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If you’ve been on the old bird app when it’s been at all operational as of late, you probably saw that Indiana football appears to have received some new uniforms for the upcoming 2023 season.
If you looked a little closer you may have seen a breakdown from Indiana uniform knower Ryan Cotter.
These appear to be using a cheaper material than Washington’s recently unveiled uniforms. Washington seems to have a knit material. Notice the seams on the side of the #iufb jersey. https://t.co/KddJSJ4iLr pic.twitter.com/sCM4KODNxj
— Ryan Cotter (@Rygi13) June 27, 2023
Now we wrote a bit about the aesthetics on display here, but Ryan got into the actual make of the new digs, which appear to be of cheaper quality than other adidas partnered schools like Washington and Texas A&M.
Well, lo and behold, it looks like Ryan received some intel per a post from UniWatch’s Paul Lukas that tells us why that is.
According to that DM, Indiana is within the top-13 adidas schools but is on the outside looking in at the top 6. The Indiana brand is strong... but mostly for basketball. Football drives more dollars in college athletics so it obviously stands to reason why schools with bigger football programs are ahead.
Those top 6 schools get a bit more attention from the three stripes, if the DM is to be believed.
So, if this is all correct, Indiana just got lower quality jerseys than other power five programs. No good! Bad! They’re not alone in this boat either, it seems like Rutgers got the same deal.
Alright so that’s the raw info but what does it mean, what can we all take away?
Well, for starters, the Indiana football brand... needs some work. Look, it’s the losingest program in the history of the Power Five, not a great thing to be if there’s no base to build off of, but something can still come of it.
That’s really the reason why the uniforms look like that. Brands have a reason to prioritize schools with more eyes on them on the gridiron. On the court, adidas made sure to sign two hoosiers to individual nil deals.
But yeah having evidence that adidas apparently doesn’t put all that much work into Indiana football uniforms compared to other schools could get interesting when it comes time to negotiate a new deal.
One way or another Indiana’s gonna have to wear these in the Fall. We’ll see how that goes!
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