Photo: Politico.com

About a month ago, Indiana State wore throwbacks to the Larry Bird era. I’m pretty sure I had seen those jerseys prior to last January, but at the time I must not have thought much of the most obvious aspect of the jersey – the use of the Indiana state outline as the letter “I” in the wordmark. That’s amazing in retrospect since it’s such a unique design element that really jumps out at you (and ripe for a JOTW column topic). While the sheer number of sports, leagues, and teams – past and present – make it difficult to say anything definitive about sports uniform absolutes, this very well may be the only instance of a state outline as a letter. I’ve never seen it anywhere else and certainly not in the most popular and well-covered sports in this country.

Whenever a new uniform design is unveiled, I’m always interested to see if it has some element I’ve never seen before. But when you really think about it, a truly unique new uniform element is incredibly rare. To see a real sports uniform first, it’s a lot easier to go back in time rather than forward. Going back to Terry Haute, IN circa 1979 yields the incredibly rare case of using the shape of a state as a letter on a jersey. Granted, Indiana State was no stranger to bizarre uniform decisions, such as pairing plain jerseys with pinstriped shorts. But as I said, I can’t think of any other example of the state-outline-as-letter style, which was even immortalized on a Bird starting lineup figure (how sweet is that?!). Indiana State still uses the state outline as part of its logo, though sadly it no longer forms the letter “I” on their jerseys.

While the use of a state outline on a jersey is rare, its appearance in other areas of sports aesthetics is more widespread. Without leaving college basketball, one major example is the use of the state outline as part of the midcourt logo design. Some of the most storied college hoops programs employ this design, including North Carolina and Indiana (here’s an older version), for which it has become iconic. I think the state outline midcourt design is a really cool look, especially when it isn’t comically large (see the Texas schools below). The Big Twelve is a breeding ground for midcourt state outlines with three current schools sporting the design. Missouri used to have a simple outline, but recently has obscured it with the school’s tiger logo. In-state rivals Texas and Texas A&M (sublimated) have dueling state outline court designs, true to the notion that everything is bigger in Texas. The only other borderline current example I came across (bearing in mind that there are over 340 teams in Division I and I probably missed some) was Michigan State, which has two state outline logos on the court but not at midcourt

That rounds out the list of current state outline court designs (to the best of my knowledge), but it is not the complete compilation of historic examples as a number of schools used to have the design but don’t anymore. Tennessee is a recent convert, while Kansas replaced its state outline-flag combination design with a gigantic jayhawk when Bill Self took over in 2003. Ohio State and Oregon are other examples. One interesting case is Kentucky, which appears to have taken its 1977-78 team photo on a court with a midcourt state outline. However, those photos feature a brick wall in the background which probably indicates that it was taken at a practice facility – though it’s certainly possible that the practice court design mimicked the actual court design at Rupp Arena.* Without conclusive photographic evidence, it remains a mystery.

In addition to their appearances on college basketball courts, state outlines have also been part of logos for a number of professional sports franchises with at least one example from each of the four major U.S. leagues. In the MLB, the Minnesota Twins shake hands in front of the state outline, while the Texas Rangers used to have a couple of different state outline logos. In the NHL, state outlines appear on the secondary logos of three teams – the Tampa Bay Lightning (old logo too), the Phoenix Coyotes, and the Dallas Stars – though interestingly, none of them have an actual state in their name. (The New York Islanders’ logo does not technically qualify, but is worth mentioning because of the outline of Long Island in it). In the NBA, the Golden State Warriors used to have a very cool logo with the outline of California along the left side. Finally, in the NFL, the Dallas Texans (who later became the Kansas City Chiefs) had a couple of logos with the outline of Texas, including a very nice helmet design. And speaking of the Chiefs, they probably take the cake in state outline history by taking it up a notch and including the entire Midwest!

* Thanks to Ivan Reifman of the excellent Basketball Court Designs blog for pointing this out to me and for providing assistance in coming up with some state outline examples.

