Florida will trash its traditional (and great) orange helmets-on-blue jerseys look for the Gators' home game with Texas A&M on Saturday. Chances are you've seen them by now, but if not, you will again. Soon.
To honor (I guess) Florida's "swamp green" uniforms, we've ranked the 10 worst uniforms in college football history. Let's get started.
10. Ohio State's throwbacks, Oct. 29, 2011 vs. Wisconsin and Nov. 5, 2016, vs. Nebraska
Ohio State has an awfulhabit of wearing throwbacks or alternates for its most important games. (Which, sigh, they'll do again when Penn State comes to town in a couple weeks.) These throwbacks, "honoring" the 1961 and 1916 teams, proved that just because a uniform is a old doesn't make it good.
9. Texas Tech's red-black gradients, Nov. 15, 2014 vs. Oklahoma
It's not just that they're garish and bad (they are) but that it was a total copy/paste job by Under Armour from their own high school All-American game.
8. Wisconsin's oversized "W" shoulder logos, 1995
Remember when the Dallas Cowboys wore those oversized star shoulder logos in the Barry Switzer years?
Those are bad, yes, but they've become remembered as classics of their days. It helps when Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin and Troy Aikman are the players wearing them. It doesn't quite work as well when you're Wisconsin and you're losing 43-7 to Colorado.
7. Virginia Tech's orange camo, Sept. 21, 2013 vs. Marshall
It makes sense why it rained when Virginia Tech wore these orange camo monstrosities against Marshall. They were so bad they made God cry.
6. Nebraska throwbacks vs. Wisconsin throwbacks, Sept. 29, 2012
This is Adidas at its worst: taking two teams -- that happen to have some perfectly good uniforms on their own -- who happen to wear your brand and making the game about yourself.
5. BYU's white bibs, 1999
The '90s were an odd time, kids. Teams across all sports trashed their traditional looks for "modern" designs that now could not look more dated. These BYU uniforms were the worst of the bunch in college football, a look so bad you want to believe it's good but, no, it's just bad.
4. Northwestern's bleeding flags, Nov. 16, 2013 vs. Michigan
It's never a good thing in the corporate world when your public-relations arm has to send out reassurances that, no, the product your company just released does not depict the bleeding American flag. But, yeah, that's totally what it looked like. Many a program and uniform supplier have attempted to score some quick p.r. points by donning the red, white, and blue, but Under Armour's effort here was by far the most egregious and tone deaf.
3. Oregon's national championship uniforms, Jan. 12, 2015 vs. Ohio State
Nike has done a lot of good for Nike, but this was an unforgivable abomination. First, here's what Oregon wore for their first national championship game appearance, against Auburn to close the 2010 season.
And here's how they dressed four years later, against Ohio State.
There's nothing wrong with these uniforms on their own, but placed in context they're a complete disaster. A silver-white-silver look exactly mirrored Oregon's opponent -- rather than go with, oh, I don't know, a green or a yellow that would A) stand out from the team Oregon played and B) put Oregon in their actual school colors. The Ducks have played in two national title games and worn green and yellow in neither of them.
This was a complete flop by Nike.
2. Tennessee's black jerseys, Oct. 31, 2009 vs. South Carolina
When you have no good reason to wear black but you do it anyway. Lane Kiffin sure did leave his mark in Knoxville, didn't he?
1. Florida's swamp green uniforms, Oct. 14, 2017 vs. Florida
I said these were the worst uniforms in the history of Western civilization, and I would never exaggerate on a case as serious as this.
