Best and worst of college basketball's gray jersey fad

Akron mentioned in the article above. I'm sure the jersey topic was covered a long time ago but this is a new article. Its always good to see Akron basketball talked about right along with Texas, Purdue, and other big time programs.

"When Akron had the opportunity to update its uniforms this past offseason, assistant coach Rick McFadden suggested breaking away from the school's traditional blue and gold color scheme and adding silver to the palette. Coach Keith Dambrot liked the idea, so this season the Zips have introduced home white jerseys with silver and blue trim and silver alternate jerseys with white and blue trim.

"It looked pretty good and there weren't that many teams that had them," Dambrot said. "Anything you can do at the mid-major level to stand out, it helps you. We're always looking for ways to recruit better players and take our program to the next level, so giving kids a little different type of uniform is another way to do it.""

I haven't seen the third jerseys in action yet and I was thinking it would be cool if they wore them on Saturday for Can't, but then I realized that they are marketing this game as a white-out, and it wouldn't make sense if everyone was wearing white except the team.

They're like Ohio State's colors, so Joe Akron must like them?

Personally, I like the addition of gray but still feel a sliver of gold should be located somewhere.

Also, screw that article: Xavier at least, by wearing gray, is wearing their school colors!!!! Dadgum!!!

I like the silver, but why not just gold?

I didn't like it.
The color itself didn't actually bother me, even though it was a bit foreign to me... but the silver and white didn't seem to lend itself to the trim and style pattern as well as the blue does.

I like the silver and think it's great. I'd buy one...

+1. I also like it. I do wish they would have mixed a little gold in there. I think old-gold & grey are an extremely sharp combo.

Selling UA replica basketball jerseys? Whoa, there Mr. Loose Cannon...that's CRAZY-talk! No school does stuff like that.

On a related note...the old Porky's Place selection is really sad. I used to look forward to seeing what's new. Not anymore.

When is the next time we will wear these? I figured it would be the Can't game but it wouldn't make sense with the white out.

Yeah, Captain. What is up with the difficulty of buying truly nice Zips gear, as in real jerseys?

And it's not a rhetorical question. I'd really like to know why?

I stopped asking. Every time I ask, the answer is "we have to buy 100 of them, and we won't sell enough."

So, you have to be creative as a Zips fan.
Take me for example, I just bought all
Steve Spagnuolo's coaching gear off of ebay CHEAP.
Joe Akron will never notice. Ram? Kangaroo?
Who can tell?




PS I hope coach Bowden changes the attitude (in his spare time..)around there and demands quality gear for the fans.
Does he sleep, or is he like Chuck Norris?

You can understand where they're coming from. The 10-20 people who would want a replica jersey probably all post on ZNO.

However, having said that, I think simply from a respectability standpoint, they should be in the offering.

As an illustration, Acura is brining back the NSX supercar. Not that they're going to sell many of them - they will probably lose money on them. But a high-end car manufacturer has to have a sports car to add to their cache. Acura's cache had fallen, in respect to Lexus, Infinity, BMW, Audi & Mercedes because they didn't have a real sports car to offer. Even if the NSX just sits in Acura showrooms for guys to ooh-and-aah over, it shows that Acura is a serious, high-end brand & adds cache to their other, more mundane vehicles.

IMHO, so it should be with replica jerseys. Unfortunately, Akron just doesn't take themselves as seriously as some of their fans do.

If anyone goes up to Bowling Green, the Stroh has a really nice team shop with good stuff inside.

My wife is there today. Is there something in particular you like? I'll have her pick it up for you.

I like that uniform that McClanahan is wearing. Didn't the Zips wear those for the FAMU game? I'd think a "light" gold version would make a nice alternate uniform rather than the "silver" or gray.

Have her pick me up a Zips #22 replica jersey.

I think you're off by a factor of at least 10. Probably much more.

I saw some Skittles there...

Interesting perspective. Nike Sterilizes Uniforms with Gray

Many teams will be wearing gray -- oh, sorry, PLATINUM -- at some point this season. Nike teamed up with a bunch of universities, primarily because Nike has lot of employees with a lot of time on their hands and is obsessed with this gray/platinum trend way more than it should be. Because of this, nine teams will don these generic, already-out-of-vogue uniforms.

