Storied football programs have iconic "looks". All of them do. You should be able to look at a teams and know who you're seeing. When you see USC, Alabama, Penn St., Michigan, FSU, UF, etc., etc., etc. you can tell who you're looking at. An identifiable and recognizable look is part of a "brand". And UM is no different. We are a storied program with an inconic look and our uniforms are part and parcel of our "brand".
This is UM's brand. This is our historical and recognizable look. This is how the college football world identifies and recognizes the University of Mimi football team:
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Now here's what the dip****s at Nike did. There's nothing about this look (or any other that Nike did for us) that was right for UM. The graphics had absolutely zero visual relationship to our recognizable brand identity. Sure, you can take a historical look and update it. But Nike did no such thing. They simply picked a graphic style out of their *** and sent it down to Coral Gables. It literally looks a middle school graphics art class did this. You look at Nike's UM uniforms and you had no idea if you were looking at UM or some other team. Nothing about those unis screamed out "Miami Hurricanes".
And Nike didn't just miss on the graphics. Even the colors were atrocious. UM is located in the most visually tropical parts of the US. Historically, our colors drew from that tropical association; i.e. our colors were bright, vivid, tropical [plant and fruit based, and representative of South Florida. Yet Nike picked colors more appropriate and representative of the the rust belt parts of the mid-west. The orange wasn't tropical, it looked like rust. And the green looked like an industrial cleaning solution or the color of a commercial dumpster, rather than the tropical plant green evocative of SoFl.
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Happily Adidas understands good design principals, respects our brand, and has given us uniforms (after the first year's dumb-*** feathers on the sleeve) that have nailed it. The new graphics of our Adidas uniforms are emblematic and evocative of our historical look, and the colors are bright, vivid and representative of SoFl's tropical color palate. Anyone looking at our Adidas uniforms knows they're looking at the Miami Hurricanes.
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The bottom line is that Nike saddled us with the worst uniforms in program history. Complete and utter garbage. No way should we entrust those clowns with our uniforms in the future. If Youngstown State ever wants to go orange and green, Nike can just pull our old unis off the shelf. The look would work fine for Youngstown St or some other mid-west program. But they never made proper uniforms for SoFl based UM. The Adidas uniforms strike the correct balance between being modern and fresh, while remaining true to our iconic look and brand.