Illinois Football Uniforms

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#801      

ChiefGritty

ChiefGritty
Chicago, IL
ChiefGritty
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Ah, thanks for the correction ... it was difficult to piece together this history via searching each consecutive year of Illini football jerseys on Google images. :ROFLMAO: Either way, I think a number outline is a great addition for the home jerseys and an absolute must for away/white jerseys ... that's my biggest issue with the current set, that the away ones look obnoxiously plain yet with a modern number style and it just looks try-hard-minimalist.
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03-04-05 is a terrible, unloved, mostly forgotten period of Illini Football, but I think those uniforms represent the most "logical" application of the stuff we talk about in this thread that we've probably ever had.

"Logical" doesn't necessarily equate with "good" though and I think on some level if you keep everything on the straight and narrow too much you end up looking a bit EA Sports create-a-team-y.

Of course that was also the era of the all-orange look where the helmet, jersey and pants were unmistakably three different shades of orange.

quaterback-jon-beutjer-of-the-university-of-illinois-fighting-illini-scrambles-with-the-ball.jpg


Jerry Seinfeld GIF
 
#802      

Fighter of the Nightman

Fighter of the Nightman
Chicago, IL
Fighter of the Nightman
^ LOL, that is terrible. If we want to wear an orange jersey every once in a while to spice things up, I think it has to go with white pants ... I hope we never see all orange ever again. Also, those all orange jerseys will always make me think of one Labor Day Weekend when I was at my grandparents' house in Kewanee, IL for Hog Days, and we had the Illini/Missouri game on. Even though I was in grade school, I distinctly remember watching us lose to Mizzou in those ugly orange uniforms with the backdrop being that ugly light green turf in the dome in St. Louis.

EDIT: Looks like it was Labor Day Weekend 2003!
554ce736bbcdb.image.jpg
 
#803      

IlliniCaboose

IlliniCaboose
IlliniCaboose
It could be because it's from when I was a kid but I actually really love the Kitner era tops, triple stripes on the neck and sleeves and no outline white numbers. It could be the materials used back then but when the orange outline was added the numbers it made it look cheaper to me somehow. Maybe with today's fabrics it would look better. It is very "Penn State" looking with just the white and navy but I think its sharp and clean.
 
#804      

Fighter of the Nightman

Fighter of the Nightman
Chicago, IL
Fighter of the Nightman
IlliniCaboose said:
It could be because it's from when I was a kid but I actually really love the Kitner era tops, triple stripes on the neck and sleeves and no outline white numbers. It could be the materials used back then but when the orange outline was added the numbers it made it look cheaper to me somehow. Maybe with today's fabrics it would look better. It is very "Penn State" looking with just the white and navy but I think its sharp and clean.
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If you look at those two pictures, it actually looks like we switched the number font to what would later be on the Zook jerseys for the 2003-2005 ones. So, I kind of agree and kind of disagree - I agree they look better on the pre-2003 ones but not because there is no outline; I just think the numbers look a lot better.
 
#805      

ILLINIShox24

ILLINIShox24
Orange Krush '04 & '05
ILLINIShox24
Honestly, I thought I was going to be generally happy with almost anything based on how our conversations had been going.

But ever since the possibility of the giant block ILLINOIS across the chest came up, I am terrified. It would be horrendous.

Not sure any of these are controversial:

O/B/O home
O/W/O away
Block I or the good script on the helmet
Outlined numbers
Consistency with stripes
No name or very small script on the chest
 
#807      

IlliniCaboose

IlliniCaboose
IlliniCaboose
IlliniBrave75 said:
Looking that the many different combinations that we used in this time period, the best looks to me are when the helmet and the pants match! JMHO
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The single best part of these early rebrand unis were the away tops. Orange numbers with the navy outline looked so good, especially with the navy pants. A really good balance of all three colors.
 
#808      

Toews

Toews
Toews
I know the one mock had ILLINOIS across the chest, but that was it seemed based on the Ok State Nike template uniform which had that because their uniform was based on the 1988 Ok State Throwback uniform which did have their name across the chest. I am sure our new jersey will be based on the same template, but to copy that part of the uniform as well would be as lazy as it gets since we have never had our name on the front of the jersey like that. The script would at least separate us a little and I could see that, but the name in typeface we never used would be pretty bad.
 
#810      

Fighter of the Nightman

Fighter of the Nightman
Chicago, IL
Fighter of the Nightman
redwingillini11 said:
You know, I do like the idea of releasing the uniform set close to the season. But I am stunned we didn't get a release this week. With all the leaks and showing the set to the team, I could have sworn they would be released before the weekend.

