The Nike Pro Combat Revolution: The Future of Football

Many of you might have been surprised when you turned on your televisions this past weekend to see teams like Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Florida State in some rather bizarre uniforms.

All three teams have pretty traditional uniforms, so many fans were caught of guard. Not to worry folks, those uniforms are not replacing your favorite classic look.

But, those uniforms are the future of football. These strange uniform appearances are the result of Nike's System of Dress program, which is revolutionizing the way football, as well as basketball, is dressed.

The football division of the System of Dress, or SoD program, is the Nike Pro Combat line. For this season Nike has selected a group of Nike outfitted teams to show off their latest template.

The template is unlike any football uniform we have seen before, which has led to some extremely strange-looking uniforms. This is all a part of Nike's personality.

Whether teams will begin to adopt these strange designs in the wake of their old traditional looks is beyond me, but it's possible.

Check out all of the stuff they are doing...

Background: SoD Has Already Found Success on the Hardwood

Nike stuck it's nose in new basketball uniforms a few years back. Ever notice the super tight fit jerseys and baggy pants?

The SoD basketball uniforms have already become the norm in college hoops, outfitting almost half of the teams in the country. Some teams like North Carolina and Duke have stuck to traditional looks despite the new material, while others like Oregon, Michigan State, and Florida show off the strange tendencies of Nike design.

These uniforms were weird a while back, but they have become the standard. Is football on it's way?

The Beginning of Pro Combat

Nike, who's founder has become the mastermind behind Oregon's futuristic uniform tendencies, began unleashing the Pro Combat template before these past few weeks.

Some of the technologies were not added yet, however the jersey template and lightweight material was actually featured on Army and Navy's uniforms from last year's game.

Remember the Camo for Army? Yeah. Also, Oregon's latest "wing" uniforms, which debuted last season for their "blackout" game, and eventually turned into a uniform set for 2009, are also early Pro Combat.

Nike spent this past year twiddling with ideas, and this month they debuted the new Pro Combat uniforms.

The Pro Combat Football Template

This is a rendering of the Nike Pro Combat template, done by a user in the sportslogos.net forums.

The difference is the strange stitching patterns. The dark areas are the areas of mesh material, or the see-through material that breaths for the jersey. The pants, as you can see, also have mesh areas, which is a first in football uniform history.

The strange design on the shoulder is a twill that reinforces contact and actually makes the jersey stronger (hard to believe, but apparently true).

The uniform is twice as light as the basic stock uniforms going around these days.

The Pro Combat uniforms have a shield on the collar with the team logo on them, much like the circle logos that are on the collar of the basketball uniforms.

Also, each team has received a special helmet to go with their new look, as well as gloves and shoes and other accessories—but we will leave the gimmicks out for now.

The Teams

The Pro Combat teams are:

Virginia Tech, TCU, Ohio State, Florida State, Oklahoma, Florida, Texas, LSU, Mizzou, Miami, and Clemson.

They have been selected to wear the uniform on one specific date this year. Some teams have already worn theirs, while others are going to be wearing them this weekend.

Here is each uniform.

Virginia Tech

As if Virginia Tech did not have enough uniforms already, they wore these uniforms recently against Maryland.

The part of this uniform that stands out is the gradients. Notice the number is maroon—and orange! Also, the helmet stripe, pants stripe, and jersey stripes have gradients as well.

Gradients were cool on NBA uniforms in the 90s, but seeing them on a football uniform was a first.

TCU

These uniforms get the award for most outrageous.

TCU unveiled a helmet and pants with "frog skin" patterns. Also, the red stripes on the helmet are supposed to represent the blood that Horned Frogs squirt from their eyes!

The pants have a strange design on them, but also nearly reflect purple when light hits them. Definitely the strangest football uniform I have ever seen.

Ohio State

The knocker on these Ohio State uniforms, aside from the fact Ohio State fans hate uniform changes just as much as they hate Michigan (and the SEC) are the super-dark pants.

Also the pants stripe is very unconventional, and wraps around the back, which you will notice happens on just about every P.C. uniform.

This is an example of a strange marriage of throwback and progressive ideas, something Nike has recently become infatuated with.

Florida State

In my opinion, this is the best Pro Combat uniform. The feather design on the pants is awesome, as is the black helmet.

It was odd seeing FSU is something different, but at least this redesign has some team character to it.

Oklahoma

Here is a look at Oklahoma. It seems that many teams are getting white helmets with their redesign.

Oklahoma looks too much like VT at first glance. But, Nike did a good job with giving them a very Oklahoma-esque look.

The thing we need to be most concerned with in this picture is how Ryan Broyles is holding the football. Tuck it away!

Florida

Florida is set to wear their ProCombat uniform this weekend vs. Florida State.

The major difference is the white helmet, which has a modernized "F" on it.

The jersey is pretty plain, but the pants design is well...not very good. It features a big white area on the back that people are already referring to as a toilet seat.

This is the worst uniform Nike has done in my opinion, but the helmet should stick around. I'm also kind of bummed they didn't go with the gator-skin design, which the basketball team uses.

Texas

This uniform is as subtle as it gets, which is good news considering it's Texas.

The differences are numerals on the helmet, and a few gimmicky details on the uniforms. But, thankfully, from afar this uniform will look as classic as they come.

LSU

Here is a weird one. LSU is going to look like Washington for their next game, though I think this uniform is cool.

The helmet is the same design, but the gold is more of a Vegas gold rather than old athletic gold.

The sleeve stripe is pretty generic, and the pants stripe will echo the same pants stripe they usually wear, but of course it wraps around the back rather than running straight down.

Mizzou

This is a bad one. Missouri's uniform will feature almost no gold, which implies a black helmet decal on a black helmet.

That's right, you will not be able to see the helmet logo at all. Nike has put black names on the back of black jerseys (Oregon), which is dumb, and it's even worse considering they have not figured out how bad of an idea that is yet.

This uniform might have been okay when they had black and white TV. Seriously, Nike, no tiger stripes?

A very uninspired look if you ask me.

Miami (FL)

Here is a cool one. Miami will wear a solid white look, which will feature sleeves with sublimated hurricanes on them (you will not be able to see that unfortunately).

The numbers are half and half, which I think is really cool. The helmet is the same, and the pants just have a little green stripe on them, which of course you cannot see here because it's on the back of the leg.

Clemson

Clemson's is the most traditional looking. They did not change the helmet, and the jersey and pants are pretty clean.

The pants stripe is pretty lame—just a solid, big orange stripe.

The Future of Pro Combat

If you did not notice, Nike outfitted their pro combat uniforms with some pretty traditional schools.

There is not a chance that any of these schools, aside from maybe TCU or Mizzou, will switch to new designs anytime soon.

But, it will be interesting to see what non-traditional Nike schools move towards this template in the near future.

I'm not really a fan. The pants stripes are way too strange, and the twill on the shoulder area looks really annoying.

But, I guess that is the least we can expect from Nike.