The 1972 Project - FCS: Colgate Raiders

[colinturner95]

Happy March Madness! Boise State is still winless in 10 tries in the tournament but at least that's better than... no one actually. Anyways: 

 

 

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Football - This is a may or may not be a first for me, but I can remember maybe one other time that an individual player inspired a look for a uniform, let alone for a whole(ish) athletic department. In our case here with Alabama A&M, I believe its Joshua Williams from the late 2010's who in one picture was seen with 7 or 8 arm bands on that gives us our primary look here. I felt like AAMU has a pretty classic look about them to begin with and this carried it on. Helmets are pretty much the same, white and crimson, single stripe with the interlocking logo on the sides. Uniforms pare down the bevy of stripes to 5. Contrasting collars. New wordmarks and number font system round out the look. Pants match the helmet with a stripe. Alternate takes the newer double stripe look and puts it on a black base. 

 

Hockey - The SWAC takes to the ice! And the first go around is a very simple look. The 5-stripes can be found on the sleeves with a solid stripe rounding it out on the hem. Interlocking logo on the chest of the home and away. Just went with the red equipment for all three uniforms. Pants actually receive the stripe this time. Socks match their uniforms. Alternate replaces most of everything. Bulldog logo appears on the chest, Double stripe takes over for the other stripes where it needs to. 

 

Baseball - College is a fun place to experiment with uniforms and I want to try doing more non-traditional things, which feels fun doing it to a team that already has a pretty traditional look. So baseball replaces the 5 stripe with pinstripes, which I thought was a pretty equal trade, and adds a solid stripe around the collar and the sleeves. New wordmarks and numbers on the chest of the home and away. Red jersey also sees pinstripes. Black jersey also does something non-traditional, but not something new for AAMU. Headgear is similar to football, all crimson or white/crimson. Socks are striped either red or black. 

 

Basketball - I finally get a basketball uniform that isn't a :censored: to translate. A little more modern take on the five stripes, with them being found on under the arm and on the sides of the pants, with one stripe forming a full stripe around the bottom of the shorts. single color stripes around the arm holes. Alternate gets a little more traditional, with the double stripe down the sides, with the interlocking logo replacing wordmarks. 

 

C&C welcome and always appreciated!

[colinturner95]

Happy Easter! I managed to get a little sidetracked, trying to get an MLB series set up and started and that took some time building out an updated template and layout. But I certainly haven't forgotten about my work here.

 

 

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Football - We double dip in the SWAC, with Texas Southern. (It's also the 2nd of 3 consecutive red teams, which means I need to have a lengthy conversation my list randomizer), but in a similar vein to Alabama A&M, classic felt like a good approach for the Tigers, which in this case starts with classic UCLA/Colts stripes on the home and away uniforms. The same stripe can be found on the helmets, which come in maroon and white options. Pants match their jerseys. I didn't want to go with just a color swap on the grey alternates, but wanted to keep the classic feel. So the stripes move to the sleeves and are joined by a subtle tiger stripe that fades in towards the tops of the sleeve caps. 

 

Hockey - Another first timer to the good ole hockey game, the Tigers also opt for traditionally styled uniforms, but unlike LSU who in the last series got shoulder style stripes on their hockey jersey, I strayed away from that, going for the stripes on the sleeves and hem, and the added shoulder stripes, matched on the white jersey with an added shoulder yoke. The alternate functions like the football one, with the tiger stripe pattern now fading up from the bottom of the jersey itself and the sleeves. Maroon equipment for all the uniforms. 

 

Baseball - Somewhat of a paradox when baseball is one of the more forward facing sets. I felt like vests were a good way to go for the baseball team. Can't really explain why, but I just liked the result. Went with one set of headwear, all maroon. The jerseys get the stripes around the neck and arm holes, a lot like the Pirates' Clemente-era jerseys. All three sets of undershirts feature the fading tiger stripes, and would be interchangeable within the uniforms. I also kept the maroon pants the team currently wears. Two sets of socks, solid maroon or striped maroon. 

