Illini Basketball Uniforms

21ChampaignSt said:

The capri era

I think the early 2000s Whites and Oranges are fine. Have never had strong opinions on them either way. But I've always liked the Blues. The black and midnight navy was tough and fitting for the style of play those teams employed.

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21ChampaignSt said:

I've probably shared this opinion before, but while the script whites are my favorite and a work of art, I think the Fighting Illini set would be best for establishing a consistent look from now to infinity. It's a fairly distinct, versatile, and timeless look.

The script jerseys are too reliant upon a word mark that harkens back to a specific point in time. I think one day, they will probably look dated again.

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Illini in Italy said:

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altgeld88 said:

Not being argumentative but I'm curious: the script ILLINI jersey motif is 47(?) years old. It doesn't look dated now (IMO) so why would it look dated in another 10 or 20 (or 50)?

It's my favorite, even more so than the block FIGHTING ILLINI jerseys from the formative years of my fandom in the early '80s. I wish we added this one to the road arsenal, too:

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21ChampaignSt said:

It's kind of just an educated feeling. I do work in branding, so I have a little bit of familiarity with these types of projects. But it's also really hard to project what will stick.

People associate stylized script with vintage or retro. It works really effectively for some brands like Coke, for example, who has used the same mark for 150 years and basically sells nostalgia. But I dont think it has quite the same effect for our brand. I think some of what people are responding to with our script word mark is the vintage novelty of it.

There are actually quite a few schools who have script throwbacks right now because it's on trend. But my feeling is it will go back out of trend eventually like it's done before.

Basically, I think it's trendy not timeless.

Again, mostly just a feeling. Like I said, I love them but if I were advising the team on a look to commit to for the rest of basketball eternity, it probably wouldn't be the script.

The Fighting Illini jerseys on the other hand are more timeless, I think. And they're also more of a template that can be adapted over time. You can tweak the font if you want or change the stripes or whatever, but as long as you have Fighting on top and Illini on bottom it'll be an ownable and timeless look.

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SeattleSlim said:

Problem with the cursive script lettering is younger kids won’t be able to read it.

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Default Home Jersey

Default Away Jersey

Default Alternate Jersey

Fighter of the Nightman said:

While I appreciate this joke, social media comment sections make it quite clear that young people consider our script jerseys to be among the best in college hoops, and I agree with them. The only problem with our two currently elite jerseys (script and the Flyin' Illini throwbacks) is that they obviously do not match ... so if it is important for us to have a "set of uniforms" using one of those, we would need either an orange and a blue script or a navy and a white Flyin' Illini set. Both would look absolutely amazing.

IMHO, this is not like football, where we lack any real history of success in the modern era and there have not been past uniforms universally adored by the fan base. Illini Basketball is steeped in tradition, and many of our past jerseys have been fan favorites ... just not our current ones. This might not be popular and it definitely won't get past Nike, but I legitimately see zero reason for "new uniforms" ... I only see a reason to get rid of our current "regular uniforms." Choose either the script or the Flyin' Illini set to have as the "default" in orange, white and navy, and have the other set (preferably in all three colors, as well!) as our special uniforms. I think the current setup where we don't reserve the throwbacks for any type of special game (i.e., we wear them quite regularly) but ALSO still wear our (very underwhelming) "regular" jerseys is actually kind of the worst of both worlds. If it were totally up to me, I would probably go with the Flyin' Illini jerseys as our "default," and save the script ones for big non-conference games, Braggin' Rights, a Paint the Hall Orange night, postseason play, etc.

Default Home Jersey

Default Away Jersey

Default Alternate Jersey (How can I not find a better picture than this?!)

Throwback Jersey #1

Throwback Jersey #2

Throwback Jersey #3
[Paging graphic design gods to create an amazing navy script jersey]

Call it a day!

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Fighter of the Nightman said:

While I appreciate this joke, social media comment sections make it quite clear that young people consider our script jerseys to be among the best in college hoops, and I agree with them. The only problem with our two currently elite jerseys (script and the Flyin' Illini throwbacks) is that they obviously do not match ... so if it is important for us to have a "set of uniforms" using one of those, we would need either an orange and a blue script or a navy and a white Flyin' Illini set. Both would look absolutely amazing.

IMHO, this is not like football, where we lack any real history of success in the modern era and there have not been past uniforms universally adored by the fan base. Illini Basketball is steeped in tradition, and many of our past jerseys have been fan favorites ... just not our current ones. This might not be popular and it definitely won't get past Nike, but I legitimately see zero reason for "new uniforms" ... I only see a reason to get rid of our current "regular uniforms." Choose either the script or the Flyin' Illini set to have as the "default" in orange, white and navy, and have the other set (preferably in all three colors, as well!) as our special uniforms. I think the current setup where we don't reserve the throwbacks for any type of special game (i.e., we wear them quite regularly) but ALSO still wear our (very underwhelming) "regular" jerseys is actually kind of the worst of both worlds. If it were totally up to me, I would probably go with the Flyin' Illini jerseys as our "default," and save the script ones for big non-conference games, Braggin' Rights, a Paint the Hall Orange night, postseason play, etc.

Default Home Jersey

Default Away Jersey

Default Alternate Jersey (How can I not find a better picture than this?!)

Throwback Jersey #1

Throwback Jersey #2

Throwback Jersey #3
[Paging graphic design gods to create an amazing navy script jersey]

Call it a day!

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Illini in Italy said:

The block lettering is perfect (you're right - add the blue to the orange and white, and it's a perfect set!)


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Illini in Italy said:

The block lettering is perfect (you're right - add the blue to the orange and white, and it's a perfect set!)


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altgeld88 said:

Thanks. I appreciate that. I agree that the block "FI" jerseys are timeless, and should be our standard. However, I find the orange ones the best and the white ones inferior to the white script. But that's me, and I'm a child of the '70s and early '80s. [EDIT: It's interesting (and I agree) that, although the FI block design is timeless, it's newer than the script design.]

I was delighted to see, for example, Ohio State recently revive its script jerseys from that period. OSU had a timeless block design that it used for decades until the mid-'70s after Fred Taylor retired. Eldon Miller brought in the script, which I believe looks great.
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IlliniBrave75 said:

#teamscript

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21ChampaignSt said:

There are actually quite a few schools who have script throwbacks right now because it's on trend. But my feeling is it will go back out of trend eventually like it's done before.

Basically, I think it's trendy not timeless.

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dbeverly26 said:

Everything comes and goes, but I don't personally put the script jerseys into that bucket on the grounds that the 70s and 80s are not having their first day as a popular retro look. I feel stupidly old typing this, but the kids are all into the late 90s and early 00s now. Once you get to a certain point the retro looks that stick are ones that make it past that first burst of nostalgia that happens at 20-25 years old (i.e. the most recent thing that kids in the trendsetting ages around college don't remember).

Anyway, I like them. I'm waiting for the whole manpris/pantaloons/garbage bag with a drawstring uniform cut from the late 90s to come back into style. (Not really.)

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21ChampaignSt said:

Unrelated, but it's wild to me that Iowa used to play their games in a Holiday Inn conference room.

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skyIdub said:

Script at least a few times per season just to watch Millennials and Z’s tilt their heads

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