Oregon’s wild uniforms really have helped win football games

Oregon came from nowhere to become a power, and the transformation didn’t reach high gear until Nike overhauled its image. Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples writes about branding in college football, with the multi-uniformed Ducks a frequent example of its importance.

This stuff works, from grabbing the attention of recruits ...

(Four-star recruit Royce Freeman) figured he should begin paying attention to college football. The biggest game the first Saturday of that season featured a team in white jerseys with purple-and-gold trim (LSU) against a team wearing black uniforms with neon-yellow highlights and a matching O on the side of the helmet. “I wanted to see who would win,” says Freeman, now a sophomore tailback at Oregon. “The neon team or the regular-colored team.” The neon team did not win, but a seed was planted.

... to making faraway prospects familiar with Oregon coaches, to players feeling ownership of what they’re wearing on Saturdays, and even to quarterbacks getting to take advantage of vision-friendly color combinations. There’s a reason teams across all sports are taking lessons from the Ducks.

Awk-ward. Jim Harbaugh went on Colin Cowherd’s radio show, and things went so poorly, the host hung up. Cowherd was trying to get some normal human answers out of Harbaugh, and unfortunately -- or fortunately, if you like awkward interviews -- Harbaugh is not up for talk radio games.

Sounds easy! Bill Connelly’s preview of Texas Tech is pretty simple: They seem to have gotten the air raid thing down, they just need to play significantly better defense and have better luck, and they should be alright. See, simple!

Top Dawg, in a bad way. In terms of resources, location and recruiting, Georgia should be one of the best in the country, year in and year out. However, since they rode Herschel Walker to a championship in 1980, no program in the country has done so little with so much.

LinkedIn, your No. 1 resource for determining the right candidates for Big 12 expansion.

It’s (not) Division I football! Believe it or not, America has a national football team that plays against other countries. Believe it or not, our national team coach is Dan Hawkins. He talked with us about what life is like around the little-known international game.

Someone call the fire marshal! Eleven programs averaged more people at home games than they have capacity for at their stadiums, based on these attendance rankings.

Colorado State, Big 12 candidate? An analysis shows CSU’s not an awful choice.

Different. Weather is a frequent cause of games being rescheduled, but the Villanova-Penn game this September is being moved because ... the Pope is visiting.

High fashion. Nike unveiled its new set of uniforms for Tennessee, who ditched Adidas for the swoosh back in January. Nike gave them a pretty subdued touch, but did include a pretty wild Smokey third uniform. Two thumbs up.

The SEC’s historical big six. Of course Alabama looks the best here, but Florida looks pretty great, too.

Smart. A contract extension for Randy Edsall might not sound significant, but it’s big for Maryland in one important way: It greatly reduces his buyout, which is helpful for a program with budget issues.

Crootin’! Florida picked up the commitment of four-star 2017 quarterback Jake Allen, and Alligator Army calls it “potentially seismic” for the program.

How to hate your own team, the step-by-step guide that is, yes, written by Notre Dame fans.