Ohio State football today unveiled a solid-grey alternate uniform that will be worn for the school’s prime-time game against Big 10 rival Michigan State on Nov. 11. The reveal comes exactly three weeks after the Buckeyes had hinted about a grey uni being in the works.
Here are some additional pics:
This will be the second time in six years that Ohio State has worn a grey alternate. In 2017, they wore this design for a win over Penn State (additional photos here):
The biggest surprise about this uni, at least to me, is the date they’ve chosen for wearing it, because Nov. 11 is Veterans Day. Seems like they’d save that date for some sort of military theme, not the grey uniform. But whatever — I’m sure they have their reasons.
As for the design: Seems like a waste, given that OSU’s primary uniforms are so nice, but I long ago stopped trying to understand the aesthetic trajectory of college football.
This is actually a grey uniform that I don’t hate. I don’t like it…but I don’t hate it. At least it matches the helmet color really well.
Yeah, this could have been a lot worse, as we’ve seen over and over.
Yayyyy, congratulations on not totally FUBARing this, OSU!
My thoughts as well. I think a lot of it has to do with this being a lighter shade. We’ll see how it looks under the lights, though.
I’m surprised by how much I want to see these on the fields!
These actually look pretty good! I prefer their normal look way more of course, but I think these look pretty great. I don’t consider OSU a GFGS team with this, it’s a unique and signature look for them. These are fine as alternates.
This should be their full time road uniform.
It shouldn’t be worn in Columbus.
I like it, but the left side of the helmet looks like a stoner’s laptop/guitar/bong.
That will always be the case with OSU. They have merit stickers that are shaped like Buckeye leafs, but they look like weed.
All things considered, this is really well done. I feel like they should have used the red pants they debuted last season instead of gray, but this is a very well done uniform. Much better than their last attempt at a gray alternate.
No disrespect, Ian, but . . . RED PANTS?????
I weep for mankind.
I think this actually looks pretty solid and could be a pretty good-looking game as long as Michigan State wears green helmets & jerseys. Or I suppose a white jersey could even work as long as they wear green helmets & pants.
Is this overly pedantic? Yes, probably, but Ohio State’s colors are scarlet and gray (not grey).
link
“Gray” is indeed the preferred American spelling, but Uni Watch’s longstanding style is to spell it as “grey.” It just seems, well, greyer to me.
hmmm… any idea if those are their regular pants or are they stripe-free? I was kind of thinking that they’re unadorned. It’s pretty difficult to tell from these pics.
If they are indeed the regular pants, I take back what I said about the uni looking pretty solid and I’ll say that it looks legitimately fantastic.
They do have the stripe: link
Yay.
needs red helmets and socks, otherwise, looks really nice
That will always be the case with OSU. They have merit stickers that are shaped like Buckeye leafs, but they look like weed.
All things considered, this is really well done. I feel like they should have used the red pants they debuted last season instead of gray, but this is a very well done uniform. Much better than their last attempt at a gray alternate.
I don’t *love* this, but it’s a bazillion times better than their previous attempt at an all-gray alt.
Ideally they’d wear red compression sleeves and red socks with this, but that would defeat the mono-grayness aspect.
I’m not a fan of schools like THE adopting (multiple) alts — I’d prefer the regular home/away and the 68 fauxback for bowl games.
However…it would be interesting to see this paired with the red pants from the mono-red kit link
…just for shits and giggles.
Worth mentioning that the B1G logo on the right chest appears to be embroidered directly onto the jersey, instead of being added on as a patch like all previous teams have done with the B1G logo. Wonder if that’s a change that all teams will switch to, or if it’s a necessary adjustment for some reason with the new tailoring template.
I agree with Paul. These are fine, but what’s the point when their regular uniforms, home or away, are great. I’d be more for these if they wore them on the road, in place of their white jersey. Of course, this would need to have good contrast, which is also true for this game. It would be terrible if Michigan State wears all white. Even a green helmet isn’t enough. They really need to wear a green helmet and pants with their white jersey.
The model is giving off some serious IDGAF energy with that sitting pose in that top pic.
With the concession that I generally don’t like grey unis (especially since their opponents will almost certainly wear white), I think this is actually not terrible. It generally follows the style of their normal home and away unis, just in a different color scheme that is still part of their official colors. It’s not ideal, but in this age of truly abysmal college alt uniforms, it’s not really bad.
The numbers bother me. Specifically, the white outline, which isn’t on either our home or away jerseys. It makes the scarlet numbers look smaller and that throws the proportions off.
I agree, I think a black outline would give the numbers more weight, and they’d still pop.
