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This is work in progress. Eventually it will be a complete conference by conference definitive guide to the coolness level of individual collegiate football uniforms and mascots. We will add new conferences as we complete them. Please keep in mind, that these are our opinions, and as such, are right. If you disagree, you are wrong. If for some inexplicable reason you still feel you have something to add, by all means, Email Us.
Indiana
Hoosiers is a great nickname. Anything local is OK by me. However, Indiana’s recent uniform history has been disgraceful. First, they’re a Big Ten team - the conference of Woody Hayes, “3 Yards and a cloud of dust,” Joe Pa, and crisp autumn days. The uniforms are supposed to be classics. Then these jamokes go and revamp their uniforms. Revamping is a sin for any college, a cardinal sin for a Big Ten school, and an irredeemable sin if you dump your old colors completely and go with a predominately black color scheme. Previous to their most recent uniform change, they used black as a major color in the uniform, and replaced the red with an off-color berry/burgundy, and then put some sort of George Jetsonian oval in the middle of the helmet. Luckily, they had the good sense to scrap these uniforms. However, while their current uniforms are OK, they’re not right for the Big Ten, and they are not right for Indiana. Indiana is supposed to be red-red, with a big-ass “I” in the middle, and the Big Ten is supposed to be all bright and big ass. Their current uniforms are more burgundy red, with small font. They are a total rip-off of the great southern unis of Oklahoma or Alabama. Unnaceptable.
Iowa
Iowa’s colors are black and gold. Not a good start. Yet somehow, their uniforms and mascot are both awesome. First, they had black before it was a marketing/recruiting gimmick, and second of all, I love birds. Mascots do not need to be tough to be cool. A jayhawk, a cardinal, a blue hen, and a Hawkeye are all a crap load cooler than say a Wildcat. Plus I dig the 4 piece old-school stenciled bird head on their helmet.
Michigan
Maze and Blue. Maze, not gold, not yellow – Maze. Coooool. What’s that stippey, swishy, wingy thing on their helmet? Who knows? But it is cool. As far as their mascot, the Wolverines, if someone were to choose that today, it would suck. However, for Michigan, it’s just plain cool. A few schools equal Michigan in coolness; none are better.
Michigan State
I give Michigan State credit for changing uniforms back to the big-ass white “S” on the green background. It’s classic, it’s BIG, it’s Big Ten. Their helmets are clean, simple, and with a style that is, well, Spartan. The actual jerseys, however, have some stupid pin stripping in them. Hopefully they drop the stripes soon, and they’ll be all set.
Minnesota
“Soo doya dink dat da Goo’fers are gonna win dis Satuuurday?”
"Hekuva team this year.”
“Yep, you bet."
"Yep."
"If the weather isn’t too dang cold then me an Midge are gonna go to da game."
"Yeah sure, good deal.”
"But it’s s’posda get so cold you know.”
“Oh yeah . . .”
“Golden” sucks as in “Golden Storms” or “Flashes” or “Eagles." However, for the Gooofuuurs, it’s kind of endearing. The colors, aren’t trying to be cool, but unfortunately, they do kind of suck. So does the weird, smallish, upside down “W” they use for an “M” on their helmets. They get a flat B.
Nothwestern
Purple is the regal color. Unfortunately, it also sucks in uniforms. Purple is strange, because unlike black, you don’t dislike purple uniforms for trying too hard. You almost feel bad for a school that has trudge onto the field wearing purple. So, when Northwestern use to be almost all purple, they were OK. Their uniforms were like your underdeveloped kid, whiffing at the soccer ball, while the jerky neighbor kid's whipped by him to score the winning goal. Unfortunately, NW didn’t leave well enough alone. They actually changed their uniform to a black/purple scheme because then coach Gary Barnet’s son thought it would be cool. Man that sucks. Oh and Wildcats. That sucks too.
Ohio State
They’re named after a nut. That’s awesome. I mean a nut. A NUT!!! Their mascot is a guy with a big nut for a head. I honestly can’t think of anything cooler. Their unis are cool too. Nice, simple, and with a ridiculous amount of “good play” stickers slapped everywhere.
Penn State
Just as cool as Michigan. Perhaps the coolest uniforms in football. No names, nothing on the sleeves, no decals, no emblems – just blue and white. The “Nittany” makes the mascot cool, and somehow just having the coolest curmudgeon ever to head up the team makes the whole shebang cooler.
