Maryland Football Uniforms: Do the Terps Really Need to Try This Hard to Matter?

Are you people like me? Did you grow up in the mid-90’s with Michael Jordan’s Bulls, 2-Pac, Biggie Smalls and a young Jay-Z? We had Michael Irvin and the Dallas Cowboys, the Miami Hurricanes dominating football, and, of course, Deion Sanders high-stepping his way on ESPN’s Prime Time every Sunday Night.

So, like me, you were heavily influenced and wanted to be everything that you saw on television. If you saw in a 2-Pac music video, Pac wearing a hat made by the company Top-O-The-World, you wanted to find a Lids and get that hat!

Jay-Z said it best in his song Empire State of Mind, “I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can.” Because when we saw Jay or Puffy come out with those multi-colored Yankees hats, we all wanted to buy one. 

It’s a business trend that isn’t rocket science. Make something that kids will like, get a celebrity to say it’s cool, kids will buy said item thus making it extremely popular. 

The Oregon Ducks figured this out when they came up with their multiple color schemes for their uniforms. Phil Knight, an Oregon Alum and Nike’s Founder and CEO, went out and took a risk on these uniforms. He knew that if he could do something different, something cutting edge, that he could not only make Oregon “cool” but get recruits to want to go there. 

The end result is that Oregon is now a national power house among college football.

Maryland is now in the same proverbial “boat” that Oregon was in. The founder and CEO of Under Armor is a Maryland Alum that is just like Phil Knight in that he wants his team to do great. 

They’ve tried, twice, at a new way of doing Maryland’s uniforms. And twice they have failed, miserably. The first week they were blasted by everyone. 

The crushing blow came from a tweet from Lebron James that said, “OH GOSH Maryland uniforms #Ewwwwww”

Yes he had that may W’s. 

Maryland is doing the exact opposite of what you are trying to do. They are turning people off to their program, which will hurt in the long-run. 

Stop it now Maryland, and please return to the traditional Red and White uniforms.

Twitter: @tjmcaloon