 

Basketball - Finishing up on the hardwood, the basketball uniforms fully merge the traditional with the modern, with the side stripes on the jersey and shorts blending the fading pattern within the stripe. Texas Southern sandwich on the home and away, this time in a block font. They've tried it with a script with a less than satisfying result. Grey alternate gets the abbreviated TSU. 

 

C&C Welcome! for those that celebrate, enjoy the holiday! 

 

[colinturner95]

 

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Football - If there's any team or teams in this part of the series that don't need modern uniforms, that would be the Ivy League teams, and leading us off is the oldest "institution of higher learning in the United States" and one of the progenitors of the college football game many of us have fallen in love with. Now like I said, nothing crazy modern but that doesn't mean they're immune to changes. For starters, the updated branding does stick around, with the black outline returning to the H.  But more importantly is what returns to the football uniforms, mostly the team's triple stripe, which had existed in on the crimson shells since 1964. The same stripe can now be found on the sleeve cuffs, a bit of a homage to the 1968 Harvard team, famous for the declaration "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29". Finishing us off on football is the same stripe also returning to the pants. Also for the first time, a black alternate shell is added, giving the option for a full blackout uniform. 

 

Hockey - Much like football, there's a lot here that stays the same. The biggest changes are to the sleeves, which now fold into the same look as football, but much bigger obviously. Added to the sleeves are a smaller copy of the stripes. Despite it feeling like a tradition for their uniforms, I removed the front numbers in favor of the H-shield. I didn't like the look with the newer numbers under the arch. Other than that, everything comes over from football or previous real life existence and like football, the team now has the option for a black alternate uniform. 

 

Baseball - If you can believe it, Harvard's baseball team predates their football team by almost 10 years. That little factoid helped inspire the new home uniforms for the Crimson. Where football uses the cream/gold/tan color for a pants option color, I thought it would make for a unique home uniform for the baseball team, which all fall into the newish look. Biggest change really is the single stripe becomes a triple. The wordmarks also feature an arch, which I think works better than the fully horizontal they currently are. Crimson road tops, which come with a set of white pants. Black alternate that replaces the wordmark with the full boat H & shield. Two sets of headgear, four total sets of socks: sold black and crimson, or black and crimson with small stripes at the top. A white jersey is present in their rotation, but because it's the same design as the home and away its just tucked behind the crimson jersey. 

 

Basketball - And closing us out is basketball and out of the four sports, their uniforms needed the most help. Nothing overtly wrong with them from a design sense, but that's also what was wrong with them, there was nothing on them but names, numbers and a wordmark. When I was done with them, the design bears a recolored appearance to a professional basketball team based roughly 15 minutes away from the campus with no traffic. All in all, a very traditional basketball uniform set, also including a black alternate, which in this case, isn't a first for the hardwood team. 

 

I feel like I'm repeating this every four teams, but the website is getting worked on, just haven't gotten time to finish up the updates and hit publish. 

 

In the meanwhile, C&C is appreciated on the last bunch of teams!

[colinturner95]

 

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Football - Howard U is really one of the first schools in the FCS that I knew existed but beyond that I really didn't have too much off the dome to work on. I knew they are one of the few schools at the FCS level to be affiliated with the Jordan Brand and they had a huge upset over UNLV but that's where my knowledge ended. After doing my work, there was one thing I wanted to change almost immediately and that was the grey. They use a lighter shade of silver and so does Hampton. Really no issue, except that Howard has a nice unique grey already. So the teams switch over to that shade. The team's existing stripe carries over, but now ends in a horn point (sorry Texans, I've had this idea since 2021). The number font keeps the spurs but changes ever so slightly. I also went with the leaping Bison logo on the two helmets, which work better IMO than the static bison head. I tried shoe-horning the stripe onto the pants, but it fell flat in every attempt so plain pants with the logo on the side. 