Purdue
We like any mascot with a profession. But we always thought the smiling, shirtless boilermaker seemed, oh I dunno, a bit, well, YOU KNOW. Their unis suck, and don’t stand up to Big Ten standards. Plus, the gold color they use looks fine on the basketball court, but looks all wrong on a football helmet.
Wisconson
Somehow Wisconson and Minnesota are a lot alike. The colors are completely different, but both have furry, rodent-like, kinda cute mascots. The Badgers are a little better. First of all, the thing is wearing a striped sweater, and his head is way too big for his body. It makes me giggle. The “W” on the helmet is a bit too stylized, but you have to cut them some leeway for sticking with plain old red and white. Plus, I mean, who’s worried about styilized “W’s” when you have a goofy badger to look at.
Florida
Both their home and road jerseys are unmistakably Floridian, with their eye-catching blue and flamboyant orange, and yet, I still kind of like them. I think it’s because UF, unlike Pitt, has had the integrity to stick with their goofy helmet decal—“Gators” in bubble script—even though it is oh-so-twenty-years ago.
Vanderbilt
There is another Division I football program in the state of Tennessee, though nobody seems to notice. Aesthetics may be the least of the Commodores worries, but it should be noted that their vermilion highlighted football unis suffer from Auric Goldfinger Syndrome. Too much gold is not a good thing.
Georgia
Reasonable people can differ on this one, but I approve. UGA has added some pointless piping and the dreaded Nike swoosh over the years, but their unis are still fundamentally similar to the ones Hershel Walker wore when he carried the Dawgs to the National Championship in 1980, which was, much to my chagrin, a long time ago.
South Carolina One of the reasons I don’t support PETA is because I felt they let me down in the mid-90’s by not pressuring USC to change its nickname to something more humane and less phallic. Some intervention could have saved me from the legion of private school boys wearing filthy white hats emblazoned with “Cocks.” Oh, and USC’s uniforms are just plain ugly, too.
Kentucky Wait . . .Kentucky has a football team? Yes, and their uniforms are blue and white, with a big “K” on their helmet—a straight C in my book. When does basketball season start anyway?
Auburn
A couple of years ago, Auburn started airing TV commercials that brashly asked, “Where would Alabama be without Auburn?" Well, without the Tigers, Alabama would be minus one school with a really trite nickname. Their blue, white and orange unis don’t do much for me either. Auburn’s only saving grace maybe the fact that it is an institution of higher learning that feels the need to have battle cry: “War eagle!” This quirk provides AU with it’s own ancillary mascot—a golden eagle, nicknamed, uninterestingly enough, Tiger.
Mississippi
A few years ago, Ole Miss finally convinced its fans that it was no longer a good idea to bring Confederate flags into Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Nevertheless, its Rebel mascot still appears to be a crotchety, ante-bellum plantation owner. You’ve come a long way, baby. Its iconography may not be PC compliant, but Ole Miss’ red, white and blue uniforms and cursive helmet decal are still some of the best in the Confederacy.
Arkansas
Razorbacks is a great nickname because I think about 22 people who live north of the Mason-Dixon line know what one is. According to Webster’s, it’s “a thin-bodied long-legged feral hog chiefly of the southeastern U.S.” I guess that explains the “Hogs” appellation. Unfortunately, Arkansas’ blasé unis are as boring as its three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust style of play.
Mississippi State
Some moderately successful Division I football programs are, for some reason or another, utterly unremarkable. Mississippi State is one of those programs. From its hackneyed nickname—Bulldogs—to its monochromatic uniforms, there’s nothing interesting about MSU. At least they haven’t sold out and changed anything.
Louisiana State
Like the state itself, LSU’s uniforms are kind of tacky—deep purple, bright yellow and white. Their helmets are also really busy, with the school’s familiar acronym and a disembodied tiger head sardined so close together that they are practically indistinguishable on a TV screen. All this means that LSU’s uniforms should be as bad as their nickname—the Tigers—but uniform aesthetics is an inexact science. Against all odds, these uniforms actually kind of work.
West Virginia
Mountaineers is a cool mascot because it’s regional, and it was chosen because Four Fingered, Slack Jawed, Sister Ogling Morons was too long to fit on the programs. (This joke courtesy of the Guidebook to Trite but Obligatory Jokes.) We debated if the “WV” on the helmets are supposed to be mountains, or are just a weird “WV.” Either way, West Virginia uniforms, colors, and mascot are pretty cool.
