Outlandish uniforms leave memorable imprints
It was Saturday night, the opening weekend of the college football season, and ESPN was showing the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Georgia) vs. the Star Wars Stormtroopers (Boise State).
Stunning admission for an old guy: I sort of fancy these alternative all-white, heat-and-publicity seeking uniforms adopted by the Mountain West Conference newcomers. However, the Bronco head on the helmet might be a wee bit ostentatious. The last time I saw a horse head that large, it was in bed with John Marley.
The Bulldogs’ Power Rangers persona? Don’t much care for it. Starting with the helmets.
Georgia’s red headgear with the Green Bay-style “G” is as iconic as playing college football between hedges. Against Boise State, the Dawgs wore silver helmets with a thick accent stripe, the kind that Jonathan E. and Moonpie wore against Tokyo in the original “Rollerball” before Moonpie’s skull got crushed.
Over on ABC, 11 guys dressed as Kevlar Batmen (Oregon) were trying to establish a running game against … well, Louisiana State.
The Tigers sported uniforms nearly identical to the ones Billy Cannon and the Bayou Bengals wore in 1959, when Cannon won the Heisman Trophy. Only these weren’t throwbacks.
On Monday, the uniforms Maryland wore against the Cheatin’ Shapiros of Miami weren’t exactly throwbacks, either.
Throw-forwards? Perhaps. Throw-ups? Depends on one’s sense of style, I guess.
School officials said the Terrapin costumes — er, uniforms — were inspired by the Maryland state flag and not by Louie the Lilac, a villain on the old “Batman” TV series. That check for a bazillion dollars, written to the school by the head of the Under Armour sports apparel company, a Maryland alum? Had nothing to do with it, school officials said.
If this is true, then an Andy Warhol painting must have inspired the Maryland state flag.
Remember the uniforms the Miami Sharks and Dallas Knights wore in the Pantheon Cup playoffs? Probably not, because those were fictional teams in a movie called “Any Given Sunday,” a movie so lame that not even the considerable thespian talents of Al Pacino, or the legs of Cameron Diaz, could spare it from ignominy. If, however, the NCAA grants Steamin’ Willie Beamon a seventh year of eligibility, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he signs with Maryland.
“Trust me,” Dick Vitale wrote on his Twitter account. “Terps will be judged by how they PLAY not how they LOOK!”
Trust me. Dick Vitale is a basketball guy, and he’s 72, so one might have expected him to recoil in horror when Maryland came running onto the field having reunited the United Colors of Benetton on its shoulder pads.
Judging from other tweets, there seems to be a line of demarcation in regard to Maryland’s uniforms. Those younger than 30, or those who leave the stickers on their New Era baseball caps after purchase, are on the Spanish side; those older than 30, or those named Paterno, are sailing with Portugal.
The exception might be Enos Cabell, who played for the Houston Astros from 1975 through 1980. If Maryland’s uniforms don’t offend him, that would explain it.
I was 18 in 1975, when the Astros broke out those retina-burning yellow and orange stripes. Stunning admission II: I liked those jerseys when I was young. I’ve got a closet full of them, in every color scheme, representing every adult baseball and fast-pitch softball team for which I ever played. Only most have “Ed’s Conoco” or the name of some tavern on an iron-on transfer where it should say “Astros.”
These jerseys are ideal for washing one’s car. Some guys even have been known to wear them while they wash their cars.
But the players who must wear them love these outlandish college football uniforms. And even if Dickie V. is right, even if you can’t judge a book by its cover, or a college football team by the number of discounted tattoos it receives, would we be talking about Maryland were it not for those uniforms?
It is Oregon, however, that must bear the brunt of this lack of uniform behavior.
The Ducks showed up for the 1998 Aloha Bowl with a new helmet design and screaming yellow numbers on their jerseys, precursor for the green, black, yellow, gray and white uniform combinations that make the Oregon sideline look like row homes in Ireland, if row homes in Ireland used Day-Glo paint that is offensive to the eye.
By the 2006 Las Vegas Bowl, when Oregon wore metallic yellow helmets with silver flames — you couldn’t see the flames from the press box, so the helmets looked more like those glass globes one finds at a lawn and garden shop — the Ducks had 512 uniform combinations.
Penn State, on the other hand, had two.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.
