“Gold” is one of the uni-verse’s most overused words. The Steelers, for example, like to say that their colors are black and gold (as do all the Pittsburgh teams), but come on — it’s yellow, not gold. And even the teams that have a legitimate claim to having gold as a team color, like the Saints and 49ers, tend to wear more of a beige or khaki these days, because modern lightweight fabrics don’t convey that metallic sheen like the old-fashioned fabrics did.
Which brings us to Georgia Tech’s new football uniforms, which were just unveiled today. As you can see above, the uni numbers on the white jersey are a very shiny gold, as are the stripes on the (yellow) pants.
The striping also appears on the blue pants:
I think the white pants also have the metallic striping, although it’s hard to be sure from the really crummy photo they released. You can see additional photos here.
This uni set — Tech’s first makeover since switching from Russell Athletic to Adidas in 2018 — will make its on-field debut on Labor Day, when the Yellow Jackets open their season at home against Clemson.
The additional photos link isn’t working.
Fixed.
Link for “additional photos here” is not working.
I’m very glad they’ve changed the numbers on the blue unis from gold (in the previous set) to white. In additional to being closer to the 1990 design, that gold-on-blue just looked terrible. I’m not wild about the mismatch between the metallic gold and the gold/yellow pants, but all in all it seems like a good looking set. I’ll be curious to see how it looks on the field.
Link fixed!
I see these better suited for The fighting Irish as their helmets are the shiny metallic gold, unlike GTechs
Tech’s colors are “old gold” and white. “Shiny” doesn’t feel like “old.”
Historically, their gold was rendered in fabric in a greenish hue similar to the Clemente-era Pirates.
That gold is simultaneously gaudy, awful, and oddly interesting. I really love the blue tech uniforms and wish they’d wear them more.
Well said
While I don’t hate our blue unis, blue should never be more of an alternate for us since, as noted elsewhere, our colors are old gold and white. I’ve long felt that using too much blue takes away from our core identity. But, I do love the occasional blue pant or mono blue.
I tend to consume much more Mon-Fri UniWatch content than I do on the weekends, but based what I know about Phil, I’d be interested to read his reaction to Paul’s take on the distinction between the use of the words yellow and gold.
*For the record, I’m staunchly in the camp of calling yellow things yellow, tan things tan, and gold things gold.
I don’t get why if it doesn’t look like a gold bar, it can’t be called gold, that’s short sighted crayola-crayon thinking to me. It really doesn’t matter what anybody feels gold should be because of their childhood crayons, they are all shades of gold.
Nobody gets pissed about the range of what is called blue. Despite the fact that they are different colours, and not interchangeable, sky blue is just as “blue” as navy blue, correct? how is that different for “gold”, from goldenrod to old gold? They are just descriptors of a colour family.
Also, many “gold” teams, take the gophers as an example, have worn every shade from flat-corn to metallic to satisfy what they consider gold.
A lot of it stems for the cultural association of yellow with cowardice or disloyalty. Teams wouldn’t want to be associated with those traits but the color is nice and looks great in almost any sport. Thus, “athletic gold”. Which forced gold gold to become “old gold” or “Vegas gold”.
I just noticed the ATL nose bumper. Is that new, or have they done that before? Georgia Tech is in Atlanta, of course, so it makes sense that they would use it. On the “good to stupid” scale, I’m a firm “indifferent” on it, but I understand that some people might think it’s cool.
Is that something that more teams have been doing lately? I don’t keep quite the same mental Rolodex of minutiae as I used to.
That might have been a stupid question. The Warriors wore “The City” jerseys more than 50 years ago.
As a fan of their “rival” Georgia Bulldogs, I can tell you they’ve had the ATL nose bumpers for a couple years. Their head coach has been trying to claim ATL as well as #404TheCulture as a recruiting pitch…Hasn’t worked.
Back in the Heisman-Alexander-Dodd heyday, during which GT won more games than any school not named Alabama or Texas, it was common for some major nearby teams to only play GT in Atlanta:
– Auburn’s 53 games against GT between 1906 and 1959 were all in Atlanta.
– Clemson’s 41 games against GT between 1902 and 1973 were all in Atlanta.
– Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida State all also had streaks of 9+ games played against GT being played in Atlanta.
I think there is something to be said about GT having woefully underutilized the Atlanta connection over the years, and despite the lack of results on the field (or perhaps, due to it), I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that incorporating the city into its brand has been the most impactful thing Geoff Collins has brought to GT as coach.
