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Nice way to start the season, eh? And we’re starting out small as the Opening Weekend (I don’t really like calling it Week 0) had just four games featuring FBS teams. We’ll have the Full SMUW Crew next week, but for today I’ll cover the four games, Wade Heidt will cover the games from Canada, and Rex Henry will uni-track the three ACC teams who played.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t as thrilled about Georgia Tech’s unis as I was with their performance. The Yellow Jackets still suffer from a “white gilt” complex. At least the shiny gold numbers on their white jerseys are outlined, but shiny numbers are annoying with or without an outline. And to make things worse, they went ghost-y on the helmets.
It’s a shame, because that’s a really nice Celtic knot pattern they used for a helmet stripe, since Georgia Tech and Florida State opened up in Dublin, Ireland.
Looks great up close…
From any type of distance, though, especially on TV, you didn’t see it.
The Seminoles looked great in their classic (not shiny) gold/garnet/(not shiny) gold uniforms. Highly visible, highly enjoyable. Meanwhile, even when the sun wasn’t shining and rain was falling on the Emerald Isle, Tech’s helmets looked washed out.
For the next game we had…oh boy…another ghost logo on another all-white uni.
We have our first FCS win vs an FBS team of the 2024 season 🙌🎉
Two games in and already I’m starting to get bored. Surely not everyone is going all-white this weekend…right? At least Montana State from the FCS has nice stripes and a not-shiny gold to go with the blue on their unis. New Mexico doesn’t have stripes, but I like their silver/red/silver combo, with a contrasting collar and a nice font.
On to the third game, where…really? SMU joined the mono-white train against Nevada. On the plus side, this is the best road uni of the day so far.
I’ve always been a fan of the red horse on the white helmet, and I join those who recently said in the comments that the red “SMU” and Name On Back with the blue numbers and stripes is a simple but really nice touch. And I’m a big fan of Nevada’s unis. Love the script helmet and the chunky numbers.
The outline around the numbers may be a little bit of overkill, but I’ll allow it. If I had done a 3&1 list today, this would have been my Number One.
The final game featured another FCS school, Delaware State, traveling to Hawaii. After finding this tweet, I got my hopes up for seeing the Hornets in light blue/white/light blue.
— Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (@MEACSports) August 24, 2024
Instead…you guessed it…I got white jerseys over white pants. BUT, at least they still wore the light blue helmets. Thank you for sparing me a chess match against the all-black Rainbow Warriors!
With 96 games next weekend featuring FBS schools, you think at least one road team will wear colorful pants? Here’s hoping!
Canadian University Uni Watch
Returning for 2024 is Wade Heidt, who will appear every week on SMUW until the season ends. The jersey Wade is wearing was created by the one and only Wafflebored (who took the photo as well). Now, enjoy his look at the three-down, 110-yard game from up north.
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Canadian University Uni Watch by Wade Heidt
You know it! It’s that time again. Time for some university football uniform watching, Canadian rules style! The CUUW is back for 2024!
It is my pleasure to again be the North of the Border Correspondent. We will be watching the uniforms for the schools competing in U Sports football starting this weekend through to the Vanier Cup championship game. The Vanier Cup will happen on November 23rd. It will again be held in Kingston, ON, this year.
The regular season kicked off on Friday, August 23rd, with three of the four conferences starting play. Canada West will not start until next weekend. Let’s look at a few games. We will travel the country from east to west as the CUUW is known to do.
We’ll start with a couple of games in the Atlantic conference (AUS).
-In Halifax, nothing really new for the uniforms from these schools. The Saint Mary’s Huskies opened the season wearing their white/maroon/maroon combo. Really wish the Huskies would get rid of the wordmark on the pants. The visiting Bishop’s Gaiters went with their white over white combo. They are always stylish in their purple and silver.
-The Mount Allison Mounties ( I think Jim Vilk’s favourite team?) brought some black out at home in Sackville, NB. Though I do think I remember Jim doesn’t like them in black. It was garnet over blackfor Mount A on Saturday.
