Sunday Morning Uni Watch

By Phil Hecken, with Terry Duroncelet

I was all set to go on a rant today about the BS BCS system and all the conference championships we have now (for example, USC kicked the everliving crap out of UCLA last night, with UCLA in their stormtrooper unis, but UCLA had, with a .500 record, clinched a PAC-12 Championship bid)…meanwhile, the second best team in the nation, by a longshot — Alabama (11-1) — sits home next weekend while LSU plays for the SEC title, and Stanford, also at 11-1, also sits home. And it’s quite possible ‘bama gets an invite to the BCS game…in a rematch against LSU. Or, Houston (who?), undefeated as of today, may just be deemed worthy (yeah, right) of a matchup against LSU (assuming LSU beats Georgia next weekend). Then again, it just may be Okie State or Stanford or Boise or … It’s all just getting out of hand, big time.

But I won’t go on a rant, because we’re here to talk about unis. I was going to do a little rundown on the UCLA all whites, but I know Terry is itching to get at that…so, I’ll now turn this over to my NCAA uni-partner-in-crime. Here’s Terry:

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• Hope everyone had a great and safe Thanksgiving. After waking up from my food coma on Thursday, I awoke to the sight of Texas A&M wearing all-maroon, along with a terrible, potentially game-changing “late hit” call by the referee that makes you want to say “What a maroon,” in the last Lone Star Showdown for the next seven years (at least).

• Speaking of maroon… The Arizona State kicker’s neck was looking a little busy with the Swoosh and his number being in the same vicinity.

• Continuing down Maroon Boulevard… Mississippi State wore their Egg Bowl unis last night against Ole Miss. I think they worked. Am I the only one who thinks that they should use the gold full-time? Not a bad look considering they’re usually the worst-dressed team in the SEC. More info here.

• The Clemson kicker’s bicep? pad was hanging out of his uniform. Or is that a medical pad, or what?

• In THE GAME, Michigan still had last week’s Veterans Day/Military Appreciation Day flag patch on their jerseys. When I mentioned Army vs. Tulane about a month-and-a-half ago, I made a comment saying that Army was the only FBS program left that knew how to wear their uniform from the waist-down (proper-sized thigh and knee pads, pants below the knees, etc.). I would like to add that Michigan does a great job of this as well. Plus, one of the Wolverines had a slightly droopy NOB.

• Kentucky did the BFBS thing again, but with the white lids. Only two words.

• Boise State wore their blue jerseys with white pants and standard blue lids at home against Wyoming. Wait, what? Boise State wore a decent combination… at home? That can’t be right. I think I need to get my already-terrible eyes checked out. All kidding aside, I like this look a lot, but it would’ve been perfect if they would’ve worn the orange pants. Oh, and there was this pretty cool catch. Nothing too special.

• Duke wore black pants with their white jerseys (dumb) against North Carolina (dumber).

• Minnesota wore gold-over-white against Illinois. Have they worn this combo before?

• These turducken-worthy muscles are brought to you by Muscle Milk.

• Virginia Tech wore their very awesome maroon-orange-maroon-striping-pattern-everywhere-stormtrooper-retro look against Virginia.

• Florida wore mono-blue against Florida State.

• UCF wore mono-gold against UTEP. Unless you’re looking at the helmets, you can’t really tell who’s who from more than 80 yards away. Credit Jim Vilk for the heads-up.

• Stanford wore their Pro Combat uniforms last night against Notre Dame, and believe me when I say that they stunk without the striped compression shirts (compare #26 to everyone else). *sigh* Never wear another AmPac suit again, Cardinal. Ever. But congrats to Andrew Luck on being only the third Quarterback to beat Notre Dame three years in a row.

