Hobbs column: LSU fashion fails an unforced error

OK, listen up now.

LSU has the weekend off, which gives us the opportunity to stray from the frivolous matters of the College Football Playoff, corralling a running a quarterback and maybe the chance of the Tigers occasionally gaining more than a yard or two themselves on terra firma.

Any hope of getting anywhere near the former probably depends on how well they handle the two latter challenges.

I’m sure they’re working on it, possibly with all due diligence.

But those delicate niceties will take care of themselves, probably  in due time.

Fretting over them during an open date won’t do much good I’m afraid, even amongst the most loyal (and pessimistic) fans.

But the break does provide ample opportunity to take a deep breath, gather one’s innermost thoughts and tackle a far more perplexing problem for the Tigers.

To wit: Who in the name of Jhorts & Crocs dressed the Tigers for those last two road games?

Now, that was not only embarrassing it was a classic unforced error.

And unlike LSU’s comical attempts to tackle Mr. Marcel Reed of Texas A&M, the Tigers had plenty of time to recover from the glaring fashion faux pas they actually sprung a week earlier on an unsuspecting fan base at Arkansas.

Did they watch no game film from the Arkansas fashion debacle?

It almost made The Boot, that gawky monstrosity that is supposed to provide in-game incentive, look downright debonair by comparison.

We speak, of course, of the all-white uniforms — helmet, jersey, trousers, the works — that the Tigers wore in both of their last two games.

Thank goodness LSU didn’t play on Halloween weekend this year. No telling what they would have come up with. Stripes and polka dots maybe?

To my football fashion sense at least, Auburn is about the only team that can really pull off head-to-toe, all-white unis.

Good for the War Eagles.

LSU doesn’t need to be messing around with that.

It wasn’t the first time the Tigers have done this, of course. They have gradually over the last few years experimented more and more with “alternative uniforms.”

The coaches will tell you the players like them — although I’ve never heard any players actually say that.

Even if true, you know my answer to that by now, right? Namely: That’s why you generally put the adults in charge of the decision-making — no matter how much the players are getting paid these days.

For that matter, for that kind of NIL money, they can wear what you tell them to and like it.

What I call the “Dress Whites” — as opposed to the “All Whites” — is truly one of college football’s more iconic and instantly recognizable uniforms.

That uniform is a “brand” in itself, so to speak, which seems to be all the rage these days in corporate America (of which college football is certainly now a part).

When you see those gold (well, yellow) pants, white, shoulder-striped jerseys and gold (yellow) helmets bobbing in the pregame tunnel, you dang well know who’s about to play football.

Sorry, but the All-Whites pale in comparison.

And LSU pretty well has a unique advantage in the “brand” wars.

A lot of really snazzy uniforms — looking at you, Southern Cal, maybe Michigan and Ohio State — don’t translate well when you force-fit white jerseys on them.

Yet since LSU wears white jerseys as its normal home attire — and looks great in them —  the Tigers generally get to take them on the road, where home teams almost always wear their colors.

Side track: Texas A&M also has some explaining to do. For Saturday’s game the Aggies wore all black, which isn’t even a school color, and replaced the familiar aTm logo on the helmets with a script “Aggies.”

Maybe they had their reasons.

But we’ll limit this scolding to LSU’s fashion sins.

Those all-whites weren’t the worst looking thing LSU has ever come up when trying to go alternative. It’s not the end of the world.

It just didn’t look like LSU.

And to do it twice? In a row?

What were they thinking?

The Tigers long have had a tradition of breaking out the purple jerseys once a year at home.

No harm done, really, at least when in moderation for what is really a sad look when those jerseys are between gold (yellow) pants and hats.

They even stumbled onto a workable combination a few years back for a reasonable different look. It turns out when you put those purple jerseys between white helmets and pants, it’s not half bad.

You could unlock those bad boys out once a year, if you must, but beyond that you’re just fiddling and tinkering with something that isn’t broken.

I’m not ready to say it cost the Tigers the Texas A&M game. I’m not ready to say it didn’t either.

But there’s no reason for the Tigers to ever lose the fashion show.

 

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