(JV: I don’t mind this combo, but my Mounties look so much better with gold pants.)
The visiting Acadia Axemen wore their white over navy combo. I love how the Axemen wear their logo on the back of the jersey above the number where the nameplate would usually be.
-In the Quebec conference (RSEQ), the season kicked off on Friday night with the defending Vanier Cup champion Montreal Carabins playing at home. The Carabins wore their blue/black/black combo. The visiting Sherbrooke Vert & Or went with their green/white/white combo. The Vert & Or have done some changes. They have switched to a green mask with this helmet. The green helmet now features the “S” logo instead of numbers on the sides. Sherbrooke have decided not to go with helmet and pant striping this year.
We will travel west to the Ontario conference (OUA) for a couple of games.
-In an unusual move, the Guelph Gryphons went white at home. They wore their red/white/whitecombo. The Carleton Ravens wore their black over white combo on the road. The Ravens wear black and red just like many teams that are based in Ottawa. I am getting used to the Ravens in the white helmet now. It has taken some time.
-The Windsor Lancers went navy over navy at home. Still love that the Lancers wear their “W” logo on top of the helmet. The Queen’s Gaels wore the only uniform they have for both at home and on the road. The legendary yellow over yellow for the Tricolour. Beautifully accented with red socks.
That’s it for this week! Look forward to seeing all four conferences in action next weekend. Also looking forward to seeing the action when the real autumn football weather starts with the crispness in the air.
• • • • •
Thanks, Wade. Welcome back!
2024 Uni Tracking
Uni Watch will again track the combinations worn by college football conferences. Long-time trackers Rex Henry (tracking the ACC), and Dennis Bolt (now tracking the Big Teen) are returning, as is Zach Wooldridge (tracking the SEC). We’re working on a Big “XII” tracker at the moment.
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Today, the only tracker who had work to do was Rex, with three ACC teams playing yesterday.
Looking forward to having Terry Duroncelet, Dennis Bolt, and Zach Wooldridge joining us next week for a full-fledged Sunday Morning Uni Watch. I’ll be back on 5&1 duty, while Terry takes the SMUW lead.
Thriftspotting With Wafflebored...and Jimmer
And now for something a little different on a football Sunday. Two weeks ago, I featured our friend Wafflebored, who had a great thrift store find for us. More on that when he’s finished. First, let’s see what he’s found this time.
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Thriftspotting: Unusual Canada Jersey
From the outside, this looks like a really nice Team Canada hockey jersey. It features some of my favourite aspects Canada has worn over the years: the speed line/double leaf logo; red and white colour scheme only (no unnecessary black); and the nice four-stripe design. I saw it at a local shop and decided to add it to my collection.
But, when I handled it I noticed it had a weird, stiff, crunchy kind of feel. I looked inside and saw the “Wind Stopper” tag and was immediately puzzled as I’d never seen anything like it before. The body of the jersey has a Gore-Tex lining.
I posted photos on an online collector’s group, and was told these were made for game use in 1994. The purpose of the lining was to make the jerseys more aerodynamic by allegedly preventing airflow through the jersey and slowing you down. I guess the air would flow around you, making you skate faster. No word if the goalie jerseys had this lining as well. In addition the lining was intended to wick moisture away from the body, which is something we’ve seen in other performance fabrics.
These jerseys were used at the 1994 World Championships and also the 1994 Olympics. I’m told some players cut the lining out as they didn’t like the feel. Interestingly, this jersey is an unused team-issued jersey for the Olympics. The jerseys were made by Tackla but Reebok was the only brand that could be shown. The World Championships jerseys also featured the Tackla logo on the rear hem but this was not allowed for the Olympics, so this is how we determined this was an Olympic jersey.
Another favourite feature is how the sleeves are tailored in the down position. The vast majority of hockey jerseys have the sleeves coming straight out like a T.
I like oddball and unusual jerseys so this one is a nice fit for my collection.
