The White Uniform Fiasco Sums Up Chianti Dan's Incompetence
by Fox 71 on Nov 28, 2011 6:04 AM PST
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PrintBumped. Fox71 sums it up well. GO BRUINS. - BN Eds.
Photo Credit: AP
Someone in the athletic department (by the way, no capital letters for that bureau until capital letters are deserved) came up with the idea of going with alternate jerseys for whatever reason. The implementation of the idea could not have been more screwed up.
First of all, what was the point of the white uniforms? If you’re going to make a sea change in the look, why not incorporate the school colors? All blue or all gold? I understand why going all blue wouldn’t work, given the athletic department’s failure to discern what color blue is the correct one. Instead of all gold, however, the athletic department chose to make us albino Bruins, wearing the white flag of surrender cleverly cut up and re-stitched to look like long underwear.
This decision ranks with Ford’s production of the Edsel or Shelly Long’s choice to leave "Cheers" to make "Troop Beverly Hills" as industrial strength failures. Was it for the surprise and shock value which was going to rattle our opponents? In my opinion, that ploy would only work if we were playing children with some sort of phobia having to do with longjohns. Laying aside the failure of the major premise, the idea has no chance of working when you announce it well in advance of the game.
You see, Morgan Center, there’s no surprise that way. I had a recollection that Notre Dame came out with green jerseys once so I looked it up. Notre Dame had used green jerseys off and on for many, many years, but were remembered for using green jerseys against just$c* in 1977. Notre Dame won that game. Also, Notre Dame was national champions, so it’s a little unlikely that the color change had anything to do with it. One footnote. The article I checked on Notre Dame green jerseys had an interesting comment:
"Kuharich did continue the tradition of wearing green occasionally, but more importantly, added UCLA-style shoulder stripes and a green shamrock to the gold Notre Dame helmets."
The entire world knows about "UCLA-style shoulder stripes" except UCLA and its uniform provider.
Was the decision to get the crowd excited? Well, by announcing the plan in advance, the athletic department did manage to get the crowd excited. There was one faction of the fan base that thought the idea was bad, so division rather than unity was created.
Was it to get the team excited? As I recall, that worked for the Burt Reynolds and the Mean Machine in a movie. Our situation was not from a movie, even though it appears to have been scripted like one of the chain saw massacre movies.
No one asked the guy in charge of the team or any of the actual players if they wanted new uniforms with colors none of our players had ever worn before as Bruins. It did seem to get the trOJans fired up, so kudos to the athletic department for that.
The choice inspired our offense to score zero and our defense to give up 50. The one positive note I have is also a negative. From the only photo I have seen, it appears that the long john uniform jerseys actually fit better. There are no "UCLA-style shoulder stripes," of course, but they aren’t the too-small spandex models. In any event, the photo of the jersey makes it clear that uniforms can indeed be acquired which actually fit. Our athletic department was unable to get uniforms in our school colors that fit.
In my opinion, every aspect of the white uniform fiasco is a graphic illustration of why there must be a total housecleaning in the athletic department. There were decision points at various stages, as there are with any decision in any business. The guy in charge of every single, solitary aspect of all the athletic endeavors at UCLA ultimately had to make those decisions.
Every decision was a total failure. And that pretty much sums up Morgan Center - failure. And speaking of failures, I just previewed this post, and as it turns out, I am a failure in figuring out how to put in paragraphs. What the heck - imagine there are paragraphs in the correct places.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
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Amen.
I thought that the uniform decision was dumb before the game. Afterwards, it just makes the whole thing that much more unpalatable. But at least they fit!
It was embarassing
Clearly, any attempt to break out the all white uniforms in the future will conjure up memories of this 50-0 blow out. This should NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!
by iLOATHEscFOREVER on Nov 27, 2011 12:40 PM PST reply actions
Weak.
the only thing good on the all white uniforms was that they used the all style numbers. Dan and adidas should have came out with an all powder blue uniform if the were gonna show of a new uniform. and can we please go back to the powder blue and get away from the dark blue.
GO BRUINS!!!
Fiasco
Yes, and as pointed out above, these uniforms will now be synonymous with 50-0. Which means the likelihood that anyone will buy them that much lower. Imagine seeing one of these jerseys in the student store – “Oh look, there’s the 50-0 shirt. Pass.” So for all the effort they put may have put into this, it will likely result in no income. Genius!
At least now we know how to build the bonfire at next year's Beat $C rally
Our new coach should bring the football team out to the bonfire next November and solemnly drop those all-whites into the flames.
Uniforms
The white uniforms may have looked good, but they are NOT UCLA and we should not accept such gimmicks. We are the Bruins and we have a worthy tradition. We should be proud to uphold our traditions and not resort to silly distractions in search of some other identity or to hide from our past. We have nothing to hide from. We are not Oregon – let them play silly games without any sense of identity.
