Illinois Football Uniforms

#77      
illini0440
Basketball Logo GIF by Lumi
 
#82      
altgeld88
This photo was in an X post on the 2026 Illini Football thread this morning as a tribute to Mikey Dudek. I'm pasting it here simply to demonstrate what a hot mess our font and color scheme was before the new unis. I realize people rag on the present font (a font that I like) but what we enjoy now is orders of magnitude better than this hot mess. It's like a uni mad lib.

Look at that helmet color.

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#83      
illinoistradition
altgeld88 said:
This photo was in an X post on the 2026 Illini Football thread this morning as a tribute to Mikey Dudek. I'm pasting it here simply to demonstrate what a hot mess our font and color scheme was before the new unis. I realize people rag on the present font (a font that I like) but what we enjoy now is orders of magnitude better than this hot mess. It's like a uni mad lib.

Look at that helmet color.

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Seriously. In what world does that helmet color even come close to our color scheme? Those jerseys then matched our lack of success.
 
#84      
altgeld88
illinoistradition said:
Seriously. In what world does that helmet color even come close to our color scheme? Those jerseys then matched our lack of success.
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This stuff is much more than simply cosmetic. It was indicative of the general disarray in our program from Beckman through Lovie. I'm reminded of John Madden; the guy has a popular, and completely unfounded, image as a lovable goof. In fact he was maniacally attentive to detail, all the way down to suspecting the work ethic of any player who failed to polish his dress shoes, which is why he won Super Bowls and is a HOF coach.

(And, yes, I realize that Lovie recruited some excellent talent, particularly some diamonds in the rough; however, he was largely retired-in-place.)
 
#85      
Birdus
altgeld88 said:
This stuff is much more than simply cosmetic. It was indicative of the general disarray in our program from Beckman through Lovie. I'm reminded of John Madden; the guy has a popular, and completely unfounded, image as a lovable goof. In fact he was maniacally attentive to detail, all the way down to suspecting the work ethic of any player who failed to polish his dress shoes, which is why he won Super Bowls and is a HOF coach.

(And, yes, I realize that Lovie recruited some excellent talent, particularly some diamonds in the rough; however, he was largely retired-in-place.)
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A very hot-mess it indeed was
 
#86      
Fighter of the Nightman
altgeld88 said:
This photo was in an X post on the 2026 Illini Football thread this morning as a tribute to Mikey Dudek. I'm pasting it here simply to demonstrate what a hot mess our font and color scheme was before the new unis. I realize people rag on the present font (a font that I like) but what we enjoy now is orders of magnitude better than this hot mess. It's like a uni mad lib.

Look at that helmet color.

View attachment 51248
Click to expand...
Looking back, this uniform looks like the epitome of an "insecure" brand (I know people hate when that word is used in these conversations, but...) just trying to do way too much to try to look trendy, cool, sleek, stylish, etc. And then the Lovie Era uniforms seemed like such a kneejerk self correction back to as plain as possible. :ROFLMAO: Like, these uniforms are not just doomed to fail! However, I just imagine myself creating a uniform using the EA CFB Team Builder website and my decision process, lol. You don't need that (seemingly massive??) neck collar when you already have numbers on the shoulders, outlines on the numbers, a 3-wide sleeve stripe, a 3-wide pants stripe and (in older versions of this set) a 3-wide stripe on the helmet, too.

Our current set certainly has a ton of stripes, but it sort of commits to that look unapologetically, and that can work ... think LSU and the Patriots, which had these looks before us. Some people might not like it (I'm a sleeve stripe guy, myself!), but it's clearly a deliberate choice. These uniforms look like we were just trying to fill it out, sort of. I have to ask, though ... isn't this literally the exact same number font we have on the current set?? I didn't follow that part.
 
#90      
redwingillini11
gary? said:
so is there any other news about new jerseys or logos or whatever? like many here, i hate the “1”s used in 1LL1NO1S
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I highly doubt we will see any further drastic changes while Josh Bret and Brad are all still at the helm. That being said, if there is a refresh on the way, they are probably going to start working on that now, if a new deal with Nike is about to take effect. That means we are probably at least 2 years out from any major changes, if any are to occur.
 
#91      
Fighter of the Nightman
redwingillini11 said:
I highly doubt we will see any further drastic changes while Josh Bret and Brad are all still at the helm. That being said, if there is a refresh on the way, they are probably going to start working on that now, if a new deal with Nike is about to take effect. That means we are probably at least 2 years out from any major changes, if any are to occur.
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I think what’s way more likely is not “admitting defeat” regarding the 1LL1NO1S font being utter trash but rather slowly working more and more Script in, as we’ve seen in the last few years.
 
#93      
dcenters33
redwingillini11 said:
Thank you for passing along the news! It seemed like the overwhelmingly likely outcome, but at least I no longer feel crazy that an announcement was due!
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Is there any articles talking about this? I've tried to find something on it, must've been pretty under the radar.
 
#95      
altgeld88
mattcoldagelli said:
I think these dudes love The Script, man (as all men and women of culture should)
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Do you favor its use in football on the helmets? Can't recall. I was skeptical but in fact thought as implemented it really popped.

I'm delighted it is now the face of the basketball brand.
 
#96      
Fighter of the Nightman
altgeld88 said:
Do you favor its use in football on the helmets? Can't recall. I was skeptical but in fact thought as implemented it really popped.

I'm delighted it is now the face of the basketball brand.
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Obviously you asked Matt and not me, but I personally felt like it worked better for the Music City Bowl for some reason. FTR, I am not commenting on the colors here ... I think we should mainly stick to orange helmets, haha. However, it just seemed to me like the Script font appeared smaller on the Citrus Bowl helmet than it did on the Music City Bowl helmet. I would like to see that orange Script helmet flipped to match the basketball uniforms (i.e., navy font with white outline rather than the other way around) to see what that would look like!

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#99      
Fighter of the Nightman
One thing at least sort of good about the shoulder stripes is that they have the potential to be fairly easily associated with an "Illinois look" within the Big Ten, especially when you consider just how unique our. Just from a quick Google search, we are the only pre-2012 Big Ten school to use them and one of only three overall.

No Jersey Stripes
Indiana
Michigan
Penn State
Rutgers

Sleeve Stripes / Design
Iowa
Maryland
Minnesota
Northwestern
Ohio State
Purdue
Washington
Wisconsin

Shoulder Stripes
Illinois
Nebraska (JUST switched this year from sleeve stripes)
UCLA

N/A
Michigan State (Greek Key design underneath a number)
Oregon ... lol
USC (technically on the shoulders but pretty unique)

When you add in other conferences, I think the same pattern would hold. A lot of truly old school uniforms don't have any stripes on the sleeves or shoulders (think Alabama or Oklahoma), and the vast majority of other ones seem to go with the sleeve stripe (Florida, Auburn, Texas, our favorite boogeyman Syracuse, etc.). I could be blanking, but the only uniforms that come to mind that have our exact shoulder 3-stripe design are UCLA and LSU. I think given LSU is in the SEC and UCLA still seems so new to the Big Ten, the design did a decent job at trying to make us stand apart.
 
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