Ted Cunningham

What really gets me about these helmets is how massive the cuts in them are and how that results in this weird two-tone (helmet color/black) effect. It almost all applications, this looks really weird with the logo decals. I understand that the cuts are there ostensibly for player safety and impact reduction. I'm cool with that. But I'm also certain the way Riddell does these is a marketing thing. What they could do is make the material below the outer shell the same color as the shell. Then those cuts become way less noticeable. Instead, it's black. I'm guessing they would never do that by default because the specific shapes the cuts make are almost a logo or other such mark for Riddell. Those watching can identify the helmet brand even at distance because of its shape. While we've seen more variations in helmet shapes over the years, this one is particularly abrupt in its differences. It's interesting to me how alien these look simply because the part of the facemask that goes around the top of the front of the helmet is missing.

This also makes a lot of sense within the context of this season, specifically: Duke is 3-0 and they're playing Kansas today, who is also 3-0. So it's undefeated Duke vs. undefeated Kansas in football. It's a fun tie-in/idea.

Yeah, this is a really tough match up, color-wise, because it's normally so navy-heavy (with Denver being the away team). If Seattle wears its home uniforms, it's navy vs. white trimmed in navy. The green (obviously) breaks that up, but the all-green is too much. I like the below better, though I don't think anything like that would ever happen. Not to mention these white pants don't actually exist with the green in the stripe, haha. Over time, I've become less concerned about how traditional or modern the elements of a particular uniform are. I do, however, far prefer contrast between jerseys and pants (and pants and socks). A modern uniform can still look good as long as there's enough contrast between elements. (The exception to that "rule" is white uniforms: white over white can't be helped in some cases.) As a sub-rule to that rule, I don't care for "bottom-heavy" home/color uniforms. So taking the Seahawks as an example, I wouldn't really like green jerseys over navy pants either. It still looks somewhat like an away uniform and awkward/unbalanced.

Man, that right there is some 500% oversaturated Upper Deck football card goodness there.

The Vikings are the classic in this example, right? In all seriousness, the Vikings look shown here is at least as cohesive as that iteration of the Bears, if not more. Setting up some loose parameters, you have four elements: helmet, jersey (sleeves), pants, and socks. The Vikings have three distinct stripe patterns/treatments: helmets and socks have no stripes, and the sleeves and pants have distinct patterns. The Bears have four different stripe patterns/treatments: Nothing on the helmets, "away" stripes on the jerseys, Braisher-esque stripes on the pants, and "home" stripes on the socks. So that's four non-matching elements for the Bears, and three for the Vikings. Admittedly the above is a very loose/reductionist view of football uniform design. But just from looking at these two uniforms side by side, the Vikings feel more consistent given the color balance of the various striping and stripe-adjacent elements. Also, I hear what you're saying about the Oilers. Though I think they are a singular, or at least rare, exception. I have always hated the argument that the below stripe patterns are "the same": The helmet, sleeves, and pants all exhibit different striping patterns on top of three different background colors. (Essentially: helmet: Braisher, sleeve: Auburn-style Northwestern, and pants...is there a term for that style?) If you lifted those stripes off of that uniform, you'd have (from top to bottom) 1) three stripes that touch, 2) three stripes with a gap in between each, and 3) a pair of paired and mirrored stripes. I understand the argument the other way (that by putting orange on the outside, they're actually the same stripes, white bordered by blue bordered by orange repeated three times), but physical application of the elements to the uniform (either in actuality or at least in perception) makes it so that the color of the uniform article to which the stripes are applied doesn't count as a stripe in and of itself. In other words, there's no orange stripe on the helmet, there are no blue stripes on the jersey (it's just the jersey itself showing through between the orange and white stripes), and there is no white stripe on the pants; it's just the pants. However, the Oilers don't appear to have disparate striping elements in the same way (even though arguably the same principle applies) because they better conform to other striping consistencies, like matching the helmet and pants stripes and the jersey and sock stripes. The 1986 Oilers actually accomplished this best between both their home and away uniforms (individual stripe thickness notwithstanding). The away uniforms simply feature essentially the same stripes on all four elements (because everything was white anyway) and the home uniform features consistent striping between the helmets and pants and the jerseys and socks. The away, in particular, satisfies both camps. As ever, all of this is highly subjective. Others may not perceive stripes in the same physical-application way that I do, so the colors of the uniform may read as additional stripes. As such, I don't necessarily present the above as an argument, except that the Vikings look presented is more consistent than the Bears', (and to a degree, agreeing that calling that particular Bear's look "classic" just because it's old is something this board is generally prone to doing, or at least conferring more favorable opinions to old looks just because of their age). Most of this post is simply an explanation of how I understand stripes on football uniforms. (And I don't think I've every actually written that down before.)

