College Football - 2024

[tBBP]

1 hour ago, Brave-Bird 08 said:

Would love to hear an industry expert tell me I am making sweeping accusations, but I wouldn't be shocked if there isn't a committed creative team at Nike like there has been in the past and more stuff is being pushed to catalog orders (or, quite literally, Nike pretending to give schools the sense they are getting special treatment but only producing certain types of options). 

 

Not an industry expert, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but Nike is dealing with a couple lawsuits at the moment. Don't know if that's affecting their creative team staff/operations at all, but just something to point out. 

[NickNolanPhD]

2 hours ago, Brave-Bird 08 said:

Would love to hear an industry expert tell me I am making sweeping accusations, but I wouldn't be shocked if there isn't a committed creative team at Nike like there has been in the past and more stuff is being pushed to catalog orders (or, quite literally, Nike pretending to give schools the sense they are getting special treatment but only producing certain types of options). 

Not an industry expert, obviously. Hardly ever post on here! But I am a marketing expert. And it is my speculation that simple monochromatic uniforms are intentional. Like TV numbers decades ago, this boring nearly catalog approach to uniform design is intended because these uniforms will be heavily viewed on vertical videos. 
 

There is less real estate for unique designs to be showcased on TikTok. Actually the more basic and easy to identify in a few seconds the better for that platform. Again, speculation. But I think vertical video is the number one influence on CFB uniforms at the moment. 

[Midway]

At first I thought these poor excuses for stripes were flags…Yikes.

 

 

[WestCoastBias]

11 minutes ago, Midway said:

At first I thought these poor excuses for stripes were flags…Yikes.

 

 

 

NAU should be way cooler than they are

[dont care]

2 hours ago, tBBP said:

 

Not an industry expert, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but Nike is dealing with a couple lawsuits at the moment. Don't know if that's affecting their creative team staff/operations at all, but just something to point out. 

Nike makes 51 billion annually. I don’t think a few lawsuits are the issue with designs being plain. It more has to do with the company being stretched thin between all the college teams, nfl, nba, mlb, international teams during Olympic year. Just a lot to do.

[tBBP]

1 hour ago, dont care said:

Nike makes 51 billion annually. I don’t think a few lawsuits are the issue with designs being plain. It more has to do with the company being stretched thin between all the college teams, nfl, nba, mlb, international teams during Olympic year. Just a lot to do.

 

It's also what happens when the "innovation culture" well runs dry--which is to say, yes, they're stretched thin. But they did that to themselves.

 

As for the $51B in revenue, my business 101 observance says don't get too stuck on the dollar amount of revenue. That really means nothing without knowing what their expenditures and other expenses are or how they're managed. (That's true for any business.) I once worked for two separate behemoth corporations that each pulled in over 80 billion in annual revenue, yet both of them kept crying poor...and ended up laying off a bunch of people in the process. Of course, with both, that had more to do with greed at the top and, um, "misappropriation of funds" at the mid-senior levels, but still.

 

Anyway, my point is that the dollar amounts of those lawsuits may affect employee compensations...and Nike has been laying off people lately. If any of those cuts was within the creative department, it may play some part, however small.

 

All that said...we're just fully in the throwback/traditional design cycle now--special design, catalog order, and/or otherwise. Give it 8-10 years...once the majority of teams start looking all the same again, we'll see the pendulum start to move again.

 

 

[NH4]

19 hours ago, Midway said:

At first I thought these poor excuses for stripes were flags…Yikes.

 

 

 

19 hours ago, WestCoastBias said:

 

NAU should be way cooler than they are

 Their uniforms last year were so cool with unique striping. They just had one of the biggest downgrades of the year

 

 

[Kevin W.]

On 7/19/2024 at 9:13 AM, Brave-Bird 08 said:

I'm seeing so many of the same copy-paste designs.

Large-scale templating is nothing new in the sports world. Look at the Euros and Copa America. Every Adidas and Nike team wore some variation of the same template.

[Lights Out]

On 7/19/2024 at 2:31 PM, NickNolanPhD said:

Not an industry expert, obviously. Hardly ever post on here! But I am a marketing expert. And it is my speculation that simple monochromatic uniforms are intentional. Like TV numbers decades ago, this boring nearly catalog approach to uniform design is intended because these uniforms will be heavily viewed on vertical videos. 
 