When Guerrero let adidas put those pathetic "CrapTech" uniforms on our players, I thought it could not get any worse and then he rolls out the Surrender White uniforms. What will he do next to defile UCLA?
Good one!
“..then he rolls out the Surrender White uniforms..”
This should become part of the UCLA Sports Lexicon.
UCLA Shoulder Stripes
“The entire world knows about “UCLA-style shoulder stripes” except UCLA and its uniform provider."
..indeed. This has been a long-standing tradition since Red Sanders introduced them:
When football coach Red Sanders came to UCLA for the 1949 season he redesigned the football uniforms. The Yale Blue was changed to a lighter shade of blue. Sanders figured that the baby blue would look better on the field and in film. He would dub the baby blue uniform “Powderkeg blue”, powder blue with an explosive kick. For the 1954 season, Sanders added a the now familiar loop on the shoulders, the UCLA Stripe, to give an impression of motion. The away uniforms became white, with a navy blue and gold shoulder stripe and gold pants. The helmets became gold.
At times, beginning with the 1954 football season, the font for the numbers on the uniforms has been Clarendon typeface. Otherwise it has been block numerals.8 In the 1980s the uniform pants became yellow to look better in color publications, the jerseys a lighter blue, and the UCLA script was added to the helmets. In the 1990s, the uniform pants became gold again.
..that was, of course, back in the days when UCLA football was synonymous with a kick-ass team. Also, I was told – when buying jerseys for my squadron’s football team – that the stripes were also to facilitate getting the jerseys over the shoulder pads.
uniforms
When I was a little boy, about 12 years old in 1954, Red Sanders and those uniforms and my uncle as a student, sold me on the Bruins. Last Saturday was the final end to Bruin greatness and the uniforms matched, especially the helmets with the stripe down the center—talk about loss of identity! To me the perfect uniform should be the same damn helmet—the gold one with no stripe and the name on the side. We should go back to the complete surrounding stripes on the shoulder. The pants should be khaki and the tone of blue is not so important, but the numerals are important and should be outlined in darker blue and gold and white. If you want to go Oregon with some new ones then don’t go with something that looks like BYU or a high school in Missouri, but with something aggressive and hopefully a bit macho. Out of the million or so Oregon combinations nothing looks as bad as those white things we wore on Saturday. Of course it doesn’t hurt to have a handful of speed demons to display your dull black and swampy green with grey wings.
Morgan Centers "Striking of the Colors"...and design
is so poorly conceived it further illustrates just how disconnected thet truly are from UCLA’s traditions. The Morgan Center obviously does not have any vision or plan to keep UCLA ahltetics viable with the elite teams of the Pac-12. They seemingly have no appreciation of honoring its past as well.
Nicely done fox71.
As Freesia wrote...
At least we didn’t embarrass our colors last weekend.
The unis were a terrible idea. All it did was give the Trogans more to laugh about, and WTF was the stripes on the undershirts idea? Just stupid, and right, it sums up Chianti Dan’s incompetence. I know it was Adidas’ idea, but if you’re going to sell out to your uniform supplier, at least get some serious cash, like Oregon does. They get paid lots of money to look stupid.
I may work with the Waves, but I'm still a Bruin!
(Formerly "HoozierDaddy")
"Getting paid mucho bucks to look stupid"
ROFL. Plus though they win…another BIG difference!!!
Who ordered the Code White?
Thanks Fox for your post.
It troubles me that no one is owning up to the decision to use these unis. RN and players say they had know involvement. Who then were the individuals involved? What understanding of UCLA did the designers have? Who were the administrators that spent the money, produced the advertising? Does the athletic department ever request assistance of other UCLA department such as communications or business school?
I’m all for innovation, a significant part of what made Red Sanders a success and a legend. Before the game I read a few posts on the athletic department Facebook page suggesting that the students and players don’t want to be saddled with tradition. How many students know why we have UCLA script for our logo? But the unis are much more than a fashion statement or historical reference; this is football, not team figure skating.
Quite a bit of the current Oregon unis look ridiculous; i.e miniature wings, glow-in-the dark socks. BUT I looked at the dark green unis they wore last weekend against Oregon State and against the green field, and what I saw was essentially military camouflage. Try to spot all their defenders while you are attempting a pass!
Remind me again what was innovative about our white ice cream vendor unis with high school style sleeve stripes?
Uniforms better than I imagined
Only because I imagined they would be TERRIBLE. But they actually had some nice touches. The number formatting (which I hope we carry over to our regular unis). They weren’t that stupid-looking super stretchy stuff, but normal uniform material, which made them look a TON better. Also, the stitching was very nice (especially on the numbers… nice drop shadow, looks a ton better than the screen-printed crap on our normal jerseys).
Uh, that was about it. All white? Blargh. Leg stripes that can’t go down all the way to the knee? Blargh. No UCLA stripes? Blargh blargh blargh.
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