 

Hockey - Howard joins NC Central in the creation of a hockey team, but as I found out, Howard U is in the process of starting a ice skating team, becoming the first HBCU do so. Pretty cool if you ask me. As for the hypothetical hockey team, the horn stripe ends up sitting much closer to the numbers than a traditional hockey stripe would. As a result, I added a second stripe at the bottom of the sleeves. Bison head logo anchors the chest. Alternate uniform swaps out the second stripe on the sleeves for a solid navy stripe, and moves the hem stripe up and makes it a chest stripe with the full Bison + Leaping logo. Silver helmets and navy pants for all the uniforms. 

 

Baseball - So Howard currently has no baseball presence. I can't find much information on their varsity team or when it shuttered.  Their club team's Facebook page's last post was in 2013. So for the most part we are starting from scratch. but it's a baseball uniform and I kept some traditional conventions in place. It's seemingly a paradox when you look at the basketball uniforms that I created a new wordmark for, but I didn't do the same because I didn't like how the current ones fit on a baseball uniform. So I went with the Bison head opposite a player number, with the horn stripe on the sleeves. Pants have the unencumbered stripe down the side. Alternate tops go to a v-neck with a 70's Blue Jays style logo setup. Headgear is navy/grey with the Bison head. The white hat is about the one thing I could find from their baseball history, which was worn in the late 50s. 

 

Basketball - Finally with basketball, like I mentioned up above, the biggest thing is the newish wordmarks, which keep the spurred look going but fit better on a basketball jersey. The design pretty much falls in line with the rest of the uniforms. Full stripes on the tops, with the horn stripe finding its place on the shorts around the legs. Alternate jersey loses the arm stripes and uses the Bison wordmark. 

 

C& C welcome!

 

[colinturner95]

 

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Colgate has a long history in college athletics and deserved a look befitting of that, but a lot like Harvard has a modernized identity that can shine through a design that isn't templated. Like the intro post image says, the overarching design comes from a short-lived helmet stripe that existed for just a season, maybe two. 

 

Football:

• Helmets - Ironically, the inspiration for the whole design can't be found here. I felt like it was a little too cluttering. But the shells remain pretty similar to the IRL buckets. Crimson and white, primary helmets get the team's 'GATE wordmark on the sides, with an alternate helmet using the team's C logo. 
• Jerseys - The new jerseys replace the templated double stripe look with the new stripe, that bears a similar resemblance to the Vikings throwback tops, with the larger stripe being un-outlined.
• Pants - Pretty scratch here, with the pants having the stripes on the sides. 

Hockey: 

• Jerseys - Probably the biggest departure. The jerseys take the team's shoulder stripe uniforms from the past season and adds the new Colgate stripe to them, creating a quasi-90's Flyers look. The alternate jersey goes a little more traditional with chest stripe and the Raiders' alternate logo. 
• Pants/Socks - Like a few teams before, plain pants to not clutter every thing up. Socks match their jerseys. 
• Equipment - Crimson all around. Helmets have the 'GATE wordmark and the 13 stripes shield. 

Baseball: Baseball used to be a varsity sport at Colgate until the program was shuttered in 1996 due to Title IX concerns and limits, but the Raiders did make it all the way to the CWS in the 50's, losing their lone trip to the eventual champs, Wake Forest. 

• Headwear - Crimson and silver for all 3 uniforms. C logo front and center. 
• Jerseys - A little sampling of everything. Full stripes on all 3 uniforms. White jersey has a wordmark, Crimson does the number-logo combo and the grey alts go for a V-neck with the 'GATE wordmark and slightly bigger stripes. 
• Pants - A much simpler take, just a single stripe down the sides. Socks are all striped. 

Basketball:

• Jerseys - Another similarity to Harvard in that, almost anything would have been an improvement on the IRL uniforms. Another somewhat traditional take, just with new elements. Single color stripes on the arms and neck with the full stripe running down the side. The grey alts are the only uniforms to make use of a triple stripe and the full sides go away. 
• Shorts - Pretty much a mirror of the jerseys. Alternate moves the stripes to the bottom and features the C-Shield on the sides. 

C&C Welcome as always!