Westgate in the white road jersey prior to the uniform change.
Anyone notice anything different about the UCLA football team’s game against Oregon on Thursday?
It certainly wasn’t the scoreboard. Once the Ducks made it 53-6 early in the fourth quarter, though, I stopped paying attention to the scoreboard and turned my attention to something else: the jerseys.
Phil Knight, the Oregon alum and co-founder of Nike, was at it again. This black-yellow-black (from head-to-toe) combo was something I had never seen the Ducks pull out of their never-ending uniform cache.
The Bruins were also sporting some new threads of their own. In case you couldn’t tell, UCLA and adidas unveiled their new TECHFIT compression football jerseys, featuring a “groundbreaking compression fit.” Coach Rick Neuheisel was even bold enough to say that the jersey would make the Bruins “harder to grab” in an adidas press release.
But did Neuheisel and the Bruins seriously think they would beat the Ducks at their own game?
Not only is Oregon No. 1 in the AP rankings, they’re also No. 1 in uniform designs, and have been for some time now.
The Ducks have 80 different combinations to choose from when they step onto the field each week, down from 384 in their previous uniform kit. The redesign took place in 2009 and took the net weight of an Oregon uniform down almost two ounces by adding “anti-abrasion shoulder reinforcement” and “laminate numbering that does not soak up any moisture.”
I don’t know what any of that means, but I think Oregon’s uniforms are definitely something to write home about. So do mutual recruits of UCLA and Oregon, apparently. Neuheisel called Oregon’s recruiting ploy “the Nike factor.”
“I think they make it a huge deal,” Neuheisel said of the Ducks. “I think anybody who’s ever been up there, and we talk to kids who take those visits, that’s a lot of what they talk about. It’s a showcase for the swoosh, there’s no question.”
All right, so maybe it’s true that these TECHFIT jerseys (which adidas also made for six other schools) are slimmer and breathe easier, but I didn’t like the way they looked. The basic design of the UCLA football jersey is so timeless ““ gold straps flanking the shoulder pads ““ with the player’s number on the side of the shoulder. These new ones look like they took the old UCLA jersey and shrunk it. The shoulder numbers and straps were tiny, and some of the offensive linemen looked like they were wearing the wrong size.
UCLA will stick with the jerseys for the foreseeable future, something Neuheisel called “a part of the deal.” I don’t think he would agree with my knocks on the look of the new jersey. I don’t think he much cares, either. He was more concerned about the product on the field against Oregon than he was with what his players were wearing. But he seemed excited, yet realistic, about the change when I asked him about the team’s reaction to the redesign at Sunday’s practice.
“I think the kids enjoyed them,” Neuheisel said. “They’re state-of-the-art in terms of fabric, and comfort and all that kind of stuff.
“Unfortunately, it didn’t have much to do with the outcome of the game.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself, coach.
Strong co-hosts the Daily Bruin Sports Show, which airs every Monday at 6:30 p.m. on uclaradio.com. E-mail him at sstrong@media.ucla.edu.