Notre Dame-Michigan Retro Uniforms Impress: You’re Going to Buy One

Uniform looks awesome…when does the jersey go on sale….cant wait to get one.

I may be in the minority but, YECK!

Bill,

Sadly not until August 1st. Per the press release they will also be selling other merchandise (hats, shirts, etc.) for the game as well.

TLNDMA,

Come over from the dark side!

Eric, I may have to listen to that game on the radio ; ).

Not good!!!!!!!!

TLNDMA,

Elaborate if you want to. I know you’re kidding, but these can’t be that bad in your opinion.

Mike G,

They are so good it hurts!!

Allow me to respond to some of the criticisms (that were inevitable from you know where) despite the majority of Irish fans (and even more outside the fan base) loving these.

I will paraphrase to protect the guilty innocent.

“Why are we wearing the worst helmet idea ND has ever had? Even Michigan hasn’t done that.”

Wrong. First, Michigan has changed their helmet by adding numbers to the sides below the wings and switching from blue to gray facemasks. Second, Notre Dame has worn three different helmets worse than this…the “nuclear” shamrock, the Alamaba numbers, and the stenciled in blue achievement star editions.

“This game is only a big deal for Michigan because they haven’t played a night game at home before. It is beneath us to change our uniforms for such an occasion and is a pure money grab.”

Despite the hatred between ND and Michigan, we were honored with an appearance in the first ever night game at the Big House. It’s a big deal, and people are excited and pumped to watch this game. It’s one of the greatest modern rivalries, Michigan is celebrating D. Howard and bunch of other things over the weekend, and it’s the day before the 10th anniversary of 9-11. Saying it’s beneath us to wear special uniforms for ONE F-ING GAME just serves to make our fan base look even more disrespectful and full of ourselves than we already should be. There’s a strain of opinion that doesn’t want to wear these specifically to belittle Michigan. In other words, a 6-year old type of argument probably put forth by mostly 60 year olds.

“These aren’t even retro jerseys.”

Complaining just to complain. Next….

“We are whoring ourselves out to Adidas.”

This was not Adidas’ original idea. It was Michigan and Notre Dame’s idea. Yes, Adidas supplies the Irish with their uniforms, cleats, and gloves. Congratulations for stating the obvious. What’s more, Adidas did not come up with the design by themselves without significant input from Notre Dame. Unless, someone wants to argue that Adidas invented the idea of putting the shamrock on the helmet and using shoulder stripes? In any event, we “whore ourselves out” to Adidas almost every other year with new uniforms. We are not Penn State, stop pretending that we’ve worn the same uniform for 70 years. We sold a bunch of green jerseys last year (like so many years in the past) wearing green against Army. Those Adidas whores….

“These are a gimmick, and the intent of unveiling the uniforms beforehand specifically to obtain money from fans is the worst problem of all.”

Like Notre Dame is holding a gun to your head to buy this retro merchandise. Have people with these opinions never bought any Notre Dame products before? Do they scoff at all the new items from the Bookstore every year? I sure hope whenever the next Forbes article comes out stating that Notre Dame was in the top 5 in revenue among college football teams that none of these same people take pride in that fact, because the sales generated from this retro merchandise is going to play a part. How dare the football team make money for the school and allow those nice clean buildings on campus and state-of-the-art facilities!!! And ahh, gimmick. Along with “relevance” something Notre Dame fans and haters throw around far too often. All of the stupid (and especially tiresome) arguments displayed here are ten times more gimmicky than Notre Dame wearing retro uniforms.

Class dismissed.

At least the stripes are on the shoulders and not the sleeves (like the Gerry Faust era). And the Adidas logo looks like a marijuana plant – but, hey, I guess that’s sort of retro to the 1960s. I LOVE the shamrocks on the helmets – they disappeared my Freshman year.

The stripes on the jerseys are a mystery. We wore the UCLA style shoulder stripes at the same time we wore the shamrock helmet, which is what I thought they would do. These? The look okay (De Lasalle High wears them out here) but there’s nothing retro about them.

a68,

You’re probably right. With today’s modern jerseys and these Adidas Techfit ones specifically, they don’t have sleeves and thus you can’t really have the old stripes on the sleeves like you used to anyway. Both the shoulder stripes and sleeve stripes are incredibly common though…I don’t have anything against them, although it’s understandable why people think their inclusion doesn’t look like a ND jersey.