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That looks great! Thanks for sharing that with us. Now, about that Montana Golden Nuggets warmup from two weeks ago…not only did Wafflebored buy it, he sent it to me!
Fits nicely. As soon as I tried it on, I thought to myself, now I need to pull out my 1986 Cleveland Cavs breakaway pants.
All I need is a ball so I can get into the layup line and work on my finger roll. Thanks again, Wafflebored!
He wasn’t the only one who found some interesting stuff recently. I went to three different thrift stores with The Boy a couple of Fridays ago. I almost got this set of clear plastic cups and containers with football officiating signals on them.
Instead, I got a Steelers glass with Steely McBeam. That really needs to be their new helmet logo!
The absolute find of the day was this Budweiser beer mug for the 1988 Winter Olympics, complete with a ski jumper! And some other athletes. On sale for just a dollar!
Oh, and I got a newfangled Nerf football, which isn’t so great for throwing, but it’s great for kicking. Perfect for me!
Big thanks to Wade, Rex, and Wafflebored for joining me today. And I’d be remiss if didn’t take this opportunity to thank Phil for trusting me with keeping the beast that is Sunday Morning Uni Watch rolling. This feature is his baby…he even came up with the idea for the 5&1 list. Naturally I’ll put my spin on things, but I’m just babysitting here. I’ll strive to do SMUW in a way that he’ll enjoy. Hope you all enjoy it as well.
Have a great week, everyone, and I’ll see you again on Saturday.
FAMU and SeMO both wore color pants on the road. Granted that’s FCS, but with there being so few games yesterday we can count them this week.
This would have been a good week to cover the FCS.
I’d love to include D-2 and D-3 as well, but there are just too many teams and not enough hours in the day.
FAMU looked great! The uniforms they’ve settled on these last few years are crisp and clean.
FSU helmet doesn’t match the pant color. Literally unwatchable.
Man, that’s such a problem these days. Especially with gold. Look how mad Purdue’s are. Honestly I don’t know many teams that get ANY color right with their helmet and rest of the uniform. It’s crazy. Kinda makes me like matte helmets cuz I feel like they always look really close.
Nike hasn’t been able to get metallic fabrics right for years. Gold, silver, pewter… all way off.
It’s not just Nike. adidas and UA can’t seem to get it right either.
The Minnesota Vikings only recently matched their helmets perfectly to their jerseys. Though that was more a purple issue than a metallic one. My completely uninformed guess is that it must be quite difficult due to the difference in materials and the lighting conditions. I also wonder if the difference is as noticable in person as on tv.
The 1994 Team Canada jersey. Represents a blip in time in the 1990s when blue was dropped as a trim colour on the national team uniforms and before black became a trim colour.
When you see that jersey number font you know it’s a Tackla. Brings back memories of watching World Juniors in those years. When it came to hockey pants in 1990s, Tackla was what I preferred to wear. Were the best for look and comfort.
Re: Wafflebored’s jersey… So a couple days ago, I got into a debate with a client over a logo design I am doing for them. They wanted four stripes to represent the four core values of the organization. Wafflebored calls the bottom part of the Canada jersey “four stripes,” as would I. My designed incorporated the stripes similar to that arrangement. The client insisted there were seven stripes… four red, and three white and asked me to alter the design. (The client is related to military/patriotic causes, so the whole US flag having 13 stripes probably weighs heavily.) What say you, people? Does that jersey have four stripes or seven? Do the 49ers have three stripes on their sleeves or five?
Interesting question…I’d say the Canadian uni has four stripes and the Niners have three.
The US flag isn’t a good comparison because the whole thing is stripes, neither red nor white is the base color. On the hockey jersey there are red stripes with white negative space between them
Right! White feels like the base on the Canada jersey, and there are four red stripes adorning it.
My son commented last night how big Nevada’s numbers were on their jerseys last night while watching the game. I told him it reminded me of how when Earle Bruce took over at Ohio State he made the numbers larger on the jerseys to make the players look larger and more imposing.