Pittsburgh
It all went to pot for Pittsburgh when they made a big deal of changing the name of the school to “Pittsburgh” because “Pitt” sounded too negative. College boards have too much time to think, I guess. When they were Pitt, their mascot was always mentioned with the name. Panthers was the official mascot, but for all intents and purposes, the mascot was the Pitt-Panthers, like the Nittany Lions. Pitt-Panthers was cool. Panthers, by itself, is lame. The corresponding uniform change was one of the worst uni changes ever seen in collegiate sports. They used to have a late-70’s early-80’s kinda funky, kinda ugly, off-blue, off-yellow affair going on. The “Pitt” on the side of the helmet was done in a charming Comic Sans bold meets cursive font. It is important to realize that just like tough doesn’t make a good mascot, ugly does not make bad uniforms. The new uniforms are amazingly bad. Gold and black are not cool if you come to these colors late in the game, and the panther-head thing on the helmet looks like Beowulf's Grendel as drawn by the troubled comic book fan at the back of the class.
Virginia Tech
I like the Hookies name and unis a lot. First of all, the name is great. It is absolutely meaningless and comes from an old school song that goes something to the effect of “hookie hookie hey, hookie hookie, hi.” The colors clash, are strange, and the result is perfect. VT has the best uniforms in the Big East.
Boston College
Yaaaawn. Gold is unusual in that sometimes it looks cool, sometimes it means the school is trying to hard to be cool, and sometimes it just looks lame. BC’s gold is lame. Eagles are also lame.
Syracuse
‘Cuse is in the house, oh my God, oh my God. Orangemen is a great nickname. It annoys me to no end when people say that Syracuse has a dumb nickname. “What’s an orange man?” I’ll tell you what it is; it’s a great mascot. It’s deceivingly inventive; refreshingly straightforward, and enjoyably silly. Their uniforms aren’t great, but by Big East standards, that’s a major victory.
Temple
Owls is a cool mascot, but this fact is completely overwhelmed by their horrible, horrible uniforms. Like the Gamecock’s unis there is just way too much going on the Owls’ helmets. There’s a cartoon Owl swooshing out, “Owls” written on the helmet in a strange font, and the helmets are jarringly white. With their uniforms, Temple look like they should be playing teams like Texas Southern Christian Babtist, and Eastern Carolina Tech.
Rutgers
Rutgers does a fine job rounding out a division that may have the worst uniforms in college football. Scarlet Knights is soooo laaaame. Scarlet Nights sounds like a theme night that a Toledo, Ohio meat-market bar might have hosted in the mid-80’s. The busy cartoon helmets are terrible of course, and they rightly deserve to be the perennial whipping boys of an already inconsistent division.
UCLA
Sometimes it’s hard to rate a uniform absolutely. A lot of teams have really cool basketball uniforms, so their football unis end up unable to inspire any sort of reaction. Nothing’s wrong with UCLA football uniforms, and nothing’s wrong with their mascot, the “Bruin.” They just suffer from being a basketball school.
Arizona State
Behind USC, Arizona State is the only PAC-10 team with cool uniforms and a cool mascot. The mustard and burgundy is ugly, but cool, and the little cartoon on their helmet is a great 80’s-looking logo. This, of course, means that in the next ten years you can guarantee that they’ll change their uniforms to something horrible. They’ll think, “Hey, we should get really tough looking uniforms. Then we’ll get a good program like Oregon, and we’ll sell a lot of crap at the Footlocker. Let’s use black in the uniform, and use jagged fonts, and asymmetrical swoshes, and . . .” and they’ll screw them up. You mark my words. Actually, don’t mark my words. Where are you going to mark them? And if you were to mark them, where would you file them? And so what if I’m right? Are you going to go to your files and pull out the paper and say, “Oh yeah, he was right.” So, please don’t mark my words. I don’t want to be a bother.
In the meantime, their uniforms are cool, and any team that combines cute cartoons with satanic imagery gets the nod on a good mascot name.
Arizona
Lame. Not bad, just lame. Red, white and blue are good for baseball teams, and basketball teams, but are lame for football squads. Also, the nickname “Wildcats” is the non-imaginative nickname used in movies for teams known simply as “State.”
(“I thought you decided to go to State?” – a line from a dozen bad “American-Fussballroman” movies.)
