For years we have had the annual unveiling of whatever disaster the Oregon Ducks were sporting to lead the way in vomit-inducing college football apparel. Remember the corrugated steel pattern on the Ducks uniforms in the past? How about the time the names and numbers have been the same color as the jersey? Stupid and a complete failure, right? In a recent Sports Illustrated.com pictorial of college football's Ten Worst Uniforms, 7 of the 10 bore the Nike swoosh, with Oregon taking top prize.
Just when you think the apparently color-blind and cross-eyed designers who dream up ways to make college athletes look more and more grotesque have taken it as far as they can, they've managed to completely outdo themselves. This season, Nike has unleashed the Pro Combat Series of Dress, a completely superfluous collection of underwear, padded undershirts, jerseys, pants and helmets that is “the lightest ever” and will be used during selected “rivalry” games this season.
The University of Texas is one of the torch bearers for this complex uniform system, one in which Nike has apparently even made the D-ring on the players belts out of titanium to make it 66 percent lighter than previous D-rings, according to their press releases.
Unfortunately for the Horns, the ounce or two that they've shaved off of their belts won't be an exclusive advantage that will give them an inside track to a national championship. The Pro Combat designers have created identical technological super hero threads for Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Louisiana State University, Miami, Virginia Tech, Missouri, The Ohio State University, Boise State, Oklahoma, and TCU.
You may have seen the Horned Frogs debut their new regalia during their recent win against Oregon State at Cowboys Stadium and asked yourself, “Wait a minute, they didn't finish painting their helmets,” or “Are those scales on their pants?” Yep. They were. Real frogs don't have scales, but your gridiron warriors are wearing patterned pants that would make Shakira blush.
To make the unis even more super cool, Nike embroidered slogans inside the collar that only can be seen when the player is putting the jersey on. For Virginia Tech, it reads “Beamerball,” for Texas, simply”Pride.” Apparently the TCU players are big Tom Petty fans as their jerseys read “Don't Back Down.”
On the Nike website, all of the Pro Combat-wearing schools' uniforms are revealed in a slide show where a faceless caricature (think Marvin the Martian, but with muscles) flexes imposingly in a dangerous looking environment: the Florida player is emerging from a gator-infested swamp, the Pitt player is pounding his chest in a steel refinery surrounded by flames, etc. The most ridiculous is the red-helmeted Ohio State player standing on a bombed-out playing field with soldiers barely visible behind him through all of the smoke of battle and with World War II fighter planes overhead. It's one the most histrionic and utterly ridiculous images I've ever seen - as if college football is somehow equated with actual warfare.
Oh wait, Nike thinks it is. In the top left corner of all of the team's slides, Nike has included the tagline “Prepare for Combat.”
Is this really the time for Nike to use the term “combat” to describe their bombastic garments while using artwork that places football players in battlefield settings to promote their product? The uniforms are clearly a shout out to current shooter video games like Halo, and will appeal to young consumers and fans for this reason, but tying their identity to war at a time when over 4000 Americans have lost their lives and more than 30,000 have been wounded in combat comes off as disrespectful and garish to me.
In the artwork that Nike created for the West Virginia uniform, the faceless model is depicted as being in the middle of a mountaintop mine, donning threads that sport dull colors to create the illusion of being covered in coal dust and will have “29” stickers attached to the helmets as a tribute to the 29 miners that died in the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster this year. It may have been well-intentioned, but Nike's attempt to salute those that died didn't go over so well.
In a recent commentary on The Huffington Post, activist Jeff Biggers accused Nike and WVU of dishonoring the hundreds of thousands of miners who have died while either on the job or from black lung.
Just when you think the apparently color-blind and cross-eyed designers who dream up ways to make college athletes look more and more grotesque have taken it as far as they can, they've managed to completely outdo themselves. This season, Nike has unleashed the Pro Combat Series of Dress, a completely superfluous collection of underwear, padded undershirts, jerseys, pants and helmets that is “the lightest ever” and will be used during selected “rivalry” games this season.