That helmet logo for New Mexico is tough to make out. You would think with a Lobo they could come up with something good for the helmet.
At first glance it looked like GT has plain white helmets.
Contrast is good.
The glassware section of the thrift shop often yields the best finds. That 88 stein is a beauty.
In other news……. the Detroit Lions LOOKED like the Detroit Lions!!!!! At least for now and they start pairing the solid blue pants with the blue jersey and the WFWS crap……
Delaware State looked great, especially the way wide pant stripe …helmet coulda used a splash of red though.
“… this Budweiser beer mug for the 1988 Winter Olympics, complete with a ski jumper! ”
Eddie The Eagle that ain’t!
Feels worth mentioning that Tech’s colors are Old Gold and White (officially the gold is more of a middle ground between old gold and Vegas gold now) navy is only supposed to be there as an accent color. So the all white look is true to the school. That said I prefer it when our helmet logo is Gold outlined in Navy. I really liked the Celtic Knot and think it works better than the 2 gold stripes from the bowl game BUT I absolutely agree the white GT outlined in Gold washes out too easily and doesn’t really match our unis because they are heavy on the Navy. I tried pairing the whiteout helmet with the gold jerseys in EA CFB 25 and it’s worse because the navy numbers. We can’t really get rid of the Navy outline because the numbers would be super illegible except in pictures lol. I would be a fan of a pure white and gold uni for the whiteout we will inevitably have this season. In motion it will be impossible to read but it’ll look beautiful in pictures lol.
That Olympic stein is interesting. It lists Scotland as a country with the rampant lion crest but Scotland competes with England and Wales at the Olympics as Great Britain. Going further, England is represented, which is incorrect for the same reasons as with Scotland. But the flag is the Union Jack, not the St George’s cross.
Even more interesting: there’s a crest for the “country” of… Africa. I forgot to get a shot of that.
Check the end of today’s post, Phil. I added something I should have put in sooner.
The Nerf football was invented by Minnesota Vikings straight-on kicker Fred Cox!
I think the Tech helmets looked fine. I watched the entire game and never had an issue seeing the knot or the GT. I do prefer that we have a gold GT outlined in blue and I am glad the knot is a one-off. If we have to have stripes, I prefer, clean, simple lines, nothing that comes to a point or splits in half or anything like that. I’m glad we went back to a more traditional uniform design and don’t mind the metallic numbers, though I would be fine with non-metallic gold numbers. Regardless of the type of gold for the numbers, I wish we would go back to a more plain block letter font and drop the modern font we have had since we signed on with adidas in 2018.
Great finds, both the jersey and the stein. FSU the clear winner of this weekend in the uniform section.
MOAR THRIFTSPOTTING
FAMU and SeMO both wore color pants on the road. Granted that’s FCS, but with there being so few games yesterday we can count them this week.
This would have been a good week to cover the FCS.
I’d love to include D-2 and D-3 as well, but there are just too many teams and not enough hours in the day.
FAMU looked great! The uniforms they’ve settled on these last few years are crisp and clean.
FSU helmet doesn’t match the pant color. Literally unwatchable.
Man, that’s such a problem these days. Especially with gold. Look how mad Purdue’s are. Honestly I don’t know many teams that get ANY color right with their helmet and rest of the uniform. It’s crazy. Kinda makes me like matte helmets cuz I feel like they always look really close.
Nike hasn’t been able to get metallic fabrics right for years. Gold, silver, pewter… all way off.
It’s not just Nike. adidas and UA can’t seem to get it right either.
The Minnesota Vikings only recently matched their helmets perfectly to their jerseys. Though that was more a purple issue than a metallic one. My completely uninformed guess is that it must be quite difficult due to the difference in materials and the lighting conditions. I also wonder if the difference is as noticable in person as on tv.
The 1994 Team Canada jersey. Represents a blip in time in the 1990s when blue was dropped as a trim colour on the national team uniforms and before black became a trim colour.
