U.S.C. – Uniforms Soon-to-be Crisis

College football without tradition is peanut butter without jelly, AC/DC without Angus, a bowling ball without a liquid center. Yet some are hellbent on trampling tradition. Tune your AM radio juuuust right on a clear evening and you might hear evil cackles eminating from Beaverton, Ore. Somewhere there in a mountaintop castle, backed by perpetual lightning crashes — or in a design showroom, whichever — conspirators collude to tear the very fabric of college football tradition. And they do so via the actual fabric.

How else do you explain the all-cardinal, black helmeted abominations USC is alleged to trot out this fall vs. UCLA? PAC-12 footbal maven Petros Papadakis was all over this yesterday, tweeting the concept images. These duds (an apt descriptor in more ways than one) are an affront not only to tradition, but common decency. I demand the FCC intervene before a nationwide television audience is exposed.

And don’t think it won’t happen. Lane Kiffin greenlit (or would it be blacklit?) Tenneessee’s Halloween-inspired alt, a look so bad former XFL uniform designers were presumably shaking their heads in disgust. Arizona State introducing a black, almost carbon copy of Oregon’s uniform? OK. Washington State all-grays? Sure, why not. These aren’t programs with uniforms dyed into the very wool of college football history. Fear the day Alabama takes the field in a helmet emblazoned with a giant elephant head, or Penn State marches into Beaver Stadium with gray tops and a navy helmet. That day is coming.