Happy Fourth: change and the Great College Football Uniform Disaster

New Oklahoma uniforms

Hope everyone has a great Fourth. Enjoy the fireworks. Watch some baseball. Eat WAY too much. Wallow. Basically celebrate the way of life that is #merica. Because unlike France or Germany or China or most other places, our country is more of an idea or shared belief set than a racial or ethnic grouping. We're like the Borg: we take from every other culture and make our own.

But that's not exactly what I want to talk about. I want to talk about...Change. Actually I want to talk about football uniforms. But first...Change. 

The older I get the more difficult I find it to change. Not the nickels and dimes variety (though that too). But in the nothing staying like the way its supposed to kind of change. Seems like just when you get used to something or finally understand or master something, its obsolete, or no longer supported, or passé, or a relic of a bygone age.

For a country that by design imports people from other places, a certain level of change was always intended. The Pilgrims brought the uptight. The Africans brought music and foods and expressions. Most immigrants bring industriousness and risk taking. The Irish brought the St. Patrick's Day drunken brawl. So our country has always been evolving. 

Lately more so. If you thought the 60s or 70s saw a lot of change, these days must kill you. Everything sort of kind of looks the same, but its not, mainly because everything happens so quickly. Or, to those not approaching 50, things happen at a totally normal speed and its only old people who can't keep pace. Technology drives changes these days, not unlike how it has for hundreds of years. I'll bet there were Reeders slumped over in caves furious that everyone wants cooked meat over their fancy new "fire" invention, while we enjoyed our ever-tasty raw gazelle meat (or whatever we could track down...knowing the Reeders, it was probably a hedge hog or some near-inert beast incapable of putting up a fight).

Ideas and accepted norms change too, and quite rapidly. Only in the last 10 -15 years has a consensus emerged supporting not only legalizing homosexuality but gay marriage. As late as 1986, the US Supreme Court held that criminal "sodomy" laws were constitutional. Other examples abound. Acceptance of women executives and professional as something other than exceptions and curiosities. Of single, working mothers and other non-nuclear, traditional families. Of interracial marriage. Of non-traditional medicine. Of soccer. Disapproval of public smoking, drinking and driving, other risky activities. A greater affinity for government regulation. The waning of the dominant Christian Culture. The ascendance of minority cultural and social attributes into the mainstream. The rise of the "security state." More explicit violence, sex, and language in movies and TV shows. The "self-help" "self-improvement" ethic. And the Canadian migratory parasite known as "the Bieber." In general, the arc is towards greater permissiveness and acceptance, or as Cole Porter put it, "Anything Goes." To someone who gets upset if they move the break room utensils to a different drawer at work, its a lot to grasp. Fortunately for many of you, unrestrained face binging on artificial preservative-laden fat and sugar substances still tops the American charts.

People both resist and embrace change. I have to confess to a certain amount of Amishness. I'm of the "that shirt is just as good today as it was 25 years ago when I bought it" mentality. If its worked for 200 years, there's no reason to do anything different. Others, however, buy every new gadget that comes out, change cars every year, change their hair, their clothes, their address, their jobs, their friends. Nothing's ever good enough, and things get stale really quickly. Count me as not part of that group.

It's not so much that change itself is bad or good. It just is. It depends in the change. I'm sure there were plenty of freedom-loving Americans who thought eliminating slavery would ruin the country. (Among them my two Reeder ancestors who mustered in to the Confederate Army. Popular move then, now not so much). Just as there were millions who thought Prohibition would save the country. So nothing is "good" or "bad" just because it's new. That's why the whole "it's time for a change" political slogan makes no sense. I'm sure Hitler probably ran on "it's time for a change" too. 

[Jarring segue ahead.] 

So, like many others experiencing news fatigue, money fatigue, work fatigue, change fatigue...fatigue fatigue, I like to turn to sports. Sports doesn't change much. Does it? Sports are beautiful. Watching pure competition. They combine strategy and intelligence with physical ability. If you've played a sport you can appreciate the skill level and grasp the inner workings, enhancing your enjoyment. And sports shouldn't change, right? Baseball is baseball, football is football, basketball is basketball. You can always count on sports to provide that oasis amidst life's turbulence.

Uh, yeah, not so much.

You see, sports are businesses too. Even at the college level. Don't let that "student athlete" garbage fool you. The major college athletic programs in this country are major corporations trying to maximize profit just the same as any other huge organization. So they "respond" to consumer demands and try to appeal to their customers as much as possible. The game you grew up has changed so much, in all the major sports, that in some ways they're hard to recognize.

