We shared it on Twitter, too, and at least a half dozen players on the team either retweeted it or said they liked the idea.
"I like the helmet a lot. A black alternative helmet would be nice." -- Rob HenryRegardless, it's pretty unanimous in the small sampling of responses we got that the idea of an all-black -- truly all-black -- alternate look would be great on a very limited basis. My philosophy on this is that it should be something that Purdue does once per year, for a night game at home. And if there are no home night games, either pick a big time road game to wear them, or just wear them for the Bucket game.
"Those are sick. I'll be fighting to get us in those this season!! How about the hammers in gold?" -- Tommie Thomas (this is significant, as Tommie led the charge for the Neil Armstrong tribute stickers)
Our suggestion for this -- as mentioned, I think, on previous Handsome Hours -- would be the matte black helmet with a gloss black P on it. Imagine that look.
Speaking of that, if you're a talented (or semi-talented) designer or photo-tweaker, feel free to send us additional nifty alternate uni concept for the Boilermakers.
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| Once a year? Please, Morgan? |
11 comments:
That helmet looks really good. I agree about making it a once per year thing.
I like.
I think we all agree that this looks very good and we would all really want to see the team in something very similar to it. Which means it won't happen anytime soon thanks to our Athletic Deptment.
Man, I just get more cynical with each passing year.
We're right there with ya, Paulie.
not all black, we always lose when we wear all black. The helmet is awesome however.
The matte black helmet is sweet and would be even cooler with the gloss black P instead of the gold. Also, it would probably be an easy tweak to change the wings on the shoulder to look more along the lines of a cow catcher thing (at least I think that's what they're called) to tie more into the train. Just a thought.
I definitely support the black helmet. The unis ... maybe if the numbers weren't that horrible, unreadable font that ranks up there with Comic Sans. I don't know if they'd be visible at a distance as black-on-black even with a better font, though ... and if the numbers aren't black (or if the borders are thicker), then it isn't quite the same thing as black-on-black.
Purdue had black helmets (no all-black unis though, AFAIK) for the 1989-90 seasons, the final 2 years of the failed Fred Akers experiment. Those 2 seasons, we went 5-17, though to be fair it was more a function of lousy coaching and improper personnel-- out of desperation, Akers decided to junk the smashmouth power style that he brought from U of Texas for, um, the run-and-shoot(?!), and didn't have the players to pull it off-- exactly what Michigan would face under RichRod 25 or so years later.
That being said, I'd love to see this happen. It's not like these things have a weird voodoo curse on them like Notre Dame's green jerseys, and in the escalating arms race of special unis to grab the fanbase and pull in prospective recruits, it would be a nice change.
Rodriguez' problem wasn't offense, not at all. He had enough parts in place in three years to do most of what he needed to do; with Robinson at the controls, Michigan put up good points and yards against all but solid competition. (Inadequate for the expectations there, but good enough for most other schools, and perhaps it would have been even better had he earned a fourth year.)
His problem was that he didn't understand how defense worked: he apparently assumed that good defenses sprang from whole cloth simply by wishing it, and assumed that what happened at West Virginia would also happen at Michigan. When it did not happen, rather than listening to people who knew about defense, he shuffled deck chairs around.
To be sure, there were other things he didn't get as well, but those wouldn't have mattered as much if he'd won, and certainly the change in personnel required to suit his offense hurt his cause (and that of Hoke; you can see that the offenses Borges knows are not the offenses Robinson can run well), and that's at a school that has a distinct advantage during recruiting. Purdue, especially under Akers, had no such advantage then (nor does it now), and the results were what we all expected and what the athletic department apparently did not.
It was a great time to start charging students for football tickets. Marketing skillz, we haz it not. (They were free prior to ... '88? or '89? and then half-price starting then. I suppose this improved the behavior in the student section somewhat. It certainly didn't help our impression of George King's wisdom.)
LOVE THESE! BUT, you just can't beat our clean traditional look either (gold helmet, gold pants, black jersey). The pictures in the Exponent showed the black helmet stripe replaced with train tracks. I love that idea!
The design looks good but I don’t think that a player will be comfortable wearing that. Anyway, I hope that the uniform is made of lightweight material so that even when already soaked in sweat, the player won’t have to deal with a heavier uniform. This will help them to move freely on the gridiron and give the fans an exciting game. By the way, the helmet is so cool!
-Jennine Stalder-
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