I am not crazy about being so ATL centric (and I was born in metro Atlanta and lived here nearly all my life). I have long thought we we need to try to reach out more to the rest of the state. This Collins focus on the ATL only makes us seems more disconnected from the rest of Georgia, IMO. We are already at decided disadvantage among non-alum fans outside of metro areas between UGA and other schools from surrounding states in different regions. And for the Tech students that come from rural Georgia, their career paths rarely allow them to return to lcoals probably rarely interact with many Tech alums in their area. I know a nose bumper isn’t a major part of that dynamic, but it seems that it takes us in the wrong direction I think we should be going.
I think the reason that shade of gold pants bothers me in a way that Notre Dame doesn’t is because of the pants stripe and the numbers. Notre Dame’s pants don’t quite match their impossible shiny helmets, but there’s no striping and the numbers are navy with gold trim. It’s much less noticeable. With these, the shiny accent on flat pants, coupled with the shiny numbers right above the pants make it…odd.
Notre Dame doesn’t wear gold pants. They wear mustard.
Quick thoughts:
– Not sure if it’s the lighting, but it looks like the shade(s) of gold reverted back to some Russell-era nonsense. Not sure I’m on board with that.
– Tech’s always had something of an issue with making the gold numbers on the white jerseys discernable on TV. Not sure if this set fixes it. I’d prefer navy numbers on the white unis.
– I wonder what would prevent Adidas from producing a full fabric using the metallic gold they’re using here in the stripes and numbers.
– I think this is better overall than the stinger-esque stripe template they’ve been using for the past few years. Factoring in some minor issues with the color shades and stripe placements/lengths, I have this at an A- overall. If only uniform quality translated into wins on the field…
Why complain about a “really crummy photo” when it’s clearly visible in another one?
link
Gaudy gold means fashion means a possible recruiting tool. Simple as that. I do not like it at all but as a 55 year old curmedgeon with bad knees I am not exactly GT football recruiting material. It is the case with a lot of current new uniforms: most critics forget these new uniforms are not targetted at them, but at their kids or in some cases their grandkids. We are supposed to just shake our heads, take out our wallets and buy them for our beloved youngsters.
Weird that they have this new gold and still wear yellow pants. Hopefully they wear he navy blue or white pants way more than the yellow
Feel like there’s at least 3 different shades of gold here. I know it is hard to match the different materials together but the pants and numbers really clash.
They’ve always mismatched various shades of yellow and gold. Anything from canary yellow to mustard gold has been an ugly theme for years on both uniforms and the basketball court. Urine yellow would be a nice match to the on field product.
I’m would be remiss not to say that these are an upgrade over the recent stinger stripes and previous messes Russell had them in. They’re close enough to their traditional 1960s-90s look.
Nice new format Paul! Always an informative and enjoyable read.
Personally, I LOVE returning to our more traditional look. I also love shiny gold, though I cannot deny the mismatch in the gold. To me, the traditional look is so awesome, I won’t obsess over that mismatch. (Nor will I complain too much about why the stripe on the pants doesn’t go all the way down…that seems to be a modern touch that doesn’t fit with the classic styling.)
Oh, and Paul, one nitpick I can’t let go without comment. It’s Yellow Jackets. Two words. Not Yellowjackets like the music group. :)
Shame on me. Now fixed.
Actually when Adidas came on board a few years back there were wholesale changes from the Russell look. White helmets with stripes for example.
This is closer to “traditional” looks but the shiny metal gold together with the mustardy yellow is annoying. Gold is “hard”, cry me a river. Look down a bunch of roads and you will see 1, count ’em, 1, shade of red and 1 shade of crimson, and on and on.
Yeah, what I meant that this is the first redesign since the initial Adidas design.
Thank you Tech for actually listen to the fans and bringing back the classic look. But just like everything Tech does, they still can’t seem to get it 100% correct. I get that this is nitpicky and I am really happy with the change, but it always seems like Tech will get so close to perfection then throw in weird things to make it not prefect. They were so close but here are a few things that still frustrate me about these new uniforms. And yes these are very nitpicky. I get it.
First is the shoulder stripe order. You can see that on the traditional navy jersey has the gold stripe is on the bottom and white on top. Same with the traditional gold uniform. Navy stripe on bottom and white on top. Why did they switch these? They were so close. At least they got the white jerseys correct with navy on bottom and gold on top. I do appreciate the return the white numbers on the navy jerseys. The gold numbers on the white jersey don’t bother me to much, although traditionally we had navy numbers on the white jerseys. Gold numbers on white uniforms were only used from 1998 to 2002. White numbers on gold jerseys were only worn a few times from 1998 to 2002.