Wow, yep. There really were some good match ups in the preseason. Thanks for putting that together, @Bathysphere. I feel like a lesson that can be taken from that list above is contrast between elements is good. In that whole list/set of pictures, there were five uniforms where the pants and jerseys match, and all of them were white (which is acceptable or at least better than matching dark-colored pants/jerseys). Plus, there's only one instance of socks matching pants. And note, too, that not all of these are "classic" uniforms. There are several modern ones as well (Vikings, Chargers, Bengals, Bills, Jets, etc.). Use of color and contrasting elements make for an infinitely better uniform match up.

Ah, neat. I didn't realize that either FAMU or Louisville had done this. The first (and to my knowledge up to now, only) instance I noticed it was the Ottawa Rough Riders back in the 60s. (I was bored once while working out and picked a random Grey Cup on YouTube to watch (1966). Ottawa was one of the teams, and that was the first time I'd ever seen forward-facing numbers like that.

Yes, that Twitter thing is happening to me too. While not a huge deal, it does mess up scrolling slightly. (And given that's a lot of the actual user interaction, that's a bigger deal here than it would be on other sites.)

Yeah, I'm right there with you. Those are some nice one-off uniforms.

Yes, Marshall has used the offset black-stroked green (or white on green jerseys) numbers off and on (more on than off) since they were a 1-AA school in the early/mid-90s.

Very nice work. Every transition feels very era- and trend-appropriate.

For sake of visual aid, because no one had posted yet (via UNISWAG):

Also, one other thing: these pictures were taken on the forest road leading to Coopers Rock State Forest. If ever you're driving through West Virginia (on I-68), take the 20 minutes out of your drive and check out Coopers Rock. There's an exit off the highway just for it, it's a short and easy drive to the overlook, and the overlook itself is spectacular.

That WVU alternate is certainly not terrible. Given the alts they've had in the past (Pro Combat coal whatever--incidentally used in one of the last iterations of the Backyard Brawl wherein WVU beat Pitt to a pulp at Heinz Field, various iterations of the grey uniforms, etc.), this is pretty nice. As @Bathysphere mentioned, if they're going to do an all-white alternative, this is it. And I like the flying WV in the state outline. Like @WSU151 said, WVU's away look should be blue helmets, white jerseys, and gold pants, especially for the first iteration of the rivalry game in 11 years. But I like this as a once-per-season alt, generally speaking. Sidenote: my wife and I are going to go to that game in September, and I'm REALLY looking forward to it. My dad and I were WVU season ticket holders through 2018, and I haven't been able to go to a game since.

