Spooky Season will continue at full tilt this weekend, with a number of teams wearing all-black uniforms, and the Iowa Hawkeyes will be joining the party.
After the school posted a somewhat cryptic tweet earlier this week…
Lights Out.#Hawkeyes pic.twitter.com/R2g5tVwY4W
— Hawkeye Football (@HawkeyeFootball) October 30, 2024
…there was a lot of speculation as to whether or not the team would go with its alternate black uniform.
That uniform is essentially the same as the team’s current uniforms, which merely add a set of black pants in the same style as their gold pants, only with the black and gold reversed. They also look a lot like the Pittsburgh Steelers’ color rush uniforms, except the Steelers also swap their regular jerseys for ones that are entirely black and gold.
The alternate black uniforms were confirmed shortly after the Hawkeyes’ tweet announcing the “Lights out”.
The #Hawkeyes will be wearing all-black uniforms against Wisconsin, a team spokesperson confirms. https://t.co/pMPi2Jhr08
— John Steppe (@JSteppe1) October 30, 2024
The confirmation comes with a caveat, however. While the team has definitely confirmed “all black uniforms” — it did not confirm whether the team will wear the combination pictured above, or whether an entirely new all-black uniform will be worn. As of this writing, no specific uniform has been announced.
If the team opts for the “regular” all-black uniform, it would be a bit of déjà vu — the last time Iowa hosted Wisconsin, they did so wearing that combination (plus S&S Hawkeye decals on their helmets). That game took place on November 12, 2022, and the Hawkeyes defeated the Badgers by a score of 24-10. So the team may have a secondary reason for going all-black: it’s Spooky Season and they hope to repeat the result in the look they wore against Wisconsin at home the last time they met in Iowa City.
All that now remains to be seen is what all-black kit the Hawkeyes will wear. The game against Wisconsin kicks off Saturday evening at 6:30 pm (ET) and will be shown on NBC.
Since Iowa’s colors are black and gold, the uniforms are not BFBS, and I’m fine with the team wearing the alternate black pants. And while I prefer the Hawkeyes in black/black/gold (their standard home uniform), the alternate black pants work well and would certainly be appropriate for a post-Halloween uniform against a B1G rival.
I’m originally from Iowa, so grew up watching the Hawkeyes. I guess since Hayden Fry modeled their uniforms after the Steelers, they have to wear the same pants the Steelers wore the other night.
Hayden publicly stated he copied the Steelers uniform when he came to Iowa in 1979 as he wanted Iowa to “look like winners”. The Steelers were the class of the NFL at the time and aligned with Iowa’s colors (more or less). The Steelers granted him permission to use the uniform design.
Yep. Then came those hideous jerseys for a couple years with the gold “feather stripes”. Man, those were so bad.
Maybe it’s all the Tim Dwight highlights but the banana peel jerseys have entered the “so bad they’re good” category in my opinion. I know they brought them back as a gold jersey with black feathers a few years ago but it wasn’t the same as those Apex jerseys.
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Just please stop reporting on BFBS stories.
Maybe this atrocious trend will just die out without the attention.
These teams are excited to be featured on UniWatch for these bad moves but let’s deny them the publicity.
Going back 50+ years, you can probably count on one hand (two hands for sure) the number of times Iowa has played a football game wearing anything other than gold pants. Certainly noteworthy on this site.