• UCLA wore their much-anticipated stormtrooper uniforms last night against USC. Once you get past the dumbass pant stripe and the fact that they were made by — in my opinion — the real satanic demons that have three stripes in place of horns, this actually has a real charm to it. I never liked UCLA’s 2010 move to all-navy and gold for their white jerseys (whether they were super-stretchies or not), but the jersey tops from last night were really cool, especially when paired with the striped compression shirt. One major thing about them was that they weren’t made with the TechFit fabric, even though the promo pics show otherwise. Weird… in a good way, of course. The helmet is a white shell with a navy-gold-navy stripe that stops about 5/6-7/8 of the way down the back, kinda like Virginia Tech, but cleaner. Navy script “UCLA” on the lids, with a navy facemask and gold helmet numbers in that really cool number font shadowed in navy. Count me as a fan of the number font, and — if they’re smart — I hope that they use this font on their regular uniforms next year, home and road (going back to a respectable fabric would help, too). But what kept it from trumping Michigan’s Under The Lights 2.0 road uniforms as the best Adidas uniform ever are those pant stripes. Seriously, those things are a freaking joke. Yeah, Nike has the same problem with the Pro Combat pants, but it looks like Adidas didn’t even try to go for a full-pant stripe (zoom in on the knee). Maybe they were trying to replicate UCLA’s once-respected shoulder stripes? Who knows, but it’s still a hot mess. Final verdict? Nowhere near as horrible as I thought it was going to be.

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Great job, again, as usual, Terry.

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Benchies

by Rick Pearson

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Sometimes he slides into “Win One for the Gipper”…

And, as always, the full-size.

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Uni Tweaks

We have another new set of tweaks today.

If you have a tweak, change or concept for any sport, send them my way.

Remember, if possible, try to keep your descriptions to ~50 words (give or take) per tweak. You guys have been great at keeping to that, and it’s much appreciated!

And so, lets begin:

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We start with Tanner Karp who has a J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets concept:

Hey Phil,

I created a new image for the Jets like 5 years ago and I finally put it into a uni tweak.

Thanks- Tanner Karp

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Next up is Coachie Ballgames, who want to bring a little OC to the house:

Phil:

Here’s a concept to rebrand the L.A. Angels as the “Orange County Angels.”

The short-lived “Anaheim” moniker never made sense. When most people talk about heading down from L.A., they usually say, “I’m headed to the O.C.” kind of like how New Yorkers say “I’m headed to Jersey” rather than a mention a specific town. “Orange County” has its own unique cache, as it encompasses several great communities beyond Anaheim like the legendary beach towns of Seal Beach, Huntington, Newport and San Clemente.

Better for the team to represent a specific region than nowhere in particular i.e. L.A..

I went with the older-style navy blue and red because I feel the red letters pop better against the blue background.

Regards,
Coachie Ballgames

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And we close with Josh Nelson, who has submitted the redux the Padres should have done:

Phil

Here are my visual thoughts on what they should have done. They took an already bland brand and watered it down even further.

Logo
Home
Road
Alternate
BP
Military Appreciation

I did a whole writeup on my blog here.

Also attached is a pdf of the original proposal that I sent earlier this year.

Enjoy!

Josh

That’s all for this week. Back next weekend with more.

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Colorize This!

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

A bit of a twist today, as we’ll have two submissions from the usual suspects (G&G), and one new one — and I have a couple of b&w’s from the past couple weeks that would be great for the colorizers to try their hand at. Those will follow the submissions.

We’ll start with George Chilvers, who submitted this a while back, since he’s on holiday for the next few weeks:

Hi Phil

As I said the other day this may be my last for a few weeks.

It’s Lionel Conacher wearing the uni (see, I’m getting into the phrases!) of Montreal Maroons. Now to be honest I’d never heard of him but apparently he is very well known in Canada, so I don’t know if he is well-known in the States. (If anyone doesn’t know who he is then they can do what I did and Wikipedia the name). All I know is that his nose is certainly something else – apparently he broke it 8 times.

The picture dates from 1937 and the original is here.

Best wishes for the next few weeks – I’ll be keeping an eye on the site while in the UAE :)

–George

Thanks, G. Enjoy the warm weather in Abu Dhabi.

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The next submission comes from Ted Hammond (who actually sent this to Paul, who forwarded it to me):

Paul,

I enjoy doing these from time to time, hope you like it.

Ted Hammond

I’m actually a little confused as to whether Ted colorized that, as the image’s title said, “buck weaver 1916 chicago white sox. by charles conlon” — so Ted, if that’s your work, take a bow (and apologies for doubting you).

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And our final colorization for today comes from Gary Chanko, who went all hoop on us this week (and it just so happens to be one featuring himself):

Basketball is here and time to colorize some vintage photos. Luckily I had one on hand.

It’s your 1958-59 St. Matthews 8th grade (Wilmington, DE) CYO basketball team. You won’t find the B&W original anywhere on the Internet because there’s likely only a few surviving prints.
Somehow I managed to save my copy over the years.

