So at first there was this cuh-razy rumor that Auburn would be wearing blue pants this week. But then it was shot down emphatically by P-Marsh. And Chizik his own self told the media there’s nothing going on. But there’s now also the little matter of what looks for all the world like an officially-commissioned blue helmet. And Chizik seemed to provide his own wink-wink acknowledgment of the rumors at Wednesday’s student pep talk. And, you know, maybe there’s a reason they’ve been pumping this “True Blue” stuff all week at the AUfficial site. So now all anyone wants to talk about is uniforms and “Blue Outs” and Project Runway: Auburn Edition and stuff.
Which makes some sense, actually. Clemson is Auburn’s biggest nonconference game of the season, the first big game of the year at home, a must-win to preserve Auburn’s national standing given how much Clemson lost from their 2009 squad and the ACC’s current state of struggle. Games like this don’t come along every week. But they do come along every other year or so … whereas Auburn hasn’t bothered with any major change in its uniforms, not even for a one-off, since Doug Barfield broke out the orange jerseys in the late ’70s. Even if “who’s going to win?” is a much more important question than “what’s Auburn going to wear?”, the latter gets asked so rarely that it’s no wonder that that’s the question everyone wants an answer to.
The wager here is that the answer is … Auburn’s regular uniform. I might be inclined to take Chizik’s denials with a grain of salt (especially after the pep talk), but that even someone as plugged-in as P-Marsh can’t turn up anything but “it’s not happening” makes me think it’s not happening.
I think it’s fair to assume that someone at Auburn is at least considering some kind of variation–there’s too much smoke, particularly looking at the helmet photo–to think there’s no fire. Someone’s probably commissioned some prototypes. But it’s still a long way from “picture of blue helmet appears on Internet/Internet guys say there’s blue pants around” to “Auburn takes field in all-blue uniforms.” I’ll believe it when I see it.
As for whether I think it’s a good idea … well, I don’t, honestly, for reasons I’ll get into in a second. But if we’re talking about the Clemson game alone, I mostly don’t care. Blue helmets, blue pants, orange jerseys, puce cleats, hot pink gloves, Socks designed by Lisa Frank, whatever–just so long as Auburn wins. As Justin pointed out last night, from a crowd perspective, it’s a win-win either way. And a certain part of me remembers how much Georgia enjoyed themselves the first time they tried pulling some uniform shenanigans (damn their dancin’ hides) and thinks doing it just this once, with ESPN and a ton of recruits around, might be a whole lot of fun if the game goes well.
But I’ve got a lot of caveats to offer:
— OK, firstly, Sir Charles and I both agree that an all-blue uniform is going to look flat-out turrible. Going monochrome in any other color than white on a football field always looks either juvenile or desperate; it’s a maneuver for high school teams or Jerry Glanville’s Atlanta Falcons. Blue helmets, blue pants, and blue jerseys is going to make Auburn look like they’re wearing odd-fitting one-piece jumpsuits.
— Even if we just toss on some blue helmets, or blue helmets and pants with white jerseys, we’re going to look an awful lot like Virginia. I don’t want to look like Virginia. I want to look like Auburn.
— Let’s say we do get a “Blue-Out” on Saturday, and let’s say things go swimmingly. We’ll still need to get two things straight: we’re not doing this again this season, and we’re not ever doing this against our rivals. If we want to jazz things up against Clemson, OK. But trying to make games against Arkansas or Georgia or–heaven forfend–Alabama an even bigger deal than they already are is just dumb, and frankly disrespectful to how much those games mean. Those weeks, everything is about football, and trying to make any part of them about uniforms is begging for embarrassment; if Georgia provides an object lesson in how well the aesthetic fun-and-games might go this Saturday, they also provide a glittering example of how badly things can go if Chizik and Co. go to the well (um, the ditch? the puddle?) too often.
— It’s one thing to be innovative. It’s another to be gimmicky, to embrace change-for-change’s-sake-alone, and the current staff has at least flirted that line in a lot of ways, from the Limo Gambit to Malzahn’s willingness to throw double-passes with the game on the line to, well, “True Blue.” I’m perfectly OK with all of that (so long as it works, and it has), and fully embrace Chizik and Co. thinking as far outside the box as they’d like. But this still strikes me as a kind of “HEY, what if we did THIS” sort of idea.
For all of those reasons, I’m hoping Auburn shows up in our usual classy damn-near-perfect togs and destroys Clemson. But hey, if we wind up in some unusual blue get-up and destroy Clemson, I’m more than OK with that, too.
But if we’re discussing uniforms again later this season? Or the week of the LSU game next year? That, that I’m afraid I’m not OK with. (Now get off my lawn.)
For further reading, I heartily recommend Kevin’s post on the subject at PPL.
I was there for the Orange Jersey bustin’ out party….. The student section went crazy!! But the older and hopefully wiser me would prefer to see any Alternate to the standard AU color scheme to just stay in the prototype stage and never see the lights of the field. Hard to improve on perfection.
Keep the blue helmets and pants on the shelf, but bring back the orange face masks!
I hear you to some degree. Everyone sure was down with what Georgia was doing (against Auburn I remember) untill they ran into a BETTER football team (Alabama), with BETTER coaches. I think the blackout was used as an excuse, at the True Blue would be if Auburn were to falter. As a former player I can tell you that this kind of stuff gets you fired up, especially when there hasn’t been much change. I do agree that this should be a once a year kind of thing, and never against a big rival. There is definitely something going on here. I think you gotta take the denials with a huge grain of salt because if they admit any changes, there will be a huge backlash from the older alumni before the game in an effort to stop it. Until they run on the field for the game, I won’t be sold something isn’t up. We shall see, bottom line is we need to win the game though. WDE!!