Other schools duped into the marketing ploy include Arizona, UConn, Duke, Florida, Kentucky, both the men's and women's North Carolina teams and the Baylor women's hoops squad. Here's the thing -- they're not even that ugly. It'd be one thing if these threads were Oregon's court reincarnated, but they're just ... boring-looking, nondescript from the past half-decade of altering team jerseys up and down the grayscale.

They're killing UNC's great uniforms? Too far, Nike.

I like the grey, of course, I like alternate uni's. It's interesting the article mentioned that the shade of grey, chosen by Nike, is boring. I'm not in 100% agreement with that, but I do feel with the columnist; I prefer a more distinct, bold, darker shade of grey ala Oklahoma State or Washington State.
I still know we need old-gold alternates!!! (3 exclamation points! )

I've seen the pics of the Nike jerseys. I like them all.

Not to hijack the thread but:

We could start a petition of people who would buy authentic football jerseys or hell pitch to them that we have to pre-order them and once they get 100 preorders....no risk there. I think they would be shocked at the amount they could sell even if they were $200 a pop. I'd get three just with the people in my household. You can't sit there and tell me that they wouldn't sell 100 jerseys to some 28,000 student body. That's insane.

Unless you make your order through the bookstore run by UA, you might have trouble with copyrights for the logos. I guess you could have someone make a generic AKRON jersey. I would think that an exact replica would be a problem.

I just can't see how anyone can like the grey...they look awful. The blue is bearable, but the fact that silver/grey isn't even one of our colors makes me wonder what the whole point is? Are we saying we are only good enough to wear second place (silver)? Whatever happened to GOLD?!

What happened to these?! They have that awesome looking "A" on the shorts and look slick.

Those are by far my favorite uni's the Zips have ever donned. Our athletics department truly seems to be often oblivious to the obvious.

Couldn't agree more. I just don't like the new look. I don't care for the A on the shorts either, the way that it sits behind the striping just looks odd to me. I think the kids all wanted the grey though. Maybe Keith gave in to the team's wishes??

If that's the case then it's a wise move on KD's part. Learn to pick your battles.

It was one of the ast coaches ideas. I forget which one though.

One article posted on ZNO said it was McFadden.

I meant to take it to the UA bookstore. Petition them to get them made. We just have to convince them that they can sell atleast 100 jerseys. Its pitiful we can't get the real thing.

If only all schools had "awesome" Russel uniforms like OU...

I remember my middle school football team wore the same thing, and even we were embarrassed.

I take back most of what I stated above. I don't love our particular shade of grey, and I don't hate it. But I love the shade of grey Nike's chosen for these select uni's! They're sweeeeet!

Yahoo! article.

Slideshow.

Totally sick! The shade of grey chosen is a more bold, distinct shade of grey than ours. Again, like Oklahoma State or Washington State's shade of grey.

Anyhow, I like the grey uniforms for a few reasons.

1. I like grey.

2. I like alternate uni's.

3. Baseball has always had grey uniforms.

4. Blue, gold & grey is a sharp combo! (When I say gold, I always mean old gold, never yellow!)

5. If adding grey to a school's uniform becomes as commonplace and acceptable as adding black, then basically Columbus State's colors are now just red & white!

I guess this is all personal taste, but I don't like the dark grey. I actually prefer the light grey the Zips chose this season. However, I'd like to see a similarly lightened gold version (not yellow...I hate that).

+1. "Old gold."

Huh?

Akron Hoops to Bring Back Gold Uniforms?

I've always been a fan of the gold unis. Not for every game, but 2-3 special ones a year is a great idea. I hope it's true, but it will be odd to see gold again, since all 3 of the current jerseys only feature gray and blue. Maybe a gold alternate means they're redesigning all 3?

That's my hope.

I think we should use Old Gold uniforms as much as possible, in all sports. It's very distinctive. And we should sell alot more Old Gold tee shirts, for the same reason.

Last season, I think we missed a great opportunity to use Blue and GOLD letters and numbers on those Gray uniforms.

I've always liked the look of gold numbers and lettering, on both blue and white uniforms. Similar to what the soccer team currently wears. Maybe the numbers/lettering can be hard to read on the whites, but in a sport like basketball, fans can recognize all the players without having to see their names.