There was a lot of chatter about uniforms this weekend, what with Georgia deciding to gear up in Power Rangers attire and Boise and Oregon sporting the latest Nike Pro Combat get-ups. Oh, and Maryland wearing those... things they were wearing the other night. And there was some chatter this summer about Iowa possibly getting their own one-off Pro Combat uniforms. So, naturally, fashion made a rare appearance at Kirk Ferentz's press conference yesterday. If you can't already predict the good captain's answer to the question of whether or not Iowa will be sporting a Pro Combat alternate uniform in the near future, well, you haven't been following Iowa football for very long.
Kirk Ferentz was asked Tuesday if he had been approached about a one-game uniform change a la Georgia and Maryland, and if he would consider doing it.
"I think that’s no and no," Ferentz said.
"It never made it to my desk. Maybe they did (ask), I don’t know. Maybe somebody told them don’t bother."
In other words, outside of the odd throwback game, don't expect anything other than the same ol', same ol' from Iowa while Ferentz is in charge. You're not going to catch Iowa rocking anything that looks like a costume from a Daft Punk video.
But BHGP is never entirely satisfied with settling for the status quo. After we got done carefully scraping up the remnants of our brains from across the walls and upholstery (where they had settled upon viewing Maryland's "State Pride" uniforms on Monday), we got to wondering: what might an Iowa version of those uniforms look like? Granted, the Iowa state flag is quite a bit more traditional than the Maryland flag, which looks like a cross between something that belongs on an old European castle and something that belongs at F-1 race, but we were undeterred. If the residents of "The Old Line State" had enough pride to cover the football team of flagship university in their flag, then the residents of "The Hawkeye State" could -- nay, MUST -- do the same for the football team of their flagship university. Have we no state pride? Are we not proud Iowans? Which led us to create this:
('shop courtesy of the inimitable Horace, of course)
GO IOWA AWESOME. And, yes, it's totally normal to bleed from the eyes that much. Don't worry about it. And Nike? We'll take a 10% cut for design assistance. That seems reasonable, right?
(Seriously, a huge T/F/J to Horace for his help with this post.)