Cougars going back to the basics
PULLMAN – A few years have passed since the retro jersey craze started spreading across the nation, and it would appear that Washington State has finally come up with the most fitting answer for the trend.
Instead of selling jerseys that look like something out of a locker room from decades ago, the Cougars have decided to put those jerseys – or something like them – back into the current locker room.
WSU will be sporting a new look this fall and it is, in a phrase, old school.
Gone are the flashy stripes up the sides of the jerseys and the Cougar logos on the sleeves. In are jersey numbers, pro-block style and all, on solid-colored tops.
“That’s something that will stand the style test of time,” said Milton Neal, WSU’s director of equipment operations, the man who suggested the change to head coach Bill Doba. “This look will never go out of style. The stripes and all the stuff coming to points had run its course. Every junior high school across America looked like us, which is fine. But we wanted to change.”
Working out of their basement laboratory, or more plainly, the equipment room, Beal and assistant Josh Pietz concocted a look that’s more Drew Bledsoe than Devard Darling.
Doba’s basic requests for the new jerseys were player satisfaction and some degree of complexity (i.e. not Penn State).
And to that end, Beal and Pietz consulted with a score of current WSU players and came up with a mix-and-match scheme that would allow for up to eight different looks in every game.
“I like the plain, old-school style,” quarterback Alex Brink said. “I liked the stuff on our old jerseys, but it got kind of old with the stuff on the shoulders. And it’s good to have a new look. Those uniforms kind of personified a different team, those three 10-win teams. There’s a different group of guys in here, a different coaching staff.”
At home, the Cougars will wear crimson tops, most likely with gray pants sporting a tri-color crimson-white-crimson stripe down the sides. And on the road, it’ll be a white top with a crimson collar plus crimson pants with a white-crimson-white stripe. WSU will stick with the Cougar logo that was on last year’s helmets, with the gray base at home and the crimson on the road. The Cougars will also use different shoes – black at home and white on the road.
The eight looks for each game become possible because WSU can switch helmets and pick from four styles of pants that will work in Martin Stadium or on the road: the crimson, the solid gray, the gray with the stripe, and a white pant with a similar stripe. It’s enough to make an equipment guy’s dreams come true.
“The pants – we got options with pants, which we love,” Neal said. “(The players) were all for it. They wanted to get back to basics, where we’re not flashy. It kind of gives you that old-time feel where we’re just going to buckle it up and play smash-mouth.”
(And video gamers can breathe a sigh of relief, too; EA Sports’ wildly popular NCAA Football game will have some form of the new jerseys in this year’s game.)
Love them or hate them, the new uniforms do beg one question. Does it actually mean anything on the field? Last year, the Cougars made significant changes from their normal jerseys three times and lost two of those games. The biggest change – crimson pants at Arizona State – led to the biggest loss on the road all season.
“No. I don’t think it makes any difference,” admitted tight end and team co-captain Troy Bienemann. “But you know what they say … you can’t play good if you don’t look good.”