Washington State
The WS/Cougar thing on the side of Washington State’s helmet is profoundly abysmal. It looks like something sent in by a child in one of those, “Draw Our New Logo!” contests a minor league hockey team might run. I don’t much care for overly clever helmet decals, but the lack of technical/artistic ability shown in the Cougars’ helmets is inexcusable. Their colors are terrible too. So are their matching shirts and pants.
Washington
Huskies is an OK name. Some dog names are terrible, like the Fresno State Bulldogs. Some are cool, like the Salukis, and some are ho-hum. “Huskies” is on the cool side of ho-hum. The big “W” is a good choice over a dog-head decal, and the colors are fine. Washington is the really the archetypal PAC-10 team -- a conference of uniforms that, as a whole, are pretty boring.
Stanford
Their uniforms are good. The big red “S” is nice. Their name is terrible. When I was 15 I thought the non pluralized nickname “The Stanford Cardinal” was clever. Of course, when I was 15, I also had a subscription to Twilight Zone: The Magazine and listened to Jethro Tull as well. “The Cardinal” is too cheeky, and too clever. And they have a tree walking around as a mascot. Cut the crap you wanna-be-Ivy-League dorks.
Oregon State
Oregon State has the distinction of being the second PAC-10 team to have a nickname associated with genitalia. “Beavers” is a good nickname. It’s regional. It’s an animal. What sucks is the ESPN “Deuce”-to-the-EXTREEEEEM! Makeover they did on the poor creature a few years back. Now it’s all angular, and pissed off. Combined with the orange and black, it just sucks. I can just hear the dweeb graphic artist pitching it to the school, “We’ve tried to add an element of kinetic energy to the logo that we feel makes it quite dynamic and powerful.” Powerfully lame that is.
Oregon
Their uniforms sucked when they had a knock-off Donald Duck on them (too cute, too derivative) and they suck now. Just like the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors, they had a wussy looking uniform, and they over compensated and got way too tough. They changed their colors to dark green and a yellow that somehow looks both burnt and neon. They used a weird almost four cornered smushed “O” in their helmet, incorporated Denever Bronco-esque sharp swoosh things on the pants, and they wear green from helmet to feet. Total garbage. The nickname, “Ducks,” sucks too. It might be considered cute like “Golden Gophers,” but I tend to think they’re being too conspicuously cute.
Cal
Another uniform that doesn’t quite add up. You can’t always pinpoint the elements that make a uni work or not work, and that’s the case here. The colors are good, the restrained esthetics is good, but the uniforms just aren’t. In the same way, the nickname “The Bears” is also sub-par. (Or it might be “Golden Bears.” I forget, and the fact that I don’t care enough to look it up speaks to how everything about Cal is simply serviceable.)
Nebraska
Cornhuskers may be the best nickname in Division I sports because there’s just no way anybody in their right mind would green light today—it’s laughably innocuous, hopelessly provincial, and would probably be considered offensive to agrarians. UN’s uniforms are plain and simple classics. Now, if they’d only tell their uniform maker, Adidas, to stop tinkering, they’d be perfect. You don’t see the Yankees adding superfluous, bulky stripes down the side of their jerseys. And still, I can’t grouse too much because this is about as good as red gets.
Iowa State
And this is about as bad as red gets. ISU has to have one of the worst uniform ensembles in Division I college football. The Cyclones red-on-red home unis are tacky and USFLish, while their white-on-white road digs appear to have been designed by Tom Wolfe. Cyclones, though historically based, is a weak moniker (remember weather phenomena don’t make good nicknames), but it’s not nearly as obnoxious as ISU’s emblem—Cy, an ill-tempered cardinal in the midst of a twister. It just doesn’t get much worse than this.
Kansas State
Despite the banality of its nickname—“Wildcats”—KSU should be applauded for somehow pulling off purple. Its ability to solve the Purple Problem is even more remarkable once you consider that this is a program that still hasn’t figured out it will never get near the top of the BCS if it keeps putting community colleges on its out-of-conference schedule. I think they played New England Tractor Trailer School last season.
Kansas
I’ve always labored under the misapprehension that KU’s blue was an azurian hue, but in 2002 they unveiled a uni that exclusively used a deeper, more sinister navy blue. One can only imagine the look of sheer terror on the faces of their Big 12 foes when they beheld these darker, more threatening Jayhawks. Rock, chalk, Gayhawk.
