It’s official — sort of. The
University of Michigan football uniform, thanks to an ESPN.com
poll, has been dubbed the greatest uniform in all of sports.
- Janna Hutz
But according to the ESPN website, the crowning of the
Wolverines only came after some deliberation. At first glance, the
Michigan threads were blown out by its opponent’s — the
Denver Broncos’ uniform — in the championship game.
Someone at ESPN, though, threw the challenge flag, and upon
further review, it was discovered that one person had placed over
70,000 votes for the Broncos.
ESPN decided to throw out these votes, giving Michigan football
a controversial “national title.”
For those of you that have better ways to spend your time that
comparing uniforms on a sports website, here’s a brief
rundown of Michigan’s road to the title.
In round one, the winged helmet matched up with Louisiana
State’s football apparel. Let’s be honest. No team
sporting purple is going to win a “Best Uniform”
contest, and as such, