The football team needs to bring back their flashy jerseys to help bring recruits to Laramie.
During the Christensen regime, UW football was building up a nice collection of good-looking jerseys. Some were better than others, but personally I found the full-yellow jerseys with the brown helmet to be the cleanest looking. Also, some might disagree but the gray jerseys with the brown and gold camo were awesome, and a good homage to the military. Every year it seemed the team was adding a new jersey that brought the team’s jersey game closer to the likes of Oregon and Baylor.
When Bohl came to town, he immediately sidelined the flashy jerseys and took the players’ names off of the back. I somewhat respect this decision, because it brings the team back to tradition, similar to Bama and the jerseys they’ve worn forever. There’s also the argument that it focuses the team so that they’re not paying attention to jerseys and focusing on the season, but I don’t think that teams are losing focus because of jerseys.
‘Look good, feel good, play good’ is a phrase that might sound familiar to people that have played sports at some point in their life. When athletes feel good they’re more confident, more excited to play, and seem to give more effort. I think this is a big aspect for some college athletes, and I also think that having their name on the back of the jersey gives them a sense of accomplishment and pride to be part of the team.
Pick Six Previews conducted a survey with 100 undeclared recruits, asking them questions about jerseys and what jerseys mean to them. Although this is a small sample size and the results should be taken with a grain of salt, it can be a good basis to look at preferences of recruits and if jerseys affect their decision when choosing schools.
The survey results show that 72% thought that uniforms have a great impact on their perception of a team, while only 11% strongly disagreed. 33% of the surveyed recruits answered true when asked if uniforms affect their decision when choosing a place to play. Another relevant result of the survey was that 43% preferred modern uniforms, and only 5% favored classic.
In the survey, they were also asked which teams have the best and worst uniforms, and the three best included Oregon, Baylor and TCU. The three worst were Alabama, Penn State and Maryland; the first two being very classic-style jerseys. Wyoming also made the worst jerseys list, and based on the results of the survey, I think it was a bad idea for Wyoming to switch to the classic jerseys. While I bleed brown and gold, it can be a tough color combination to make look right on the field, and adding the classic factor means that (if this survey is assumed to represent the whole nation) we could be losing 1/3 of recruits based on our jerseys alone.
Wyoming has proven that they can create very clean-looking jerseys that could potentially be the final factor in a recruit’s decision on where to play football. I understand the ideas of tradition and playing for the name on the front of the jersey, but I feel that recruiting high-caliber players so that the team can win some bowl games is much more important.F