Change is good sometimes….I would not mind seeing all blue….Ive been calling for blue pants for years….Never occured to me to get blue helmets as well….Heck I even want to see orange jerseys again….Why not go super throwback and have them wear sweaters
Is it just me, or does that blue helmet look like a minature? See how the size of the helmet compares to the guy’s hand? Only head that could fit is an Alabama grad’s. 🙂
Memphis, a lot of people have noticed that. It would make sense to be some kind of prototype.
Blue helmets just once? Maybe. Blue pants? No, thanks.
Look at the face mask…looks well used, scuffed up, paint knocked off it.
That would indicate that it is a collectable helmet.
But more than likely it is just Wayne County, MS buying blue hats and slapping an AU sticker on it for grins and giggles.
http://www.maxpreps.com/photo/gallery.aspx?imageid=d4f90600-c48f-4a09-8ce4-1b8b6b665966&photogalleryid=1edb5726-d0a7-4498-a01a-cb1fbcc33138#imageid=d4f90600-c48f-4a09-8ce4-1b8b6b665966
Just so no. Friends don’t let friends wear stupid f*cking alternate uniforms. Ever.
I don’t care what they wear, as long as they beat the mess out of the other team and look dominant doing it. This “don’t mess with tradition” BS is for old people who got old before their time maintaining the status quo. We’ve got great uniforms and they aren’t going to dematerialize if we break out an alternate uni a couple of times a year. It’s fun, and for the record that helmet looks awesome (and small, as others have noted).
Was that an Auburner refrence there at the end? Gotta love the cross-blaugosphere connections! haha
Well said. This post is pretty much exactly how I feel about this situation. Especially the part about not doing this when it’s a big rivalry game.
I’m usually very progressive w my attitudes about such (ex… I like the DJ Khaled/Hands go UP for the students), but… no. Not on this stage against anybody of significance.
Next time AU plays Presbyterian, or the Citadel, or some other team that has NO, none, not even the tiniest little bit of a chance of a victory they can break out an alternate uni. Sell some more/different jerseys as a result. Make some cash for athletics so they can pay for a bigger bus for the gamma version of Tiger Prowl (or whatever they replace it with).
Luke, sorry, not particularly–it’s standard-issue blogspeak (at least, I think it is) for “I am acting like an old person.” Not that I’d be above making an Auburner reference, of course. we’re all big fans here.
2x, I totally agree I’d rather see this the week of the Chattanooga game. But the coaches may feel like with the national TV audience and all the recruits around, this is the week to make the big splash.
I have to agree, I think this is twofold. Auburn is coming off a win against Miss State in which the pundits doubted us. Now that they’ve proven themselves and everyone expects us to pull off the W this week, Chizik doesn’t want to let the players lose focus, adding a gimmick this week is a great way to put more emphasis on this game, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the number one reason for this is that its the highest profile game this season. It may not be the most exciting matchup that we’ll have, but we have GameDay, we have a strong BCS out of conference opponent, and we have the eyes of the Nation on ESPN 1 (the uno). If a recruit is gonna come visit Auburn, this is the week to do it, so who wouldn’t want to go all out, pull out all the stops and create buzz. Bring in the recruits, cheese it up, let your hands go UP (and they stay there!) and show the future Auburn Tigers that they aren’t going to find a better atmosphere to play in anywhere in the country.
This week is show business on the plains and we all have a part to play. Be a pal and play yours.
Blue uniforms or not, we better not see the players on the field asking for crowd noise on a key 3rd down again in this game like they had to last game.Such an embarrassment.
The first Auburn game I ever attended in person was the 1978 Auburn vs. Georgia game where we wore the orange jerseys. At Auburn whenever I think of uniform gimmicks I think of Doug Barfield and those orange jerseys. I loved it when Pat Dye was asked about the orange jerseys and gave his famous “we are going to make them fear the blue jerseys” quote. With that said I don’t think I hate the idea of the orange jerseys as much as showing up in all blue. Just last week when South Carolina came out in all garnet I remarked to my wife how much I hate it when teams wear the dark jerseys and matching pants. It just looks horrible to me. I agree though that this staff has tried a lot of “out of the box” type of things and this seems like a spot where they might try this. Here is hoping they don’t but like you said, winning the game is most important.
ESPN 1 (the uno). I’m using that one.
I can scarcely remember a game where the D players did NOT encourage the crowd to get louder on a key play here and there. I don’t understand where that complaint is coming from.
One last thought on Bluegate:
Could the blue pants/helmets rumors/leaks just be a smoke screen for an entirely different uni option? All this focus on the blue elements and nobody is talking about orange jerseys.
I’m just sayin’.
the issue with the pic is that it is purposely taken in a way that looks like it is a regular size. given the opportunity to find a blue helmet that is gonna be worn by a player i am gonna try to get a good pic, even if it is on a cell phone from the front and sides, not at an angle to make a small helmet look big on a cell phone camera
All blue no. But I think against Alabama this year it would be really awesome if we wore that blue helmet white jersey and a navy pant that would be sweet that helmet is cool I think that it the only uniform combo it should be involved in thought all blue is too much for me I think maybe all white unis with the helmet I wouldn’t mind seeing the helmet with and orange facemask like the old days what do y’all think?