The University of Texas is one of the torch bearers for this complex uniform system, one in which Nike has apparently even made the D-ring on the players belts out of titanium to make it 66 percent lighter than previous D-rings, according to their press releases.
Unfortunately for the Horns, the ounce or two that they've shaved off of their belts won't be an exclusive advantage that will give them an inside track to a national championship. The Pro Combat designers have created identical technological super hero threads for Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Louisiana State University, Miami, Virginia Tech, Missouri, The Ohio State University, Boise State, Oklahoma, and TCU.
You may have seen the Horned Frogs debut their new regalia during their recent win against Oregon State at Cowboys Stadium and asked yourself, “Wait a minute, they didn't finish painting their helmets,” or “Are those scales on their pants?” Yep. They were. Real frogs don't have scales, but your gridiron warriors are wearing patterned pants that would make Shakira blush.
To make the unis even more super cool, Nike embroidered slogans inside the collar that only can be seen when the player is putting the jersey on. For Virginia Tech, it reads “Beamerball,” for Texas, simply”Pride.” Apparently the TCU players are big Tom Petty fans as their jerseys read “Don't Back Down.”
On the Nike website, all of the Pro Combat-wearing schools' uniforms are revealed in a slide show where a faceless caricature (think Marvin the Martian, but with muscles) flexes imposingly in a dangerous looking environment: the Florida player is emerging from a gator-infested swamp, the Pitt player is pounding his chest in a steel refinery surrounded by flames, etc. The most ridiculous is the red-helmeted Ohio State player standing on a bombed-out playing field with soldiers barely visible behind him through all of the smoke of battle and with World War II fighter planes overhead. It's one the most histrionic and utterly ridiculous images I've ever seen - as if college football is somehow equated with actual warfare.
Oh wait, Nike thinks it is. In the top left corner of all of the team's slides, Nike has included the tagline “Prepare for Combat.”
Is this really the time for Nike to use the term “combat” to describe their bombastic garments while using artwork that places football players in battlefield settings to promote their product? The uniforms are clearly a shout out to current shooter video games like Halo, and will appeal to young consumers and fans for this reason, but tying their identity to war at a time when over 4000 Americans have lost their lives and more than 30,000 have been wounded in combat comes off as disrespectful and garish to me.
In the artwork that Nike created for the West Virginia uniform, the faceless model is depicted as being in the middle of a mountaintop mine, donning threads that sport dull colors to create the illusion of being covered in coal dust and will have “29” stickers attached to the helmets as a tribute to the 29 miners that died in the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster this year. It may have been well-intentioned, but Nike's attempt to salute those that died didn't go over so well.
In a recent commentary on The Huffington Post, activist Jeff Biggers accused Nike and WVU of dishonoring the hundreds of thousands of miners who have died while either on the job or from black lung.
“In an act of total disrespect, Nike claims the West Virginia University football players put their lives on the line every day, just like coal miners,” he wrote.
Luckily the suits at Nike were saved from sure embarrassment when USC was placed on probation, and thus not selected to be one of the Pro Combat schools as their marketing image would surely be a Trojan player menacingly standing in the middle of the L.A. Riots with the Watts Tower crumbling in the background.
Another event that confoundedly escaped Nike's consciousness is the 2007 campus shootings that left 33 people, including the shooter, dead. They thought it would be OK to put the “Prepare for Combat” tag on a black military vehicle and park it on campus. Nice.
Longhorn coach Mack Brown, after a visit to the troops in the Middle East put things in the proper perspective. “I learned that war is different. We shouldn’t compare football games to war,” Brown said. “We say ‘battles’ and ‘war,’ and it’s not. These young people are getting into helicopters and going out to work every day, but may not come back.”
Unfortunately, Brown didn't convey these thoughts to Nike.
I don't mean to come off like a tree-hugging, bunny-eyed liberal pansy, but Nike is a bunch of schlong-jammers. Thankfully, UCLA is still an adidas school, and adidas schools will be donning red, white and blue colors this weekend to commemorate the 9th anniversary of 9/11.
