If Indiana football wears black uniforms, make it the oval

Good afternoon.

If you’ve at all paid attention to the #chatter going around the Indiana Twitter universe you may have noticed a trend among adidas schools this year: a great many of them are getting alternate black football uniforms.

This trend has been noticed and tracked by our guy Ryan Cotter.

If everyone is doing it, a black alternate may be inevitable for the Hoosiers. If they’ve gotta, they shouldn’t wear black just for the sake of it. They should bring back the oval logo of Indiana football yore, specifically the black version.

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Yes, I am aware of the history behind this particular uniform. No I am not old enough to have been at this game, neither is a sizable portion of the fanbase including literally everyone in the student section.

Indiana very much lost the first and only matchup in which the Hoosiers wore these bad boys. I, however, do not particularly care. A uniform isn’t why that game ended the way it did and they don’t look that bad.

I do not love the current main Indiana uniforms. The ones from the 2019-20 season looked great and featured the school colors. Don’t love that the current ones feature a lot of black, not a school color, as an accent.

Which is why I’d prefer Indiana to not just throw together a black uniform for the sake of it. Why bother when you have something from the past that could serve as a throwback for a single game this time please.

The oval doesn’t look great, the era it hails from wasn’t exactly full of wins and it’s not the trident. I get why people don’t like it. But one of the greatest athletes in the history of the university, Antwaan Randle El, wore it when he graced Memorial Stadium as a human highlight reel.

It may not look great, but his play absolutely did.

If Indiana were to make a black uniform just for the sake of it, it’d be another forgotten, disliked alternate akin to those of 2020. There’s no storyline there, just an empty product. Utilizing the oval would solve that issue.

Make it happen.