Second is the stipes on the gold pants. I get that from around 1992 until 2007 the stripe pattern was navy, thin white, gold, thin white, navy. Which was the same on the white pants since the 1980s. but traditionally since the 1950s the old pants stipes were just navy, white, navy. And I think that’s just a cleaner look. I’m ok with the white pants being navy, thin white, gold, thin white, navy, but removing the thin white stripes within would be cleaner look. Also, the fact that the stripes do not go all the way down the pants is just some of the stupid things I’m talking about with Tech’s execution of things. They can never seem to get it just right. I know someone earlier said that the Russell uniform template from 2016-2017 were just about perfect and I would have to agree.
Lastly is the uses of the two different golds. While the metallic gold does pop, it clashes with the mustered gold pants. I agree that the vegas gold from the Russell uniforms were to dull and I think the gold used on the pants from the 1950s until around 1991 is the correct shade of gold. Notre Dame’s gold pants today are the correct shade we should be aiming for. It’s every close to what we use to wear. Also, in 2018 our helmets wear changed to a lighter shade of gold. I think the helmets from 2016-2017 were the correct shade of gold. We do not need our helmets to match the mustered gold pants like they did in 2008. I think ditch the metallic and find a good middle ground between the golds of the helmet and the rest of the uniform like we did from the 1950s until 1991.
I know I’m going to get gripe about being nitpicky but my point is show that Tech can never really get anything 100% right. I know you can’t always get everything 100% right all the time but when it comes to something as easy as this and you still can’t execute it correctly; it’s just sad. It isn’t that hard to do a quick google search to see what Tech wore traditionally and then replicate it.
Overall I am happy with the focus on tradition, I’m just upset with the execution. Lets just hope they standardize when they wear which uniform. If it were up to me we would were GWG for home and away games. GGW for homecoming and against UGA at home. WWW or GWW for one whiteout game. and GBW for one special home game. Keep it simple so that the players aren’t focused on which uniform they are going to where that week so they can be focused on the game. The fans will know what to expect. No more gimmicky weekly uniform reveals. The top teams in the country don’t do any of that. They keep it simple so that they can focus of the game.
For what it’s worth I think swapping the stripes makes some sense on the navy jerseys. Even going back to 1990 when sleeves were long the gold was often lost under pads (only certain sleeve cuts would show it). Considering how much white was on those unis (and these) it would make more sense to have the Gold stripe be the one less likely to get cut off (we’ve entered a weird era where despite sleeves being practically non-existent stripe placement is high enough to be visible for most cuts except maybe the linemen, so this isn’t really something that needs to be accounted for but I’m okay with the change). Also we should wear Navy as little as possible it’s not a school color it wasn’t even the official accent color until the 80s.
I do not understand the switch for the Gold jerseys though… Something about that photo of that sleeve felt off when I saw it earlier today, I thought it was just the spacing but now I think it may be because I am so used to White over Blue on the sleeves.
I’m gonna wait to see how these look outside before I pass judgement on the metallic gold + mustard gold existing with one another. I think it looks good in most shots but there are some where the metallic gold has a greenish hue to it. I hope it looks better in more natural light. To me the “mustard gold” were using here look nearly identical to our Hamilton and Godsey era gold except that fabric had a shine to it that was lost when fabrics changed over the last decade or so. I really want to see a company find a way to add shininess back to the newer material without sacrificing the benefits of the newer material. Plenty of teams have had their looks hurt by the loss of that shine (in our state alone we have Tech and the silver britches in Athens who are now more accurately described as the light grey britches). I think Notre Dame’s current gold pants are more or less the same shade as our 1990 pants but minus the sheen (I remember hoping we would go with Under Armour specifically because I wanted us to just use that exact shade because it’s Old Gold on a modern fabric that doesn’t look green under florescent lighting or overly yellow in direct sunlight like our 2008 attempt did on a side note that 2008 gold looked phenomenal during early evening games when there was still enough sunlight that we weren’t relying entirely on the stadium lighting, it also looked really good in the shade, unfortunately it was not consistent at all).
For what it’s worth, you’ve hit the nail on the head, and basically enumerated in your nitpick every issue I merely alluded to in my initial comment for brevity’s sake. If I had to explain my own gripe with the uniform set in one word, it’s “noncommittal”. Not that it’s particularly new, seeing the last 20 years’ worth of Tech branding.
The only time I think it ever felt like Tech really committed to a uniform concept was in 2012, but that’s only because it was such a radically different concept than what they had ever used. And I kinda have to walk it back on account of a rumor – unconfirmed, so take with a huge grain of salt – that the designs that year were submitted to Russell and GTFB by a third party, and that the entire process from concept to field ended up being something of a rush job. But even in that year, they used two thoroughly incompatible uniform designs, the graphics they passed off as honeycombs were too noisy and overdone, and save for the honeycomb helmet (which had its own issue with non-Euclidian hexagon tiling) and a single reprise of one of the white uniforms against BYU the next year, the entire experiment thankfully only lasted the year.
