Not as blinding in still photography.While we wait, we naturally move the direction of the conversation to what gets men (and some really chill ladies) out of bed on Saturday mornings. That unequaled place in our lives that little else in life can dare fulfill. Of course I'm talking about fashion; pants in particular. What? Did you think I was going to say "Johnny Simon's abs"?
In all seriousness, more Ohio State uniform shakeups appear to be afoot. Ohio State notably in the early 2000's shifted gears to a shiny pants look that will haunt many of our dreams until our time on this earth has come and gone. Essentially the team went from the familiar aesthetic of the 90's to something that looked somewhere in between a side alley car detail shop paint job and a Danelectro guitar (or pedal).
The old and busted aesthetic.The brotherhood of the traveling pants underwent its next major etch-a-sketch design job around the time the team abandoned their uniforms of the 90's, the latter portion of the 80's, and the championship-era of the first half of the 2000's. The entire re-branding was a move, lest I remind us, that was frowned upon by over 90% of Dispatch readers. In fact, had 11W been cooking with gas at the same level the site is now, it's pretty likely we would've hit darn near 95% in a poll around these parts to express the cumulative disgust. But as the gray and white shoulder stripes devolved into the red-and-white ones before them, the pants also experienced a dramatic change, losing that shiny silver luster and instead transitioning into more of a bizarre egg-white-meets-tan.
The cries for change are hardly a new thing; "you're the Scarlet-and-Gray not the Scarlet-and-Off-White" or the like could be heard from some amateur Tim Cook (who'd long since forcefully retired from actually being able to rock athletic pants) at least once or twice a season in Ohio Stadium. The good news for those of us solidly in the pro-gray pants lobby is that there appears to be a rather strong chance we're shortly going to be finally getting our way. The Dispatch's Ken Gordon, who's become a kind of go to source for adding legitimacy to the scuttlebutt for all things Ohio State of late, had as formal of an acknowledgement as we've seen on the twitterwebs of late:
A few other Buckeye beat writer types who'd been in attendance1 at the practices have also echoed similar sentiments about a rather tangible difference in the tone of the pants this season. You can be the judge for yourself here. Our own Keith tried to probe deeper (via the magic of social media, no less), having raised the very valid point that the shiny pants had been abandoned several years back, but per Chimdi Chewka, Gordon assured that even the players are seeing the difference.
The Michigan-Ohio State "Pro Combat" faux-throwback shameless corporate feces-fest (Nike's official name for the project; honest) pants are perhaps a rather interesting parallel for the senior defensive back to draw. I mean, those pants were dark, dark gray. However, even if not that dramatic of a shift, I think it's pretty undeniable the pants appear to have taken some kind of step in a new direction; whether that's the right one, I'll leave open to debate.
Tressel Hands If you missed EDSBS' "first hand" account of how The Vested One rolls when it comes to keeping it real, please stop everything you're doing and atone ASAP. The read is worth it for this magnificent gem alone.
- 1While we had a presence at 2010 Media Day, technological woes ultimately blindsided us. We'll win the war on proprietary media formats (and in general get better about getting this stuff out to you guys in a timely fashion) yet. Mark our words.