That’s me, No. 10, behind the kneeling player in front. Actually the player just behind me is wearing my actual jersey, No. 3. We did a switch so all the players in the last row had the same jersey for the team picture.

Strangely I’m the only one wearing low cut shoes, Keds I think. There’s a few high top Chuck Taylor All-Stars, other Keds, and maybe a PF Flyer or two for footwear. No leather shoes just yet. Baggy shorts were still another thirty years off.

Although I’ve lost contact long ago with my teammates, I’m hoping some may be Uni-Watch readers today.

Gary

Nice work, Gary! I bet Jim Vilk would wear that.

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Normally, this would end “Colorize This!” but I received a couple black & white submissions, as well as spotted a couple over the past two weeks that would be right up the colorizers’ alley. First, the submissions.

Kevin Feser requests:

Dear sir,

I love this picture for many reasons, if you could colorize it for me it would be very much appreciated.

I have included another pic of the uniform colors for reference, if it helps.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Kevin Feser

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Next is a suggestion from Ben Fortney:

Hey Phil,

A commenter had left a link to a Facebook Group featuring old photos of Long Island and NYC yesterday.

There are many, many gems but I saw this and it’s just screaming for some color. Not exactly a hi resolution image, but there’s a leg up if anyone wants to give it a crack… this.

Keep up the great work.

Ben

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Next, a couple people noticed this incredible shot on Shorpy (Paul even tickerized it this week). Would make for a great colorization. Here’s the Shorpy link with uni details.

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Finally, Ruben Zendejas sent me this beautiful pic in his uni tweaks yesterday. That’s BYU. Reader Andrew Seagraves found a separate colorization of how that uniform might look (a discussion of that was featured in the April 26, 2011 Uni Watch comments’ section). The uni was described thusly:

“I was at my in-laws’ place over the weekend and saw a book about the history of BYU football,” says Eric Westover. “The first part was about when it was Brigham Young Academy, and there were some interesting photos. In this team portrait, some of the players appear to have their positions indicated on their uniforms. And in the 1940s, they added orange to their uniforms so ”˜they could be seen easier.’ That didn’t last long.”

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There you have it readers. A few challenges for the next time. Hope to see more of you trying your hand at this fine and fun hobby.

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2011 Duck Tracker

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, Jake Hurley has stepped up to the plate and taken over the “Duck Tracker” for 2011. What is the Duck Tracker? Quite simply, it tracks each and every uniform combination the Ducks have worn for the 2011 season. He steps in for former tracker Mike Princip, whose non-Uni Watch activities will preclude him from tracking for 2011.

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Here’s the updated 2011 Duck Tracker.

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Jim Vilk’s 5 & 1

And now for the part of the post that I wait up all night for you’ve all been waiting for…

Again, I haven’t taken a look at what Mr. Vilk has in store, but there were some good looking games yesterday — and a few duds. Jimmer had a good week last week, so let’s see if he can’t build upon that success this week as well. Here we go:

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Terp Tracker — A wise move…keeping the red to a minimum against NC State.

Honorable Mentions to UCLA/USC — White For Rivalry’s Sake < Color vs. Color. And to Ole Miss/Mississippi State — Gold For Rivalry’s Sake? Hmmm…

5. FSU/Florida — One of the best mono-blue unis I’ve ever seen.

4. Texas/Texas A&M — Goodbye to yet another rivalry.

3. Iowa/Nebraska — Speaking of rivalries, I still say the Huskers should be playing Oklahoma this weekend.

2. Rice/SMU — Welcome to the big time, you other Owls!

1. Ohio State/Michigan — With apologies to Keith Jackson: Hellooooooo…number one!

And the bad one: Bowling Green/Buffalo — BFBS (Bad Font, Brown Swirlies) vs. regular BFBS.

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I think Joe Dreyfuss will approve of this. I had a hunch you’d put Rice in the top 5 once I saw they had SMU on their sked. And lookie here…OSU and UM actually looked like, well…the Bucks and the Wolverines. Amazing how that works out some times. Kinda thought you’d have pegged UCLA for the BAD one, and certainly Stanford was in the running…good job tho, Jim. You’re on a bit of a moviroll.

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And that…will do it. Enjoy your Sunday and the league where they play for pay. Back next weekend with more weird, wild and wacky stuff.

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“From the article headline: ‘adidas, UCLA to Debut New White Uniforms Tonight’. I think putting adidas in the headline ahead of UCLA is the definition of logo creep.” — Mike Styczen