Obligatory Uniformz Post

The helmet and the uniform need to be separated here.

Matte helmet- looks pretty sweet, and is possibly what all football helmets will look like before too long.

The rest of the uniform, of course, is unspeakably bad.

Edit:  My first double post!!

Isn't 11 a "Legends" jersey, why no patch?  Or does the Legends Patch lose out to the BIG logo and the Outback Bowl Patch?  Wait, I just answered my own question.

you get triple points on your Lidz card for buying one.

Agreed.  Its one thing to feel the need to deploy gimmic jerseys.  Its a whole other thing to agree to terribly horrible-looking ones.  I mean, who the f-ck is designing these things???  My 4-year-old son could come up with something that looks better, and he just painted a Christmas using pink and brown paint!

Why didn't we just make blue uniformz?

By contract with the Outback Bowl, Michigan was designated the home teams and would normally wear the dark (home) uniforms.

But in order to get UM into this particular uniform, Brandon (I assume) waived this so that we wear this Adidas-inspired white outfit with the blue shoulders.  Why did they do this?

I recall seeing a photograph from this weekend with the recruits and in the background there was a blue uniform with maize colored shoulders.  A lot of people were wondering if that was a true alternate jersey.

I bet the answer was yes, but when comparing it with the white jersey that we just saw rolled out, a decision was made to keep it on the shelf and have the team wear the visiting (white) Adidas jersey.  Who knows why the decision was made, but I bet dollars to donuts that the marketing brain trust thought they could see more of those to the general public than they could sell the home version. 

What really draws my ire about this is that they could have made a real killer, all blue jersey with maize numerals and letters.  Heck, just replace the numbers on the sleeves with the block "M" and change the shades of blue and maize to reflect the colors on the matte helmet and you'd get a traditional look that's also sellable.

Brandon does a lot of things well, but alternate jerseys isn't necessarily one of them.  The UTL jersey by itself was okay, but it's real appeal is that it is coupled with an epic win against Notre Dame in the first night game ever.  The Sugar Bowl jerseys were also good in large part because they didn't go too outside the box.

But the white striped jerseys for Michigan State and the ones used in the Alabama game were pretty sorry given the competition and the game results.  MSU came out in dark green, black and bronze while the Wolverines looked like some maize-and-blue bumblebees wearing white pants.  Alabama stuck with the traditional look, something that UM should have done as well.  Not only did Michgan play badly on the field, but they looked like an Arena football teams in the process.

As long as Michigan has the contract with Adidas and David Brandon is giving the okay to their uniform/jersey concepts, then we're going to continue to see these sorts of things.  Hopefully, the next contract for athletic apparel is with Nike.  Not only is it better made, but the edit themselves when it comes to some of the wilder stylings (with the obvious exception of Oregon).

Brandon should be on the hot seat, plain and simple.

There are some things he does really well, but that does not justify keeping him around when he is whoring out central aspects of our tradidion for those Adida$ uniformz dollar$.  

It's like RR.  He did one thing really well, but seriously (and continually) fucked up another thing, and eventually he had to go.  Same thing applies to Brandon.  This shit is getting ridiculous.

It's almost certainly just a "money grab" -- there's no other reasonable explanation -- but that explanation itself is unreasonable as well.

In January of 1998, I remember Rose Bowl uniforms for sale in the bookstores.  They were the exact same uniforms worn during the year, except that they had the Rose Bowl patch on 'em.  They seemed to sell just fine, to the same people that already had a bunch of uniforms in their closet.

Selling jerseys makes sense, but are people going to buy more helmets?

As I understand from this thread, Michigan is the designated home team and elected to wear white, much like LSU, Georgia Tech, or the Dallas Cowboys. So for a game, at least, this is Michigan's choice for a home uniform.

"Parade" is too kind.  "Clown show," maybe?

In fact, they did all black once and black jerseys w/ orange pants another time. PSU and Bama are the only legit examples Brian gave, and even then, he's not 100% accurate. PSU was originally sporting a white helmet with huge numbers on the side, which they have scrapped for the all white sides, and Bama used to feature a huge script A on the sides, which they have scrapped for the numbers. I think because OSU has had many variations over the past decade, Dave Branding sees it as ok to do the same.

Florida, LSU (2x), Alabama (slight change in the current uniform), Georgia, Ohio State (3x) have all done this, and I would argue that these are some of the classic uniforms in all of football. Its a sign of the times changing, everything has to be throwback, fauxback, or alternate uniform these days. Would I prefer that Michigan comes out in the classic blue jersey, or a white version similar to the home jersey? Absolutely. Do I mind this new jersey? Not at all.

We can complain about adidas and Dave Brandon ruining everything, but next time you're near Michigan Stadium, Yost, or Crisler (arena) Center, look at the good that they have done for the programs. I will take a matte blue on the helmet (that looks great IMO) over having a crappy Crisler Arena, or having a stadium that all the sound escapes. It isnt the way that the jersey looks, its the players wearing the jerseys. I am damn proud of all these men, and I will root them to victory, even if they decided to come out dressed like South Carolina.