When you see that jersey number font you know it’s a Tackla. Brings back memories of watching World Juniors in those years. When it came to hockey pants in 1990s, Tackla was what I preferred to wear. Were the best for look and comfort.
Re: Wafflebored’s jersey… So a couple days ago, I got into a debate with a client over a logo design I am doing for them. They wanted four stripes to represent the four core values of the organization. Wafflebored calls the bottom part of the Canada jersey “four stripes,” as would I. My designed incorporated the stripes similar to that arrangement. The client insisted there were seven stripes… four red, and three white and asked me to alter the design. (The client is related to military/patriotic causes, so the whole US flag having 13 stripes probably weighs heavily.) What say you, people? Does that jersey have four stripes or seven? Do the 49ers have three stripes on their sleeves or five?
Interesting question…I’d say the Canadian uni has four stripes and the Niners have three.
The US flag isn’t a good comparison because the whole thing is stripes, neither red nor white is the base color. On the hockey jersey there are red stripes with white negative space between them
Right! White feels like the base on the Canada jersey, and there are four red stripes adorning it.
My son commented last night how big Nevada’s numbers were on their jerseys last night while watching the game. I told him it reminded me of how when Earle Bruce took over at Ohio State he made the numbers larger on the jerseys to make the players look larger and more imposing.
That helmet logo for New Mexico is tough to make out. You would think with a Lobo they could come up with something good for the helmet.
At first glance it looked like GT has plain white helmets.
Contrast is good.
The glassware section of the thrift shop often yields the best finds. That 88 stein is a beauty.
In other news……. the Detroit Lions LOOKED like the Detroit Lions!!!!! At least for now and they start pairing the solid blue pants with the blue jersey and the WFWS crap……
Delaware State looked great, especially the way wide pant stripe …helmet coulda used a splash of red though.
“… this Budweiser beer mug for the 1988 Winter Olympics, complete with a ski jumper! ”
Eddie The Eagle that ain’t!
Feels worth mentioning that Tech’s colors are Old Gold and White (officially the gold is more of a middle ground between old gold and Vegas gold now) navy is only supposed to be there as an accent color. So the all white look is true to the school. That said I prefer it when our helmet logo is Gold outlined in Navy. I really liked the Celtic Knot and think it works better than the 2 gold stripes from the bowl game BUT I absolutely agree the white GT outlined in Gold washes out too easily and doesn’t really match our unis because they are heavy on the Navy. I tried pairing the whiteout helmet with the gold jerseys in EA CFB 25 and it’s worse because the navy numbers. We can’t really get rid of the Navy outline because the numbers would be super illegible except in pictures lol. I would be a fan of a pure white and gold uni for the whiteout we will inevitably have this season. In motion it will be impossible to read but it’ll look beautiful in pictures lol.
That Olympic stein is interesting. It lists Scotland as a country with the rampant lion crest but Scotland competes with England and Wales at the Olympics as Great Britain. Going further, England is represented, which is incorrect for the same reasons as with Scotland. But the flag is the Union Jack, not the St George’s cross.
Even more interesting: there’s a crest for the “country” of… Africa. I forgot to get a shot of that.
Check the end of today’s post, Phil. I added something I should have put in sooner.
The Nerf football was invented by Minnesota Vikings straight-on kicker Fred Cox!
Indeed!
This was my tribute to him.
link
I think the Tech helmets looked fine. I watched the entire game and never had an issue seeing the knot or the GT. I do prefer that we have a gold GT outlined in blue and I am glad the knot is a one-off. If we have to have stripes, I prefer, clean, simple lines, nothing that comes to a point or splits in half or anything like that. I’m glad we went back to a more traditional uniform design and don’t mind the metallic numbers, though I would be fine with non-metallic gold numbers. Regardless of the type of gold for the numbers, I wish we would go back to a more plain block letter font and drop the modern font we have had since we signed on with adidas in 2018.
Great finds, both the jersey and the stein. FSU the clear winner of this weekend in the uniform section.