I am officially on record as thinking alternate uniforms are cool and good.
In 2023, "Ohio State football players wearing something different for a game is neat" isn't exactly a bold take. The Buckeyes have worn alternate duds dozens of times (depending on how you define "alternate", I guess), and by now it is pretty well established that Ohio State will don something other than their usual scarlet and gray at least once per season.
This has been the prerogative for both Nike and OSU going back to at least 2009, one of the first notable instances of an "alternate" uniform, in the modern sense, being worn by the Buckeyes. That particular jersey was an homage to the 1954 national championship-winning team, and when I used dark magic to peer back in time to see how the Eleven Warriors commentariat reacted to the new threads, I was pleasantly surprised that the overall reaction was pretty... positive?
Especially given that the alternate uniforms were being worn in The Game, but maybe the general state of Michigan football in 2009 meant that people were ready for any kind of juice to be injected back into the rivalry. Additionally, making horrible alternate uniform concepts has been a pet industry of college football fans since the invention of the internet, so the acceptance of their actual existence probably wasn't too shocking.
Anyway, my thoughts about the 2009 unis today echo the thoughts of this particular commenter, because he's me:
Wow, great job at looking at the bright side of life, 2009 Johnny! You were wrong about the helmet numbers, those are in fact sweet, but you were right about the pants being dope.
While there's been several Michigan games since that have featured alternate uniforms, Ryan Day seems less willing than his predecessors to mess with the overall look of the rivalry:
“I like the traditional uniforms,” Day said. “I love that part of college football. I think that some of our players and recruits like to see a different style and a different swag and look to the uniforms, and that’s great, but I’m more of a traditionalist.”
Which is a fair take that I have zero problems with; there's something comforting about watching Ohio State and Michigan line up against each other each year looking roughly the same as they have for the past several decades.
But, if alternate uniforms are going to happen regardless, and we know that they are:
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) July 17, 2023
Then my suggestion would be that Ohio State also go out of its way to codify when and how these uniforms are deployed.
In the past, the Buckeyes have worn alternate uniforms against the likes of Nebraska and Wisconsin and Michigan State and Penn State and various bowl teams, sometimes for "black outs" or "gray outs" or "scarlet outs", and sometimes for a weird Sicario reference that was a team motto for whatever reason. They've worn them to honor past Heisman winners and national championship teams. They've worn them in September and October and November and December and January.
All of this seems a little haphazard, and the one additional element to alternate uniforms that I think Ohio State should add is to try and make their appearance centered around a predictable yearly event. In other words, if you're going to have a "black out" game (or the like), just do that and have the alternate uniforms be worn then.
In fact, one such predictable yearly event already exists. It's called "Halloween", it kicks ass, and it already affords both the prince and the pauper an excuse to wear whatever weird shit they feel like putting on. Making alternate uniforms an event rather than a random happenstance would give it more meaning and help build anticipation to them being worn. I'm not particularly excited about a night game on November 11th, but if I knew that the Buckeyes would be wearing something interesting for Halloween, I would be more likely to make a note of it on my calendar.
With all of that said, a big part of how successful alternate uniforms are comes down to how cool they look, and thus far the Buckeyes have mostly satisfied in that accounting.
The next step is to make sure that, in the absence of by now mostly-exhausted historical variants to model after, there's a way to keep fans engaged.
