For those who have been sheltered the last couple days and haven't seen the news or been on the internet, the hottest topic right now seems to be the University of Maryland's football uniforms that debuted against the University of Miami on Monday night. Maryland is outfitted by Under Armour who's founder Kevin Blank is a University of Maryland alum. They have been outfitted by Under Armour for the past couple of years as are a few other college teams such as the University of Utah and Auburn University. Maryland had debuted new uniforms in August that were suppose to represent the state. The new uniforms give the team options each week.
As you can see in the above image, there are numerous options and two helmets, a black one and a white one with a turtle shell pattern. Both helmets have a center stripe that represents the Maryland flag.
There had been rumors of a uniform that Maryland was going to wear against the University of Miami on ESPN in front of a national audience that few knew about and supposedly not even the team until right before the game. And then the world saw these uniforms!
I'll say this as a designer. Sometimes you come up with a "great" idea... and sometimes those ideas really don't work... or they just don't. This is one of those "great" idea. Someone either at Under Armour or the University of Maryland thought it'd be a great idea to push the limits of what a football uniform should look like. I have no problem with that. Nike and the University of Oregon have over the past few years been doing that and are often times ripped in the sports world for using colors such as silver, neon yellow, carbon, and black which aren't University of Oregon colors. They even put a diamond plating pattern on the shoulders and knees of the uniforms. Then in the most recent set, they introduced wings on the shoulders, a carbon fiber patterned silver helmet, and then this past Saturday they introduced us to the Carbon colored uniforms against LSU.
Oregon was considered "out there" and pushing the limits of what a uniforms should look like. Maryland saw this and decided to get some attention in the same way. It's interesting to look at Oregon's uniforms now, and compare them to what Maryland rolled out on Monday and call Oregon's conservative, but they are. Oregon's helmets are a plain color and have an "o" on the side. Maryland's on Monday was half of the state flag. That's right, only half of the flag. I understand pushing the limits, and the jerseys are actually pretty cool with half the flag on one shoulder and the other half on the other shoulder. It's just the execution of the helmet is so loud and obnoxious that it distracts from what could be a interesting look for the Terps. If they would've used the white turtle shell helmet, it wouldn't have drawn your eye to one part of the uniform as the current half flag helmet does. Now you might be asking, "Why do they have a turtle patterned helmet?" The nickname for the University of Maryland is Terrapins or Terps for short, a turtle that are found along the eastern United States. Even if they would've done the full Maryland flag as the helmet it would've looked better. The problem is, using only half the flag gives you a black and yellow checkerboard look on one side and a red and white cross look on the other side. Now if you look at the first pic in this post, then it honestly looks like two different teams are on the field when in fact it is one team. That is a failure when you are trying to create an identity and trying to brand yourself as Maryland is, you shouldn't have schizophrenic look. I don't mind them pushing the envelope as Oregon does, but when you push too far, you loose your identity which you are trying to create.
Images:
ESPN screen capture - tbd.com
Full uniform set - dcist.com
Helmet image - theatlanticwire.com
Maryland state flag - 50 States.com
4th Maryland image - Lacrosse Playground.com
Oregon diamond plate uniforms - goducks.com
Oregon winged uniforms - NikeBlog.com
Oregon Carbon uniforms - NikeBlog.com
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