in Pride.

Soccer News: Reader Keelan McWilliams writes, “I’d be interested in hearing your guys take on how football boots aren’t like other sports and the colors can be so different from the teams kit.” … Riverdale Soccer Club (a youth soccer program in the Bronx) has advertisements on their jerseys (from Alexander Ganias).

Grab Bag: From Jeremy Brahm: New look for the Russian Men’s SuperLeague Volleyball. … OK, this is pretty awesome: Big League Chew is putting a woman on its package for the first time ever (r’t’ed by Paul).

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