Whatever the quarrel with Adidas, they bailed us out from all the years of Nike's trash uniforms.
Our uniforms stopped looking like the U shortly after Nike took over. And we stopped playing like the U. The two are connected. When our look became indistinguishable from Florida A&M or Pompano Ely HS, our program took a dive. We lost our identity.
We went into decline playing in the Nike uniforms. We didn't look like the U. Now we're now coming back playing in our classic dynasty era uniforms from Adidas. And we're starting to look like the U again on the field as well.
Not only did our uniform graphic design become completely detached from our brand when Nike took over, so did the colors. SoFl is about tropical and vivid colors. SoFl is not Soylent green and rustbelt orange, which is what Nike came up with for some inexplicable reason.
Adidas year one uniforms were a miss. But then they got it right. Whereas every single year of Nike uniforms was a miss once they moved away from our classic look early on. Nike never got it right.
I don't particularly care about Adidas. If folks want to pick apart Adidas, go for it. But to this fan at least, Nike failed us moreso than any apparel company in our history and should be at the bottom of any list to do our uniforms in the future. Nike got everything wrong and nothing right.
