The conversation about uniforms can be dismissive. “It’s just laundry” some say. “It’s for recruiting!” say others. “We should aways wear our school colors!” say some others.
All of this is true. There is no perfect answer. There is value in a classic, well-designed look, as it appeals to good design forms. There is value in a look-at-me-I’m-here-wearing-something-stupid kind of look. (You get people to look at you for being garish). College football is a very copy-cat kind of group. You have some influential alumni saying things like “We should do what THEY do” and they push the athletic staff to ask for that kind of thing. Of course there are also the manufacturers. Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour are trying to get contracts and sell replicas and all that good stuff. They push a look on you, and if you are not a program that sells a lot of gear you can maybe ask for some concessions and maybe they’ll listen.
We call cannot be Oregon, because the primary benefactor for Oregon was Mr. Nike himself, Phil Knight. They had want of a unique look and were happy to take experimental looks because they wanted a brand. It worked. People wanted to see what Oregon was going to wear that week. Steel paint? Chrome domes? Highlighters?
Nike set a template, got the follower-types followed suit. Some made it part of their regular looks (WKU’s chrome). North Texas has some of those elements here. The “zoomed in” eagle has some Oregonian innovations. NT has eschewed some of the crazier stuff in favor of some classic green-and-white-with-block-lettering. The throwbacks to the Mean Joe era were super popular and I suppose someone somewhere listened.
Does it “stand out”? No, it does not. It looks clean and classic. The standing out will be done while playing football and winning or losing. The uniform helps them look good but I can guarantee you that losing by 55 in the Alabama uniforms will make the Alabama uniforms start to look bad. You become iconic by doing icon-type stuff.
Go win the league. Those uniforms start looking good.
If you don’t believe me consider that the 1980s Clippers had some nice uniforms. They sucked. So they changed them. They keep changing them. No amount of new or shiny or nice has erased the stink of losing. They will change them again but they will only be “good” when they start winning. The Lakers’ uniforms are pretty much unchanged since the the beginning of their time in LA. A lot of that has to do with the fact that they have won 11 titles since 1979 or whatever. The Celtics have 18 championships. They don’t change much. The Mavericks picked new uniforms after Marc Cuban bought them, started winning, and have made few big changes (those aluminum ones excepted) and have kind of settled into their look. Why? Well, they have been to three Finals and won a title.