I don’t hate them and if they wanted to wear then on the road, it would be too bad. Better than the last Grays
I usually hate all gray uniforms (looking at the NFL team “up north” as Exhibit A). These are quite nice, though, and a million percent better than their last mono gray effort.
My mind went straight to the same place (I’m sure many did). I have loved the lions mono greys in theory, but in execution they leave much to be desired. These unis fix many of the issues the lions set has. First it’s a lighter shade, which doesn’t look as drab and dingy and helps the primary color pop. Second, the numbers are bolder and rendered in the primary color with a white outline, which again helps them pop and keeps the team’s primary color front and center. Third (and this is a universal NFL problem) the swoosh is on the chest, which leaves the right sleeve tailoring uncluttered. Fourth, these are being paired (at least in this shoot) with shoes in the teams primary color which helps to break up the blah of otherwise white and grey with the lions.
I am not a proponent of primary colored socks in either case here, because it actually lessens the effect of the mono look, but I would be fine with primary colored undershirts/compression sleeves.
I think Ohio state has done well here to match the uni tone to the helmet, although the helmet still has a metallic sheen to it so that could look much different on the field. Whereas I think Detroit also does well to mismatch the helmet and the uni. I actually like that aspect of it. Now if Detroit would make these adjustments and then simplify the sleeves and cut out the perpetual memorial or whatever and never again use the awful “I can’t draw a lion” lurking lion throwback logo they’d be in business.
Not bad considering that they’re completely unnecessary.
I really don’t like anything mono, besides white (this reminds me of the stupid Lions mono greys), but I laughed out loud at the first picture and the player’s pose. Like, WTF is he supposed to be doing? I may have to call that the Favre pose. If only he were wearing Crocs.
Come on now, calling a uniform that’s being worn once during the entire season “a waste” is silly. These look really good, better than some NFL uniforms, and that’s coming from a Wolverines fan.
Wow, I actually don’t mind these at all! I wouldn’t mind them as a full time road uniform / alternate.
The *one* thing missing is a black outline around the numbers to match the helmet/shoulder/pants stripe. It would’ve been a home run!
If it’s a VERY thin black outline, I think you might be on to something here.
A fairly daunting “come give me a lap dance on my folding chair” photo. What’s that all about?
Question: have we crossed the uni-Rubicon? The Unicon, so to speak? Have we passed the point where all of these alternate unis matter or are even fun or interesting? There have been so many in the past few days it’s overwhelming but it seems like the norm now is for every team to have 3-5 sets, depending on the league, and then there are the colleges, where some of them just wear something different every game or so. Don’t mean to be a downer here but is there a point where the corporate heads co-opt something that was once fun and interesting and turned it into little more than a bottom-line endeavor, which preys on people like us, who genuinely have enjoyed these uni-quirks and things for many decades? I feel like I’m being taken advantage of by the corporate behemoths who realized about a decade or so ago that there is big money in this and are ruining yet something else that I’ve loved all my life. Again, sorry if I’m a downer but I’m feeling bad about all of these uni-related things recently and I hate that I feel so bad about them.
Or, perhaps, there are uniform nutballs like us, well-placed in sportswear corporations, who are influential enough to actually put them into use–unlike us.
If only that were true. The cool thing about this for many years is that there were exactly those types of people here and there. Paul’s interviewed them or their relatives and those interviews have been great (I remember something about the guy who came up with the Vikings horns or something like that. It was fantastic). But when you’ve got the MLB ASG unis that nobody asked for, and “city connect” garbage that comes and goes so often it barely even registers, you know that that’s not what’s going on anymore. This isn’t about aesthetics or uni-geekdom or anything like that. All of it is a gross merch dump — one gross merch dump after another. Don’t like these grey OSU unis? Don’t worry, they’ll be gone within a year, after a couple of games or so, and replaced by something else, which will also be gone and replaced, and so on and so on. The uni-world is getting gross and disgusting and I guess I’m about out. Which is a damn shame because I love this stuff and I love what Paul does. But the corporatization of this over the recent past has begun to make me sick to my stomach. Bummer. The corporatists ruin everything. Without fail.
These are
These are absolute fire
I like that Ohio State mostly keeps the stripes, or some variation of them in alternate colors. Additionally, they use the more elaborate throwback striping pattern, usually for big games.
Fine, but unnecessary. That’s a pretty low bar that manages to put them in the top 10% of all (non-historic) alternate uniforms.
Actually not bad.
I say no to mono. The jersey in itself is not bad with the scarlet included, as are the pants, but the combination of the two is gruesome to me. Combine the jersey with white pants with the OSU striping and I say go. Also, as mentioned above: that model needs some instructions on how to sit on a chair when representing your school and team. Why have him sit down in the first place? If so, let him sit in a real classroom at OSU.