In some respects, the same forces that affect the rest of us have altered sports. As sports have grown in popularity, salaries have risen sharply and the "workers" have invested more to stay competitive. Unlike the old-timers who sold insurance during the off-season and who barely trained outside of practice, today's pro and college athletes have one job-preparing themselves to play their sport. They train year round. They consult nutritionists, sports doctors, acupuncturists, herbalists, psychologists, private coaches, and trainers. Today's athlete bears little resemblance to those of even 25 years ago. The vaunted '70s Pittsburgh Steelers defense would look puny compared to an average NFL team of today. And as sports teams become more profitable, they can devote more time and money to improve their operations, everything from coaching to training to travel and facilities. NFL Network occasionally shows old football games (old as in from the 70s and 80s). Even from old videotape on television, the players' smaller size and mobility jumps off the screen. Complex schemes then seem like high school operations today. Even the stadiums then look like shacks today. The same holds true in baseball and basketball. 1990s and 90s NBA basketball, during the Jordan/Thomas/Malone era looked more like a UFC brawl than today's basketball. 1970s NBA games looked like today's All-Star game-no defense whatsoever (and plenty of cocaine to spread around).

Rules changes have affected the games significantly as well. The designated hitter fundamentally changed baseball, as managers no longer had to manage around having a pitcher's spot in the lineup. Football has drastically changed its rules to increase scoring; legendary defensive players like Jack Tatum or Deacon Jones would have been fined out of today's NFL. NBA rules such as the three point shot and greater enforcement of blocking rules likewise have "opened up the paint" and made the game higher scoring, with more passing and shots and transitions.

The game day experience has changed. Its become more like a Transformers movie. Players no longer just run out onto the field or the tunnel, or walk up to the plate. An entire ritual must take place before the action may commence, replete with lasers, fog, music amped up to 11, and some idiot PA announcer screaming at the top of his lungs.

Oregon State

And with that has come the change in uniforms. [I finally made it to the point. Hopefully no one was counting words to see how long that took]. as Peter Griffin would say, this really grinds my gears. The apparel companies are driving this. They're donating what I call "garish" and what kids probably call "cool" new uniforms. They feature multiple color combinations, prominent and contrasting stripes, disproportional designs, and crazy emblems. Colleges utilize them far more often than the professional leagues, though the latter seems to encourage changing designs every few years to encourage fans to run out and buy the "latest gear."  The new pro uniforms mostly keep it simple. I didn't much care for the "Iron Man" Rockets uniforms that signaled the beginning of the end of their '90s championship run. Those were cartoons. The '70s Astros "Rainbow" uniforms still take your breath away, but as children of the '70s can perhaps be viewed along with the Pet Rock, EST, and shag carpeting as relics of a bygone age.

But the colleges have really run with this, WAY past the Good Taste Boundary. Consider such atrocities as the Maryland Terrapins' "flag" uniforms, the Michigan "Killer Bees" unis, or the infamous Oregon "Tron" uniforms which change with every new game. The Oklahoma State orange highlighter pen unis. The Baylor basketball yellow highlighter unis. Joe Pesci's purple tails in My Cousin Vinny thinks those are all ugly. 



Maryland

Now Oklahoma, our Lenny-like neighbors to the North, wants in on this. Check out the mock ups. I guess it was either that or some sort of Bootsy Collins deal. 

I get that maybe 18 year old star athletes want to show their own style and not just wear two colors, one of which is white. And since the NCAA exploits these kids in every other way maybe it doesn't mind throwing them this crumb. I also get that just because a uniform has had a particular style since 1950 that's not a valid reason to keep it forever. Actually, some of those old unis were just awful. Anyone caught the Steelers' throwback unis? They look like some steelworker threw up on a Scrabble board.



Oregon 



But don't change to something so hideous it will send half the alumni section into convulsions just to get some 4-star linebacker from Muleshoe to play for you a couple of years (til he leaves campus with concussions and an ACL tear and functionally illiterate because your training schedule kept him from studying). Sucks is sucks. Who's to say the OU 1970s uniform design should remain unchanged forever? Well, me actually. It's a pretty classic look. And since most OU players come from Texas (oh snap!) it's like OU is Ishmael to our Isaac.



Baylor

Ok I don't know where I was going with that last bit.

The real reason colleges are going to these alternate unis is to drive product sales. All the face-painter fans will go buy jerseys, hats, t-shirts and the like sporting the new design. It's another revenue source. Because the schools are all in it for the student-athlete and education first. Right. For that we must watch games where the teams are dressed like a Rollerball match.

So can we stop with the neon, amped up me unis? Until you can top the traditional look just keep what you've got. USC, UCLA, Notre Dame, Alabama, Penn State...they seem to be doing just fine without neon streaks and when they take the field, they carry on a long tradition which the unis reinforce.  I'm sure Texas will one day succumb to thirst shenanigan. It'll be a shame when it does because that home uniform looks just as good now as when the 1963 team wore it and won the national championship. And the 1969 team. And 1970 and 2005. Because you see A&M, we've won actual real championships, not like your 100 years after the fact theoretical contrived championships you declared after everyone on the team died of old age.



Vince Young

And, after all, this is what a champion looks like...

That seems like a good note on which to end. Go America!