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The infamous "tire tread" college basketball pattern


VandyDelphia Mike

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I remember these jerseys. Wasn't it Converse that created them? The commercials for their shoe or something showed off these jerseys. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, but now we need someone to find those St. Johns jerseys where the shorts had the outline of the skyline on them to complete the "what were they thinking" look of this time.

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I remember these jerseys. Wasn't it Converse that created them? The commercials for their shoe or something showed off these jerseys. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, but now we need someone to find those St. Johns jerseys where the shorts had the outline of the skyline on them to complete the "what were they thinking" look of this time.

I believe they were Apex (which was a part of Converse at some point, not sure exactly what the timeline was on that, though), who was also responsible for the Cowboys' double stars and the Kentucky Basketball denim-style uniforms.

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I think this was Converse who rolled out the Con Blue line for Kentucky which was the horrid looking denim uniforms. They followed those with teh tiger stripes. You'll notice the chevron is actually part of the Converse logo turned on it's side

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I actually think the chevron design is nice, on the jerseys at least...

Agreed. They look nice and classy going up the side of the jersey, but they're on that weird angle on the shorts that just makes them look so..."tready".

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This was the only time Minnesota had bad hoops uniforms. I was not fond of "Gophers" on the homes for one year either. But this really was awful. This was my first time recognizing templating. I remember the commercial and I am pretty sure it was converse. I want to say there were about six schools that wore the template. Each one was a downgrade. (EDIT: I looked up the tire tread and found reference to, but no photos of, Oklahoma wearing it).

Actually, I think my first memory was about a year before this. Minnesota had shorts with a horizontal stripping pattren on the right leg. It was also on the left let, but broken up and a diagonal stripe insterted. The "M" sat on top of that diagonal stripe. Clemson had the same shorts pattern that year (buy may not have had a logo). It was almost like the mid-1009s Flames jersey. I think this occured for one or two years perhaps 1993 to 1995 or so. I looked for photos of both schools but found none with that uniform.

If anyone can find that, I'd appreciate it. It's the only instance I can think of where Minnesota used black trip for basketball (they have some history with hockey and football as well).

Disclaimer: If this comment is about an NBA uniform from 2017-2018 or later, do not constitute a lack of acknowledgement of the corporate logo to mean anything other than "the corporate logo is terrible and makes the uniform significantly worse."

 

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You mean you don't miss these?

1215253516_0203a12f47_o.jpg

Oh-Holy-Crap-No!

The awfulness....it burns! It burns like hygiene!

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Go Gators. Go Blue Raiders. Go Commodores. Go USC Trojans.

Preds & Avs.

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Grizzlies. 14ers, Jam.

Team Spirit + Laziness = Yay.

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You mean you don't miss these?

1215253516_0203a12f47_o.jpg

Kentucky kinda led the way into the non-traditional uniform styles of the mid-90's.

First these:

http://www.solobasket.com/fotos/1808_2.jpg

Then, the "Umbro Logo" Unis:

http://www.solobasket.com/fotos/5033_2.jpg http://www.kentuckybasketballcd.com/delk.jpg

Then, the aformentioned "Tiger-cicles", as shown above. (Here's a white version:_

http://www.kentuckybasketballcd.com/mccarty.jpg

Then, for the first half of the 1995-96 season, they had simple ones with a blue side panel down both sides, which was nice and simple, yet awesome, only to be replaced mid-season by the infamous denoms:

http://www.nba.com/media/heat/hpg0506_96walker_060322.jpg http://www.bigbluehistory.net/bb/Graphics/...sachusetts3.jpg

After these, in 1997, was a return to the simple 2 blue side panels, to be followed in 1998 by the long-running uniforms of their new Nike deal:

http://starbulletin.com/97/11/26/sports/bkc.gif

which ran up until 2 seasons ago, I believe, which were then replaced with the currents.

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Ah the Apex Sublimated uni's...

Arkansas had some too...

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I know I liked most of these uniforms when I was younger (I was 10), and they look really dated and lame now.

But I still think those St. John's uniforms are pretty cool.

The empire state building extended all the way up to the jersey...I always thought that was a nice touch.

Arkansas had some pretty "normal" uniforms really. Very simple, just the stripes that went down only on one side and then kinda "swooshed" around.

0411_mid.jpg

I also remember Villanova had some crazy uniforms around that time.

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Apex One isn't the only one doing "re-treads" (ba-dum-ching) in this pic - get a load of K-State. Reebok plastered that exact number font all over college basketball in the mid-to-late '90s, with Utah and Michigan State being two of the more notable schools. I also think Reebok might have had a contract with the old ABL, because I believe that font got quite a bit of use there.

Seeing these pics further cements my belief that the mid-to-late '90s was the golden age of creativity in sports uniforms. You had new tools like dye sublimation, color schemes previously unheard of, and designers who were willing to pole-vault outside the traditional boundaries, because suddenly anything was possible. Sure, a lot of crap got made in the process, but so did some incredibly wild things of beauty. Those skyline shorts on St. John's were absolute brilliance.

Compare that to today, when you've got a company that tried to convince an entire league that horizontal stripes just aren't possible anymore, and that that somehow is an improvement.

On 1/25/2013 at 1:53 PM, 'Atom said:

For all the bird de lis haters I think the bird de lis isnt supposed to be a pelican and a fleur de lis I think its just a fleur de lis with a pelicans head. Thats what it looks like to me. Also the flair around the tip of the beak is just flair that fleur de lis have sometimes source I am from NOLA.

PotD: 10/19/07, 08/25/08, 07/22/10, 08/13/10, 04/15/11, 05/19/11, 01/02/12, and 01/05/12.

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There was one other Apex template that hasn't been mentioned. It was used by Penn and George Washington - and maybe North Carolina State. It had a sort of horizontal zig zag pattern on the right leg (it kind of shaped a mountain). On the left leg, there was a very odd shape that kind of looked as if it was the blade of an extremely fat sword. On the left side of the jersey was a diamond. They were completely bizarre, but I can remember as a youngster thinking that they were fantastic.

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Reebok was crap. And I remember them giving every team the same font. They did supply the uniforms for the old ABL Women's basketball league. It sucks that the WNBA had more moeny because the ABL had better games and used the same rules as the NBA to include the ball being the same size as well.

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