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Uni Watch

Roanoke College Football Gets First New Uniforms in 82 Years

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No. It’s not because they’ve been wearing really old, tattered uniforms for four score and two years.

Roanoke College football will make its grand return to the gridiron for the first time since 1942!

The school will play five games this fall.

The team is considered a club sport this fall, with the program joining the Division III and the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) ranks in 2025. All five games this autumn will be held on Sundays, every other week.

Despite all that, the school was able to produce a hype video showing off the new uniforms for this season.

Unfortunately, the video was shot in “portrait” mode (as opposed to landscape), and there were no stills provided. I did my best with some screen caps.

But really, what’s interesting here is these are about the most basic football uniforms Nike produces — which makes sense, given football will only be a club sport this fall and they’ll play a total of five games.

There is one helmet (white), two jerseys (maroon and white) and one set of pants. Sounds a bit like da Raidahs in the NFL.

The helmet features the Maroons’ logo, which is a hawk’s head. Due to the lighting, it’s hard to tell if the bird is maroon or black and white. Two maroon stripes run from front to back.

Both jerseys feature two stripes on the shoulder caps: maroon stripes on the white jersey, and white stripes on the maroon one. Each jersey has a wordmark: “MAROONS” for the home (dark) jersey and “ROANOKE” for the white jersey. Unfortunately no rear views were shown in the video, but I will assume they will be NNOB. There is a small hawk logo at the base of the collar.

The number fonts are of the rounded variety. Here’s a bit of a good look at the front of the white jersey.

And a look at the maroon jersey.

The white pants will have two maroon stripes running the full length of the pants, and will be worn with maroon socks.

The only adornment (aside from the makers mark) on the pants is the Hawk head logo — in what are likely the same colors as on the helmets.

I show you this for a couple reasons. 1) As someone who is an alum of a school that dropped football after 69 years, it’s interesting to see how a program starts up again. 2) Despite being a small school with football as “only” a club sport (for this year, anyway), you can still put together a pretty decent looking uniform. It’s basic sure, but it’s solid. Other schools could learn a thing or two from this. 3) If you’re going to reintroduce a sport (football) and Nike is your supplier, this is probably about what you’d get. Which shows that Nike can produce solid uniforms after all.

I look forward to seeing the Roanoke Maroons in a future 5 & 1 list (on the good side). That probably won’t be for a while — Jimmer doesn’t often feature Div. III schools — but I’d put this uniform up there with some of the more classic unis in the college game.

I put all the screen shots I made into a gallery below.

So readers — what do you think of the new unis? If your school were starting up a football program, would you want them to go with something similar? Or would you go for something a bit more…wild?

Love to hear your thoughts.

 
  
 
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Comments (17)

    Based on the headline, I was expecting a before-and-after photo showing the leather helmets and threadbare wool jerseys they wore up until last season.

    So excited to see my Alma Mater featured on here!! These unis are so solid. Definite fits the classy branding that Roanoke has in general.

    Simple, love maroon as a color, and they keep the stripes consistent on the helmet, sleeves and pants, so thumbs up.

    The bird’s head on the helmet looks maroon to me. The uniforms themselves are not bad; they are better than Penn State’s and every other team that has plain white pants.

    Their number font looks very similar to JMU’s, which I guess could be a nod to another in-state program. I could be mistaken, but I thought their font was custom. But I guess it’s like Michigan State’s custom font being an option if you build a Nike uniform several years after that font was introduced.

    Actually, now that I look back, JMU got a new font wiht their jump to FBS, so this no longer matches that font from a few years back.

    Not true anymore. Their purple and white football jerseys for 2024 now use the custom JMU athletic number font that all teams wear. If you look at their posts on social media, you can see in graphics that include posed photos from this year’s photo shoot that JMU upgraded to the Nike FUSE template jersey, and changed the numbers to match what every other team wears. When they introduced new black jerseys last year, those used the standardized JMU number font, not what was on the purple and white jerseys. According to College Football 25, those black uniforms are not available this year – who knows if that will be the case in reality.

    I still don’t know why JMU had a totally different football jersey number font for their first two FBS seasons. Seems to be fixed now.

    The Roanoke uniforms are excellent; I wouldn’t change a thing. If I were starting my own program from scratch, I would take what I consider the best uniforms in college history: the 1984 BYU Cougars.

    It’s probably wise to start a program back up with something solid like this… no complaints or suggestions from me…
    The comment saying it looks “high school” seems more related to how fancy high school unis have gotten in the past 25+ years.

    All that aid, it would be tempting to go with some crazy / unique stripe pattern or large lettering or something to make it “different!”

    Solid, no frills look. I like it a lot. Even if they move up to being a full varsity sport they should keep this uniform. Maroon is such a great team color.

    Missed opportunity in the video; how do you feature unis # 4 and #2 and not position them as “24” at least once? I recognize the last football team was in 1942, but c’mon – the symmetry is crying out to be highlighted!

    This is, in my opinion, how uniforms should be done. A single helmet, a home set, and an away set. Done. And maroon is a great color.

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