The power of Terps uniform colors
Fridge says he lies awake at night pondering new ways to motivate his players. That includes thinking about jerseys.
Equipment manager Ron Ohringer was telling me recently about the time he and the coach surprised even the players by switching to black jerseys for the Virginia homecoming game in 2005.
“The team didn’t even know the black jerseys were here. It was basically only myself and coach Friedgen that knew,” Ohringer said.
“We had the red jersey with the white pants,” he said. “But when they were outside for warmups we pulled out the black jerseys and put them out by their lockers. And as they were coming in from warmups, it was kind of like we had just won the Super Bowl. They were just going nuts,” Ohringer said.
Who knows if the jerseys had anything to do with it, but the Terps rolled up 33 first downs and 570 total yards and beat Virginia 45-33.
Maryland’s main colors, of course, are red and white. But there’s been talk of incorporating more gold into the design.
Uniform changes are delicate propositions.
"Coach Friedgen doesn’t stop talking about how many letters he got when he first got hired to get away from black helmets. The alumni think of us as red and white and they don’t want black as a primary uniform color," Ohringer said.
"I think we pretty much stick with red and white as our primary uniforms. Black is a trim color. It’s every now and then," he said.
Comments
Ugliest uniforms in the ACC, no question.
Posted by: leo | October 14, 2008 3:21 PM
I was never into those black helmets at all.Don't change too much now;we have enough trouble trying to find our recievers sometimes.If we need a uni to extract more motivation then put the cheerleaders closer to the sidelines so the players can hear them,too.
Posted by: Dan R. | October 15, 2008 6:55 AM