Last year when the football jerseys were revealed, there were cries along the lines of “Where’s the Orange??” Many fans, myself included, were disappointed by the uniforms that were revealed last April. Why did the numbers look this way? Why is there a gray option? Why revamp the jerseys? Those are the kind of questions that flew around in the comments below the articles.
Now, just this week, Syracuse Athletics revealed the uniform we were waiting for, the Orange jersey with blue pants. And they looked solid, considering they were the same design as the jerseys revealed last year but in another color. That was great, until the next day when this picture turned up from the football building at Manley, which brought back memories of this disaster against Washington nearly 8 years ago.
But here is the thing, no matter what Syracuse does right now regarding jerseys, fans are going to be upset with what it chooses. Last year, it was not evident that Syracuse’s nickname was the Orange. This year the Orange uniforms are “too orange” or ugly.
Bringing change to anything is a lose-lose situation. On one hand, we don’t like the idea of what Nike is doing in changing the nickname—Orangemen to Orange—then taking total control of the uniform process. On the other, we don’t like change. We want to keep living in the glory days of Syracuse football where the team looked and played a certain way, it is part of the reason we don’t like the direction the team has headed the past couple years.
No matter what Syracuse athletics did regarding jerseys, there was going to be an outcry from fans and media because it is different. They may not be what we want them to be, but they bring the program further into the present age of college football. Now, uniforms are all about the ability to mix and match and “look cool” to recruits. These uniforms do a much better job of that than the old ones. And to be honest, the Orange set just helps the program with more variability.
So it seems like an inevitability that September 26th against LSU, Syracuse will run out of the tunnel covered head to toe in Orange. It may look ugly, but it is all in the name of recruiting and advancing the program.
And if we hate the change in the uniforms, imagine how bad the reaction will be when the Dome is changed or demolished in the near future.
Posted:  Seth Goldberg