Maybe the release is going to coincide with the beginning of fall camp?
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I can’t believe with how surprisingly active this thread is (for a tangential topic like this) that no insider has thrown us another bone! 😂

And I sort of jest that this isn’t important, but I truly believe it is. Creating an “identity” as a program has small-but-mighty effects on SO much, including the impression the next generation of Illinoisans gets regarding what “Illini Football” means. To my generation, it was basketball’s ugly, deformed stepbrother who only the most hardcore fans (and mostly just alumni) bothered to suffer for. I want the next generation (or the one after that) to view the Illini as something you’re “born into” simply by being a resident of this state - an attitude prevalent in most of our fellow Big Ten states. Wins matter most, but these small things add up to “paint a picture,” so to speak.
 
#813      

BalloonsTheElephant

B
BalloonsTheElephant
Illiniguy74 said:
Still get chills watching this. The noise. My god, the noise. Our season tickets were in East Main, roughly the 20 yard line, 20 rows up. The Illini drive the ball down the field towards us. Trudeau knocked OB in front of us. Rooks turns the corner and scores. I tell you folks, I absolutely lost my mind. Tears of joy.
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@pruman91 finally has a reason to post a pic of Taylor Rooks. I'm not team pru on the bikini pictures, but I feel like you gotta slam this alley oop down.
 
#814      

BZuppke

BZuppke
Plainfield
BZuppke
We all like what we like. For me it’s the traditional O/B/O at home and I like the O/W/W on the road. And I like the gray ghosts for homecoming. They had meaning at Illinois. Honoring grange at homecoming. No one else can tie off colors to their history
 
#815      

SampsonRelpenk

SampsonRelpenk
Edwardsville, IL
SampsonRelpenk
The Astroturf discussion made me wonder: what was the last game Illinois played on that surface? Against Mizzou at the dome in 2003?
 
#817      

Fighter of the Nightman

Fighter of the Nightman
Chicago, IL
Fighter of the Nightman
SampsonRelpenk said:
The Astroturf discussion made me wonder: what was the last game Illinois played on that surface? Against Mizzou at the dome in 2003?
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Could be. I seem to remember Wisconsin keeping it for a long time, but the Wikipedia page says 2022 was the last year with the old Astro Turf.

Were any other Big Ten stadiums the old turf for that long? I know Purdue and Northwestern still use grass, and I remember that Iowa had grass back then.
 
#818      

SampsonRelpenk

SampsonRelpenk
Edwardsville, IL
SampsonRelpenk
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Could be. I seem to remember Wisconsin keeping it for a long time, but the Wikipedia page says 2022 was the last year with the old Astro Turf.

Were any other Big Ten stadiums the old turf for that long? I know Purdue and Northwestern still use grass, and I remember that Iowa had grass back then.
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I definitely remember Jon Beutjer leading us to victory on Wisconsin's turf in '02, that was my original guess. I remembered Michigan St still having it around that time so I checked the Spartan Stadium wiki. They played on something called "Tartan Turf" (that just sounds carcinogenic) for most of the 70s, switched to Astroturf, then, in a rare occurrence, switched back to grass in 2002.
 
#819      

Mr. Tibbs

Mr. Tibbs
southeast DuPage
Mr. Tibbs
I wish we would switch back to real grass

As a land grant school with a world class agronomy dept, we should be showing the world what proper management of turf grass is all about .
Instead, we are content to let Purdue do it
 
#820      

MustangWally

MustangWally
Mayfield
MustangWally
Mr. Tibbs said:
I wish we would switch back to real grass

As a land grant school with a world class agronomy dept, we should be showing the world what proper management of turf grass is all about .
Instead, we are content to let Purdue do it
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Just curious . . . do we have a natural grass field to practice on before we go on the road to play on one?
 
#822      

Fighter of the Nightman

Fighter of the Nightman
Chicago, IL
Fighter of the Nightman
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Could be. I seem to remember Wisconsin keeping it for a long time, but the Wikipedia page says 2022 was the last year with the old Astro Turf.

Were any other Big Ten stadiums the old turf for that long? I know Purdue and Northwestern still use grass, and I remember that Iowa had grass back then.
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2002*, not 2022! Lol.
 
#823      

redbeard7278

R
redbeard7278
Mr. Tibbs said:
I wish we would switch back to real grass

As a land grant school with a world class agronomy dept, we should be showing the world what proper management of turf grass is all about .
Instead, we are content to let Purdue do it
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Illinois has no turfgrass program to speak of. When they dropped horticulture all of that stuff got gutted when it was moved to crop sciences.
 
#825      

Fuze

F
Fuze
redbeard7278 said:
Illinois has no turfgrass program to speak of. When they dropped horticulture all of that stuff got gutted when it was moved to crop sciences.
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Horticulture is still offered, and you can take some sort of turf program within it. It's just not to the scale of something like MSU. I have a friend who's going to be a junior in the program this fall.
 
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