I'm not an O/O/W fan. Looks terrible on the Bears too.I cannot agree, because our current white pants with the O/B/O stripe down the middle would make an O/O/W uniform too good to pass up ... why even mess with the orange pants?! I will leave it to a better MS Painter than myself to get this mockup done, but it would be:
This uniform look/combo...
... but with this jersey...
... with these exact pants and helmet.
That would look damn fine if you ask me.
New Illinois Football Uniforms
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redwingillini11
White and Sixth
- North Aurora
It certainly looks better on us than the Bears.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Two things:
1. I would be fine if we frankly never wore an orange jersey ... I think it works way better in basketball than football, and our "classic" football look (at least to me) is definitely navy. My main thing is that IF we wear orange, I just personally think all orange looks bad. So, the only other options according to my taste are navy pants or white pants, and I think the navy pants look too busy with an orange top.
2. Could not agree more on the Bears, lol ... their new orange uniform set looks awful, IMO. I do think the old one with the navy helmet looked slightly better, though:
New
Old
I will say Bret is very superstitious. Would shock me if we wore O/B/B @ home until we lost in them.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Haha, that is kind of funny that you say that ... I feel like I might have guessed that, but now that I look at the last two seasons, lol...
2021
- Wore O/W/W at Virginia and got whooped. Wore O/W/O for the rest of the year.
- Busted out the O/B/B for Wisconsin and got whooped at home. Never wore them again with that uniform set.
2022
- Wore O/W/O at Indiana and lost. Wore O/W/W for our next three road games and for the bowl game vs. Mississippi State.
I'm guessing since we lost at Kansas, the O/W/W is out and we will go with orange or navy pants at Purdue, haha.
EDIT: If Bret wishes to TRULY harness the juju, he should know that there is only one uniform combo that he is absolutely undefeated in - O/B/W! We wore that once vs. Northwestern in 2021, and we won 47-14!
That's the way Zook was. Lost to Minnesota in 2010 with the all blues and he "fired" the equipment manager for letting them go with it (it was the team captains who wanted to wear them). Guy was nuts about that stuff.
Lets just say he was high strung
Time to retire the O/W/W?
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
we could have been wearing 1972 Miami Dolphins uniforms and it would not have mattered
Wish we could retire this style in general. It's not working for me, and its basically the discount version of the Syracuse unis.
TentakilRex
- Land O Insects between Quincy-Macomb-Jacksonville
It should be O/W/O, O/O/O, or time to create W/W/W. Having a "monochrome" look with a different colored helmet is pet peeve, it is having a navy three piece suit with neon orange cap.
The only good thing about that game is it's a win for #TeamNoWhitePants
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
redwingillini11
White and Sixth
- North Aurora
White pants are poisoned. Burn them.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Let's say the team gets fired up enough to at least live up to the expectations Vegas is setting for us and we can beat Nebraska at home.
Our next opportunity on the road is at Maryland - a team that not only seems to own us in all sports lately but also just looks pretty darn good this year. If we FINALLY break out the O/W/B look on the road and score that upset, I don't know how anybody cannot hop on the bandwagon for #BPOTR.
Back to uniforms, I actually find myself like different "patterns," if you will, depending on the uniform. In other words, I am not a stickler that you should "never wear white pants if you're secondary color is bold" or something like that. However, I feel very strongly about the following:
1. If you wear a white jersey and white pants on the road, WEAR A WHITE HELMET. I don't care who the team is, I have always thought it looks clumsy and weird to wear a colorful helmet with the rest of the uniform being strikingly white.
2. If you have two "real" colors (e.g., orange and blue for Illinois or black and yellow for Iowa but NOT red and white for Wisconsin), I think it looks cool to combine your two colors and white in some way in your uniform. That could be O/B/W (our main home look during the Zook years) or the look I obviously love, O/W/B on the road. Even if you don't have a white helmet, jersey or pants at home, you should at least have prominent white stripes, numbers, outlines, etc. - easily my biggest problem with our previous set of uniforms.
mattcoldagelli
- The Transfer Portal with Do Not Contact Tag
Although my Never Monochrome bona fides speak for themselves, I think this is aesthetically correct. And because Bielema has all but said that if there is one thing you will be able to set your watch by when it comes to Illinois football uniforms, it will be an orange helmet....then this isn't in the cards for us, which is fine (some - me, specifically - would say it is better than fine).
I was watching our alleged uni-inspo brothers the Patriots yesterday as they did just this, and it looks so mediocre:
And that's with a much more muted helmet color (silver) than we'll ever have.
Unrelated uniform tangent....have we talked about the Cowboys home uniforms? Somehow simultaneously iconic and and absolute hodgepodge mess that hangs together by history alone. Just look at that thing - literally no parts of it are consistent with each other. The blue of the star/helmet stripe appears nowhere else. The blue/silver pants do not match anything. The silver of the helmet/facemask....also its own thing. There is, inexplicably, a black outline on the blue shoulder striping.
Compare this to their secondary/"road" uniform concept, where all of these issues have been corrected, yet this is far less popular/recognizable as "the Dallas Cowboys":
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I think there is some objectivity on the ends of the spectrum - some uniforms are just plain bad to 90%+ of people, and some uniforms are just great to 90%+ of people - but I largely agree. With that in mind, I wish we would rock O/B/B at home and O/W/B on the road for the rest of the year. The O/B/B looked so shockingly good to me (I would have literally never supported that combo until I saw it, haha), and my love of the O/W/B look - which I have gotten to ACTUALLY see during my fandom only a handful of times - has been articulated before.
This will be a good chance to see what our uniforms would look like with a white helmet.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
I actually think that within the constraints of the Beckman Era uniforms, our storm trooper look was the coolest individual combo, at least in isolation:
However, and I hate to always go back to this ... it just didn't "look like us." So I at least appreciate Beckman for one thing - he emphasized we are the only Big Ten school with orange, and in a conference full of teams who don't even have a secondary color (half of whom seem to be red and white specifically!), I do favor (at least almost) always wearing an orange helmet. And I just personally hate the O/W/W look for some reason. SO, that is pretty much where white pants on the road die for me, haha.
Given the new uniforms we will likely have for the next several years and what I have seen so far this year, I think I have come around to the following POV ... which I understand will be sacrilege to many long-time fans!!
HOME: O/B/B most of the time for our "established look" ... O/B/O as a special Homecoming look.
AWAY: O/W/B 99% of the time ... O/W/O occasionally, I guess.
ALTERNATE: O/O/W or O/B/W. Now hear me out on this one... ONLY for the Mizzou game every year, and it is the only time we ever wear white pants. We turn it into a USC/UCLA thing where both teams only wear their colors, regardless of where the game is being played. We need some more quirky traditions, however small, and the colors of both teams make it work whether in Champaign or Columbia. If it is a year where Mizzou wears black, we go O/O/W. If it is a year where Mizzou wears that hideously disgusting mustard "gold," then we go O/B/W.
Alright, alright ... back to work.
altgeld88
- Arlington, Virginia
Having seen the O/W/W road kit up close and in person on a brilliant sunny day last Saturday I like these new unis even more than I did seeing them in photos and on TV. The orange just pops and the letters and stripes are so crisp and clean. Though I've been no fan of the white jerseys and pants together in the past, I now really like them.
Mr. Tibbs
- southeast DuPage
hard pass on the white helmet
TentakilRex
- Land O Insects between Quincy-Macomb-Jacksonville
Burn these jerseys now!
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