With this design, it’s as if they wanted to return to traditional design elements but couldn’t commit to just doing the traditional design. It’s as if they changed the shade of gold from “old gold” to “tech gold” a few years back, I believe in order to simplify the manufacturing, but couldn’t commit to just using it over a shade of yellow that is closer to the “buzz gold” they supposedly hid away. Not to mention that Tech reduced the number of logo and wordmark options back in 2017 to simplify the brand, only to reintroduce a few in an update 4 years later.
Still I think this is an overall good set, and I much prefer this set to anything we had in the last 10 years with Russell, but it’s just…noncommittal. And I’ll add that all the talk of committing to tradition is not to say it’s impossible to hit with a hypothetical design that incorporates both modern and traditional elements. I do think that’s what Tech attempted to do here with elements such as the metallic gold, but with things like the sleeve stripes being too spaced out or flipped when compared to historical patterns, it seems as if they just tried to hit a traditional element but missed the target.
Overall, Tech moving to Adidas definitely raised the floor for GT’s uniform design, but the ceiling could still be so much higher.
Nice analysis. It seems we are on a similar page here. I think the switch to Adidas hasn’t paned out like we had hoped. All I have heard about is issues with manufacturing, not enough time to manufacture, trouble with the colors, etc. I don’t hear about these issues with other teams. We seem to get these custom uniforms like the cap day greys they wore against UNC, and the black watch unis (which I thought were darn near perfect). But they don’t seem to nail down the normal uniform. The AJC said that the mustard gold may change to be a lighter shade once they finalize it. But fact that they are promoting rough drafts of a uniform is just pathetic. Their “rough drafts” seem to overthought. They just need to simply things.
I agree that I wish fabrics had more of a shine to them. That’s what made Tech’s original uniform special. But i they could just match the color as best as possible, I’d be happy with that. I wish Tech had Notre Dames gold as well. It’s is much closer to Tech’s original old gold than tech gold is. Notre Dame seems to be pretty consistent with their gold across the board. It amazes me that a smart school like Georgia Tech can not seem to use common sense sometimes and get the most simple of things done right.
I wish Tech had went with Nike because most of the traditionally uniform teams in college football have Nike. You don’t see Nike doing stupid things like this much at all. (Unless you are Oregon or that one lime green Michigan State uniform) But for the most part their standard uniforms for schools are pretty normal and consistent. Plus Adidas hasn’t been putting out a lot of fan apparel as they had promised. And if they do its mostly navy not gold.
Nice post DaDadd. I appreciate the effort and detail you put into that. As a lifelong Dawg having watched Tech for fifty years I couldn’t agree more with you about needing to use white jerseys, gold pants at home and as a fellow nitpicker that would drive me crazy how they botched the sleeve stripes. Glad you shared that!
Thank you Mark. Its nice to meet a nice Dawger. Congrats on y’alls natty. While it was fun making those 1980 jokes I get there’s been a lot of heartbreak over the years. Y’all’s athletic department seem to have common sense. Something Tech has been lacking for years now.
Can anyone explain to me why Georgia Tech doesn’t wear their blue jerseys more often? Honestly curious. Can’t just be heat because eventually it does cool off, right?
As a Tech fan I can tell you that navy is not one of Tech’s primary colors. White and gold are their primary colors. Navy is a secondary color. Traditionally Tech has always worn white at home. LSU started to wear white at home because their coach wanted Tech to wear a colored uniform when they played them in the SEC. In the 1980s the NCAA made it a rule that home teams had to wear a colored uniform. Therefore, Tech started to wear black uniforms until around 1987, then switch to navy uniforms. Then in 1995, with the help of pressure by LSU, the NCAA overturned the home color rule, allowing teams to wear white at one with the approval of the away team. Then on, Tech mostly wore white at home again until 2003. From 2003 to 2007 Tech wore gold at home. When Paul Johnson came in 2008 Tech when back to home whites, stating “growing up Tech always wore white at home”
So to answer your question. Tech has traditionally worn white at home. Navy was only there for a few years. Tech did win a national championship in the navy so it does have something special attached to it. But I think that the majority of Tech fans want to see white most of the time, with gold and navy only used for special games.
To be honest the past couple of years Tech has worn navy more often that Tech fans haven’t liked it. They broke out navy pants for the first time a few years ago and it has contentious topic since. The all navy uniform has been worn a lot lately but not liked by the traditional fans.