There is less real estate for unique designs to be showcased on TikTok. Actually the more basic and easy to identify in a few seconds the better for that platform. Again, speculation. But I think vertical video is the number one influence on CFB uniforms at the moment. 

 

This seems like a stretch to me. Reveal videos for social media have been standard practice for a while now, but it's only in the last couple years that all personality has been sucked out of college football uniforms.

 

Maybe CFB uniforms with a modicum of thought put into them were just a zero-interest-rate phenomenon, and the return to generic templates is a cost-cutting measure.

[Danny the Sheeb]

I've said this before, but CFB uniforms were way more boring around five to six years ago.  So many teams were going with minimalist, monochrome-heavy, simplified looks.  Washington State, Baylor, Illinois, Wake Forest, West Virginia; heck, even Oregon.  I get the frustration with everyone using the same striping patterns, but at least stripes are SOMETHING.  Compare Baylor's or Illinois's uniforms to what they had a few years ago.  Way more appealing, at least to me.

[aawagner011]

On 7/18/2024 at 8:58 AM, jerrylawless3 said:

Clemson is in the F.U.S.E. template. That may just be a patch slapped on an old jersey for the "promotional" event.

I saw that but didn’t think much of it. We see teams giving recruits old jerseys on visits all the time. I think there’s a decent likelihood the patch is worn on field since it’s been used plenty before.

 

 

 

[Kevin W.]

14 hours ago, Lights Out said:

Maybe CFB uniforms with a modicum of thought put into them

Most of the thoughts that went into those uniforms were bad thoughts, like ones that involved fire emojis.

[WSU151]

Based on 2024 Nike merchandise being released on Fanatics, it appears Stanford will bring back black stripes or accents in some form to the regular home/away sets...possibly cardinal pants with black/white/black stripes. They just took the black numbers outlines off in 2022 I think.

 

[Lights Out]

On 7/22/2024 at 1:04 AM, Kevin W. said:

Most of the thoughts that went into those uniforms were bad thoughts, like ones that involved fire emojis.

 

The equipment managers are still probably thinking "this is fire, no cap, frfr" as they recolor the extremely limited template that Nike gives them.

[Dynasty]

2 hours ago, WSU151 said:

Based on 2024 Nike merchandise being released on Fanatics, it appears Stanford will bring back black stripes or accents in some form to the regular home/away sets...possibly cardinal pants with black/white/black stripes. They just took the black numbers outlines off in 2022 I think.

 

 

It never looks good when teams that have a relatively dark shade of red add black to the mix. They bleed in so terribly and it's an issue I have always had with South Carolina's color scheme as well (I think they are a worse offender).

[damnyoutuesday]

2 hours ago, WSU151 said:

Based on 2024 Nike merchandise being released on Fanatics, it appears Stanford will bring back black stripes or accents in some form to the regular home/away sets...possibly cardinal pants with black/white/black stripes. They just took the black numbers outlines off in 2022 I think.

 

Stanford's uniforms should look like red Penn State, but with a helmet logo

 

White helmet with single red stripe

Plain red jersey with plain white block numbers

Plain white jersey with plain red block numbers

Plain white pants

 

That's it. Nothing more. Stop trying to use black

[oldschoolvikings]

16 hours ago, damnyoutuesday said:

Stanford's uniforms should look like red Penn State, but with a helmet logo

 

White helmet with single red stripe

Plain red jersey with plain white block numbers

Plain white jersey with plain red block numbers

Plain white pants

 

That's it. Nothing more. Stop trying to use black

Almost.  The pants need the same stripe as the helmet.  
 

(Which I would say is true of Penn State also, personally)

[nuordr]

New uniforms for the Liberty Flames: 

 

[udubfan19]

17 hours ago, damnyoutuesday said:

Stanford's uniforms should look like red Penn State, but with a helmet logo

 

White helmet with single red stripe

Plain red jersey with plain white block numbers

Plain white jersey with plain red block numbers

Plain white pants

 

That's it. Nothing more. Stop trying to use black

I wouldn't mind the Sherman & Luck era stripes returning to the pants

[nuordr]

New Louisiana Monroe Warhawks helmet: