Those of you who also appreciated the metallic sheen and heft of the numbers Nike used on the Oregon Ducks uniforms for the Rosebowl might have been disappointed, as was I, with the effort put forth on the Michigan uniforms worn for the Jan 3rd, 2012 Sugar Bowl. While Michigan did pull off an overtime win, they weren’t as lucky with their choice of the game jersey. In my humble opinion (everyone’s entitled to one), when it comes to football, I like a big, heavy number font. I like to see people take chances, with custom fonts and special effects like Oregon did. There are things you can do to keep numbers from getting boring, but making them skinny and odd isn’t one of them. Maybe these numbers would have worked on a baseball uniform. Maybe they don’t belong on any uniform. It’s a great idea to continually reinvent the uniform, especially to increase sales of replicas, but the designers should try to come up with something people actually would want to buy.
As a 15+ year veteran in the custom uniform industry, I could not agree more. Numbers were WAY too thin and were a failure. When I saw it I wondered how anyone with any type of custom uniform experience looked at this and approved it prior to production.