Saturday Roundtable - Purdue Football Uniforms

If it’s Saturday, it must be the roundtable. I ask the staff and question and share their answers with you all. Today, we are talking football uniforms.

If you saw recently, Purdue football presented their gold helmet they’ll be wearing this season and the stripes have been updated to reflect a Tiller era white stripe. See pic below.

If you could choose Purdue’s base uniform, what would it be?

Jumbo Heroes:

This is such a fascinating question, I ask the questions, because to me it can often just be a question of “when did you go to Purdue?” So often people just fall back on what the uniforms looked like when they went to college and they always think those are the best ones. I spent six years at Purdue getting two degrees from 2004-2010.

Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

That means this is what I think of when I think of Purdue football uniforms. I’ve been a fan much longer than that of course, but there’s just something special about that first team that’s “yours”. You know what I mean? Do I want this to be the default uniform? Absolutely not. That gold on those pants is awful and the jerseys are just sort of generic. The helmets are fine. Overall, it doesn’t wow me.

So, in a perfect world I’d want Nike to come up with something new and something uniquely Purdue. I want the gold to be Old Gold, I want the helmets to have train tracks and/or a cattle catcher incorporated, I want the colors on each piece of the uniform to match. Doesn’t seem like too much to ask of a multibillion dollar company does it?

Instead, what I’ll say is let’s just stick with the Drew Brees era uniforms with some slight tweaks to bring them up to speed to today. I think overall that’s a great look, evokes good feelings in the fanbase, and will allow some slow forward iteration to keep with the times.

RVR Photos-USA TODAY Sports

Jed:

The uniforms that should be standard are the entire Tiller-era throwbacks. That is a uniform combination that screams Purdue and doesn’t look like a cheap version of whatever Nike gave Oregon once upon a time.

The one change I would make is that the pants, stripes, and helmet have got to match and we know it needs to be closer to actual old gold. Army and Navy have gotten that color, so we know Nike can get it for Purdue. I think it is just a matter of someone finally putting their foot down and telling Nike ‘this is what we want.

Ryan:

This is a difficult choice for me. I will start by saying that because I didn’t grow up with the Tiller era uniforms, they are not my favorite. I do like them and think they make for a really great throwback set, but not as a base. Where I am torn now is whether to choose the gold helmets with just a black stripe or the black helmets with the railroad track stripe. I think I lean towards the gold because it’s such a clean look. That makes the rest of the uniform decision easy though as it needs to go Gold- Black -Gold. So gold helmet, black jersey (can we finally remove or update the cattle catcher shoulders), and gold pants. For what it’s worth, if I had chosen the black helmet, I would have gone all black with the uniforms.