Missouri
Missu uses a color scheme almost identical to Colorado’s, but does so with considerably less aplomb. Their uniforms are about as boring as their nickname—Tigers. And that’s saying something.
Baylor
The Baylor Bears? Are there Bears in Texas? BU’s rotten, bush-league uniforms are green, gold and white . . . oh, wait a minute, nobody cares about Balyor football. I’ll stop now.
Oklahoma
For me, Oklahoma will forever be linked to Nebraska not only because of that highlight of Johnny Rodgers’ serpentine punt return touchdown against the Sooners in 1971, but also because of their uncanny aesthetic similarities. Both schools have monochromatic color schemes, a single stripe helmet with simple initial decals and great regional nicknames (“Sooner” has a great history that I won’t bore you with here). So, when someone mentions OU, I reflexively think of its great traditions, like the Sooner Wagon. It’s not until later that I remember Barry Switzer, Brian Bozworth and athletic dormitories that would have made Caligula blush.
Oklahoma State
OSU has one of those good-in-spite-of-itself uniforms. The blaze orange is garish, the font too stylized and the helmets merely passable, and somehow, they make it work. And sure, Cowboys is a trite nickname, but the bowlegged Pistol Pete—a mascot wearing a six-foot-high ten-gallon hat—saves it. You’re doing fine Oklahoma [State], Oklahoma [State] OK! Sorry.
Texas
“Burnt orange makes me puke, ” said Oklahoma’s tight end Justin Smith last year. I couldn’t disagree more. The only thing wrong with burnt orange is that there isn’t nearly enough of it outside of Texas. I wish my car were burnt orange, and when (or if) I buy a house, burnt orange will receive serious consideration. I no longer consider my hair “red”—it’s burnt orange, thank you.
Aside from a Sears Trophy, a victory over Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout and a competent coach, Texas’ football program has it all: Great colors, a perfectly minimalist helmet logo, an iconic mascot (“Bevo,” the longhorn steer) and catchy nicknames for its players. For example, wide receiver Roy Williams—a manchild who will emerge as the Charles Rodgers of 2003—is known around Austin as “The Legend.” Do you know who Roy Williams is? If you don’t follow college football closely, you probably don’t, but it’s hard not to admire that kind of delusional yet innocuous megalomania.
Texas Tech
Deplorable. One of my high school’s fiercest rivals was, like Tech, know as the “Red Raiders,” but at least Derby High School had the decency to wear primarily red. If TT’s nickname is the “Red Raiders” why does their football team wear black from head to toe at home? The answer is embarrassingly obvious.
Texas Agricultural and Mechanical
A&M just takes it a bit too seriously, but despite Aggieland’s football fanaticism, it’s consigned to being second banana in its own state. That’s kind of sad. Its maroon and white unis are solid and admirable, but their not as good as Texas’. But that’s just the way it is—A&M will always be second best, no matter how big its bonfire is.
Notre Dame
“Cheer Cheer for old Notre Dame. Wake up the echo’s sounding her name. mumble mumble, la, la, la . . .Onward to Victory!” - some of the best uniforms and one of the best mascots around -- And Ty has brought them back! (uh. . .Navy, BC, NC State – let’s just wait on that, shall we?)
Air Force
A crudely drawn big blue bolt on the helmet, and “Falcons” as the mascot. Very Cool. Why? Because it’s a Service Academy. All the Academies are cool by dint of the fact that they’re the Academies. If you disagree, you’re not a real American.
Army and Navy
See Airforce. The above is even truer for Army and Navy, and it’s also cool how their uniforms look a lot alike.
The Mid Alantic Conference
The MAC stands out as a conference that used to have a bunch of cool Indian mascots and then totally caved and changed them. It’s sad, because as a whole, the MAC used to be the coolest small conference when it came to mascots and unis.
The only standout now is the Toledo Rockets. This is a terrible nickname, but in sort of an endearing way. First, a rocket is an inanimate object, which is a bad start, but more importantly, it just seems dated now that some ICBM’s are 40+ years old. They might as well be called the Toledo “8-Tracks.” Plus, I grew up in Toledo, and I’m not aware of any rocket manufacturing or research going on there. Who knows? There probably was, but it hardly matters now. Also, “Rockets” is kind of phallic, which is funny. OK, I’ve changed my mind. “Rockets” is a good name in spite of itself.
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