Photo: Eric Badeau / GoSeattleU.com

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been having trouble getting fully immersed in college basketball so far. I guess it just still feels like football season to me. The college game still has six (6!) undefeated teams and the BCS picture is cloudier than usual this late in the year. There are two conference championship games with major national championship implications and a de facto Big East title game that could also affect the BCS spots that are up for grabs. In the NFL, there are two undefeated teams and a one-loss squad at the top, about a fourth of the league is truly dismal, and the rest are lurking somewhere in between. It’s about as paritous (is that word?) as usual with five weeks to go.

My inability to switch gears is definitely not for lack of college hoops games, and good games at that. The early season invitational tournaments during ESPN’s “Feast Week” featured a number of major conference matchups as well as good mid-major teams showing what they can do given the chance to actually play bigger programs. While mid-major upsets over teams from the BCS conferences get the most press, a number of surprising results go unnoticed as they take place well beyond the collective periphery of many college basketball fans. Case in point: the owner of this week’s featured jersey, the Seattle University Redhawks. SU is in its first season at the Division I level since 1980 and currently plays as an independent school, so no conference and no chance at getting into the Big Dance. That hasn’t stopped the Redhawks from starting the year 5-3 with upset victories over Fresno State and Utah. In theory, all of their wins could be considered upsets, but when you’re beating teams from the WAC and the Mountain West as a first-year independent that’s especially noteworthy.

There are a couple of reasons the Redhawks’ jerseys caught my eye. The first was that they were gray (more on that later), but let’s start with the “SEATTLEU” word mark. Frankly, I’m not a fan. I’m not sure if everyone there calls it Seattle U or what, but the Seattle women’s basketball team doesn’t do it. And if they really feel the need to include the U, it why not go with SEATTLE U? That little space can go a long way. The school at least set Seattle and U apart by using two different colors. That’s more than can be said for Albany, er UAlbany, whose similar word mark issues I became familiar with from their 2007 clash with UVA in the NCAA Tournament first round. The UAlbany nickname seems to have been around for a while and is plastered all over the school’s website, apparel, and (most importantly) Wikipedia page, but it still makes it seem like the school name is pronounced “y’all-ba-knee” or “oool-ba-knee.” The SeattleU designation seems to be a more recent phenomenon (last year’s jerseys didn’t have the U) that the university is trying to get going, though it is used for the school’s website domain. A solid rebuttal to my dislike of the U with no space is mentioning any of the University of California schools who don’t include a space between the UC on their jerseys, but I’d argue that since the UC abbreviates two words and there’s a space between that and the school’s city name, it at least looks aesthetically better.

In addition to the word mark issue, the uniforms bear a striking resemblance to Syracuse’s uniforms using similar shorts striping accentuated by the fact both schools are SU’s. With Nike’s System of Dress taking over college basketball there are bound to be teams that share uniform templates, but when two teams already have similar logos (like Syracuse and Seattle) it might make sense to pick different designs.

Having said all that, you’ve got to give SeattleU props for going with gray uniforms at home. You don’t see teams rocking the gray all that often in college basketball, and often it’s only as an alternate. Georgetown is probably the most well-known example and a personal favorite, especially when players wear the mismatched gray t-shirt underneath reminiscent of prior players. Other recent examples include UCONN, Ohio State, UNLV (very subtle gray), Colorado (technically silver), and probably a few others that I am forgetting (there are, after all, over 340 teams in Division I). I’ve said before that I love when teams use underutilized colors, and gray on the hardwood definitely fits the bill. Gray tends to work with most color schemes and I especially like the way it can make white numerals pop off the jersey (check out the Seattle player in the background of the featured photo above as well). It tends to work best when it’s already a part of a school’s color scheme (cough Colorado cough), but it seems to have been recently added to Seattle’s look and it works so maybe the jury is still out on that one.

Regardless of your opinion of the jersey overall, you know it felt good for the Redhawks to do this with it after beating Fresno State and Utah. And maybe that’s all that really matters.