Today is a dark day for college football, no not because its Tim Tebow's last home game. Nike decided to ruin the nation's retinas with an display of bad design and tasteless marketing that makes me wonder if Satan is running the show. I have seen grumblings about an experimental Nike design featuring a spirograph-like design element floating around the web, but all accounts of the design seemed to make it seem like it had (thankfully) been shelved. Looks like Nike had us all fooled as Florida took the field in the above mentioned spirograph design during its game against Florida State, and successfully looked like the aborted love child of their retro uniforms. This has of course come with official jargon to try and rationalize the new Pro Combat design, but it doesn't take a genius to see these are just flat out ugly. The sad thing is that things could have been even worse! Perhaps some sanity caused Florida State to hold back on their own uniform disasters which are also part of the Pro Combat apocalypse.
Not content with ruining just one game, another set of bewildering designs were unvieled during the Miami-USF and Virginia Tech-Virginia games. These uniforms have multi-colored numbers, and in the case of Virginia Tech show us why gradients aren't seen very often.
You might be shaking your head right now, but wait, there is more! The Big 12 North is probably tired of getting passed over by the media, so Missouri has gone to great lengths to make you forget all about Florida by coming out in the ugliest Pro Combat uniform set and sticking it to common sense. I nearly confused them with Army's camo set, but these are much worse.
Shame on Nike, Miami, Florida, Virginia Tech, and Mizzou for turning a game into a marketing spectacle. My biggest fear is that the Oregon crew will see this as a challenge to their ugliest-uniform title and try to top it next year, and Cal (Nike uniforms) will come out with some version of the Pro Combat set that will force me gouge my eyes out.