This is such an interesting discussion to me. IATA codes seem (at least from anecdotal evidence) to be how many people abbreviate the names of entire cities/MSAs because they represent the point of entry and the shorthand by which some travelers identify their destination. Pittsburgh, for instance, is decidedly in the IATA =/= city abbreviation camp (as opposed to, apparently, Charlotte? according to the previous discussion). I've seen and heard it corrected many times: PIT is the airport. PGH is the city. (And Pitt is the university; some people have used that shorthand before too and have been corrected.) Sports teams add an interesting layer to it because of how media abbreviates the cities or placenames. Pittsburgh sports are almost unequivocally "PIT" in scorebugs, box scores, etc. where that abbreviation convention is used. So if the Pirates were to incorporate an abbreviation into their future City Connect plans, I wouldn't necessarily be surprised to see them use PIT, even though PGH would be the more-accepted abbreviation for local fans. And while, ha ha yes the Pirates are awful and how would they even have fans outside of the city limits, let alone inside (haha), would it be a better move from a marketing standpoint to use PIT since that's how out-of-market fans who didn't necessarily grow up in or spend significant time in/around the city identify the city in which the Pirates play? (To be clear, I'm firmly in the camp of PGH and/or using the generally accepted civil abbreviation instead of IATA codes. IATA codes were set up for a specific purpose. There are reasons why none of them start with N or why the letters don't line up with the city's name because of multiple airports in the area, etc. I certainly understand that in certain places they line up, one-to-one, or else the IATA code has come to be the city's abbreviation because there wasn't another abbreviation in common use previously or whatever. But those are exceptions. An IATA code is not designed to be an abbreviation for the city.)

Two things: 1) The uniforms (so far) have been well thought out and have kept things simple. Nice work all around. 2) I love the ideas regarding scheduling and the conferences. While I realize there are guidelines in place for not going too far away from aesthetics-based concepts in this forum, I'd love to hear/see an explainer on how you did all the scheduling and simulation work. This is very cool.

These concepts are wild. While not my taste, I do think there are a lot of interesting ideas here. And I appreciate contrasting pants and jerseys. From a general standpoint, I can get behind more aggressive or modern looks so long as the pants contrast with the jerseys. In particular, here: I like the black-over-white Panthers, the Browns, and the black alt for Washington is great. If they have their hearts set on a black alt, it should look like that. Also, I think the Cowboys look kind of like the LA Express of the USFL; that's fun.

It's a nice looking uniform for sure. (Of the red-helmet Falcons looks, I actually prefer this early version with the black jerseys compared to the all red 70s/80s iteration.) But being unintentionally forced into looking like the 90s Falcons because of the one helmet rule was an unexpected boon. I grew up in the 90s and I think that was the height of my NFL fandom, so of course that look resonates with me. And while what we've had for the past few years isn't a true 90s throwback, there's just something about the classic Falcon in black on black over a black jersey and white pants. Again, because of my own bias, I think the Falcons should be a black-forward team instead of red-forward. Either way, I do like the red helmet too. So I'm not going to complain about that look or the aesthetics-based potential for the game against SF in October.

The latest one gets it even closer; it's definitely a Tigers-esque D. The previous iteration looked like a D too, but more along the lines of Duquesne's latest rebrand. I really appreciate you posting all these process images. It gives an excellent insight into your design process and why the final products come out the way they do. Nice work.

That set of numbers is kind of like the "McAuliffe" numbers for football: A fair few teams used it, but because of its recent use, it's associated with one team. The Titans/Jets also used a serif block font similar to that, correct?

Eghhhh. Why did they put a stroke on it for the helmets? One of my favorite looks out of the MAC in recent years has been the gold shell on gold mask helmets with navy marks that Akron has been wearing. The stroke somehow overly complicates it or something. (I can't quite put my finger on it; something about it feels overwrought.) While I have no connection to Akron (outside of having friends who are from the area and/or live there now), and thus no strong sentimental feelings about their looks, I liked where their branding was over the past few years. All of it is and has been pretty bland for a while, certainly. But it wasn't terrible either. And this is no different; just kind of a lateral move from one fairly safe look to another.

That is the logo of the entity sending the C&D to the XFL. While I personally don't think there would be any confusion, I suppose this is like most of these situations: Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe (founders of Togethxr) felt it was a necessary step to protect their brand.

I quite like that otherwise blank helmet with the crosses swords in the back. Is there a reason you didn't use the swords from or ones similar to those in the primary Raiders logo?

Yeah, I've always been fond of "Athletic Gothic" (as I've seen it called in various places), too. Fun fact, the 0 in that Washington set was different than those in other versions of that set of numbers: I guess the 1s are a little different too. I think Nike has a version of this set, where the Titans' Oilers throwbacks are truer to the original numbers. That's just my own judgment/based on what I've seen, though.

It's blue. It's dark, but it's blue. (HEX #03142E)