Of course, the Trefoil logo looks like marijuana. A little weed never hurt anybody.

IrishinSF,

The shoulder stripe was a mystery to me for a bit too. I was wondering whether they’d go with the blue-gold-white striping pattern that was popular during the Kuharich era, if they’d go with the green jersey with white striping, or something new.

I had assumed this retro look was a new look. But it turns out it is not.

That is a picture apparently from 1959, although the shamrock should be on the helmet although it is clearly not. I was not aware of this jersey until yesterday and believed ND had only worn a white jersey with green numbers against UF in 1992, and SMU in the early 50’s. And of course during the late 70’s Green Machine era.

Perhaps this was the uniform worn in the early part of 1959, or for the whole season, and eventually they switched to the blue and gold versions, plus adding the shamrock after a game or two. That was a pretty wild time for uniform changes.

I have to admit that I think these turned out great. I was skeptical as all hell but they look pretty sharp. When it comes to the whole “one time uniform” bit I would much rather see ND put together throwbacks than do something along the lines of the Nike Pro Combat getups. And in this case I’m pretty happy with the way that these turned out. This is game is going to get a lot of hype and these uniforms will look sharp under the lights.

The one caveat I have to throw out there is that once you bust out the throwbacks you need to win the damn game. Getting run ruled by USC while wearing throwbacks at home in 2007 was beyond painful.

whiskey,

Winning will have a lot to do with how much people like these. I like them either way, but you know there will be curse talk and all that if there is a loss. It’s inevitable.

I think this relatively simple and classy design is yet another sign that the school does things the right way whenever something “new” comes out. Maybe it’s time to start giving them the benefit of the doubt?

eric, well-said on all fronts

i hope the “old-gold” actually looks old to solidify a semi-retro overall appearance . . . faux-retro?

How about ND return the favor with a game under the lights deal next year or turn it into a yearly affair in either Chicago or Green Bay, much like Florida v. Georgia in Jacksonville. The hype can only help, as there aren’t many prominent games that early in the year. It would allow Adidas to make their own version of the Combat jerseys, much like Nike does for various programs, many might not like it, but having cool alternate jerseys does bring attention from many, including recruits.

pablo,

Faux-retro is a good term here, very precise. They can only get so close to the exact way the uniforms, helmets, cleats, etc. looked back in the day.

I had noticed that a few players were wearing non-metallic pants during spring practice. My guess is this was Adidas’ way of “testing” out the color on the players to get a good sense of how they will look live on a field. I would bet those are the old gold pants we’ll see.

It might not be perfect, and it will be difficult for some to even see the change maybe, but it should be a good look in my opinion.

Lou,

It seems doubtful.

During Michigan’s press conference their AD told the crowd specifically that there was a very small chance they would do anything like this in the future, both retro uniforms or a night game.

As well, Swarbrick was just interviewed and pretty much said the same exact thing, although his comments were geared more toward the home night games. He said, there was a small possibility that the Irish would play another night game at home in 2012 (maybe we will return the favor with Michigan…it’s very likely with the neutral game against Miami and the USC and OU games on the road), but that they will not make this an annual thing.

Remember, we are still supposedly seeing another new uniform for this year’s night game against USC anyway. All indications are that this will not be a retro or throwback uniform (but it could be…USC might wear something new too, although I doubt we’ll see a Nike/Adidas coordination there), and the odds are the crowd that doesn’t like these uniforms up above are probably not going to like what’s unveiled against the Trojans.

The only concern I have with the uniform is new cleats. For whatever reason, there seemed to be several bowl games that the players were slipping all over the field in their shiny new cleats. As long as we don’t have a footing problem, I don’t care too much what the uniform looks like. I do like adding green into the away jersey so we don’t look just like Navy.

Jeremy,

The cleats shouldn’t be too much of a problem, if at all.

They have already received them on campus and the game is on FieldTurf at Michigan. We’ll be flying left and right!!

Excellent!

I played for Kuharich and I loved the uniforms we wore then. The helmets with the shamrocks were special for us.

Dave