Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Fools Gold

An email from a reader the other day alerted us to the fact that Purdue is calling for "gold strike" at Ross-Ade for the 10/17 bludgeoning game against Ohio State, and sure enough, now there's a story about it on the Purdue Athletic site.

The reader email asked us if we thought they might bust out the gold jerseys for such an occasion. Our answer is... hopefully not.

Those things were a disaster and the team never looked comfortable in them. After the first home game of the '03 season -- in which they had changed to the gold with black numerals (pictured) instead of gold with white numerals -- the team went back to black and has stayed with them ever since. And then they overdid it with back-to-back "blackouts" the past two weekends, most likely because it was asking too much to have the stadium crew change the end zone lettering back to gold.

Give how this season has gone, though, why not expect another weird decision?

4 comments:

Purdue Matt said...

Piss Gold is an intimidating color. Especially like what it does to Ross-Ade when you have people wearing 10 different shades of gold. Yuck!

dozer8589 said...

As a branding professional (advertising hack), I think the "gold strike" is a mistake.

The best brands are built through repetition. I think the "Black Out" although not original was a great idea - they just need to STICK WITH IT. Every one knows Happy Valley is a sea of white on game day, Camp Randal and the horseshoe are red. Why? Because they've done it for YEARS!

I wish Purdue would stick with the all black uniforms, black endzones, and black out crowds. Stick with it for years, game in and game out. This constant flip-flopping weakens the Boilermaker brand.

Or hey, here's an idea. Let's win a d@#m game.

Scruffy_P said...

We can wear pink and lime green like the seahawks last weekend for all i care... as long as we win! Me? I'll be in the stands in a black hoodie as always.

COD said...

Given our record, and the way OSU tends to travel, I suspect some shade of red will be the dominant color at that game.