Black is Black....I Want My Maroon & Gold Back

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a long standing, loyal and totally committed fan of the University of Minnesota football and basketball programs.  I have been for about 60 years, going back to my childhood days growing up on the farm in southwest Minnesota.  I have always loved the maroon and gold color combination worn by the Golden Gopher teams and I was proud to wear those colors myself as they were also the school colors worn by the Heron Lake Falcons  when I was earning  varsity letters during my high school athletic career.  Sixty years of unwavering devotion to the Maroon & Gold! 

Tonight the Ohio State Buckeyes, currently ranked #22 in the latest  Associated Press NCAA Basketball poll, will visit Williams Arena to take on my hallowed Gophers and I’m not sure that I’ll be able to bring myself to watch.  Why?  Because tonight the University of Minnesota men’s basketball program is doing something so reprehensible and repulsive that I don’t think I can bear to see it. Tonight the Golden Gophers plan to wear……….black uniforms.  Black Uniforms!  With gold trim!  Like Iowa, or Purdue.  It’s enough to make me want to run to the bathroom stool.  The very thought of it nauseates me.

Why are they doing this?  Who is responsible for this abomination?  I’m pretty sure it’s not head coach Richard Pitino.  He has enough to be concerned about right now with two senior guards underperforming and a bench weakened by some disgruntled players leaving the program.  Plus, I think he’s just too smart to be so stupid.  I’m certain that this is the work of  some athletic administration underlings who have the misguided notion that black will somehow excite the student fan base.  They’re promoting this game as a “black out” night and all of the fans are supposed to wear black.

Now, that would make some sense if Williams Arena was the home of the Iowa Hawkeyes which, of course, it's not..  Williams Arena has been the sacred shrine of Golden Gopher basketball since 1928 and every one of those teams have worn Maroon and Gold.

Coach Pitino and DeAndre Mathieu 
wearing the Maroon & Gold!

The U of M isn’t the first program to be infected with this tradition attacking syndrome. There has been an epidemic of this insidious nonsense spreading throughout college and professional sports in the last few years and there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop it.  Locally both the University of Sioux Falls and South Dakota State University have  caught the dreadful bug.  USF, whose colors have traditionally been Purple and White, now wear black uniforms in football and basketball, while the Jackrabbits of SDSU have besmirched their Blue and Gold legacy with black and grey. 

This absurdity of messing with tradition in sports uniforms goes far beyond just desecrating color schemes, however.  Don’t even get me started on the superfluity of the University of Oregon’s football uniforms. 

This summer the Minnesota Twins, whom I hold in much the same esteem as my Golden Gophers, have decided that they no longer will have pin stripes adorning their home uniforms, and they have added gold to their traditional navy blue and red color scheme.  This isn’t the first time in their 54 year history that they’ve monkeyed around with their uniform design.  Thankfully, they brought back their original home uniform, the one that they wore when I first fell in love with the team back in 1961(read more about that here) as an alternative home uniform a few years ago.  They will continue to wear that one on occasion again this season.  I always enjoy watching the games a little more whenever they sport that traditional look.  Unfortunately their main home uniform this season will have a more peculiar and unfamiliar look. Obviously, I am not impressed.

Harmon Killebrew wearing the
 traditional Twins Uniform.

I’m not a New York Yankee fan or a Green Bay Packer fan which, in both cases, is an understatement, but I do greatly admire their tradition.  A tradition that is manifested in their enduring uniform designs.  There is no doubt as to who they are, all you need is to see the uniform to know that it’s the Yankees or the Packers.  At the college level the Michigan Wolverines come to mind.  They’ve had those same, strange looking winged helmets since 1935.  I hope they never change, and I’ll bet they never will.  I firmly believe that the success that the Yankees, Packers and Michigan Wolverines have had over the years has a great deal to do with the heritage of their attire.

But, back to tonight’s game at Williams Arena.  I suppose I could just listen to the game on the radio, which I did so often in my youth.  I would listen to the play by play of legendary Gopher announcer Ray Christensen and, though I wasn’t there, I could imagine how the Minnesota players looked in those Maroon & Gold uniforms as they took on the Hawkeyes or the Boilermakers, who were wearing their ugly black and gold.  If only Ray hadn‘t retired in 2001.  So what’s an old curmudgeon to do.  Maybe I’ll just listen to these old clips of Ray in his heyday and read about the Gopher’s victory in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune tomorrow morning.

http://www.pavekmuseum.org/christensen.mp3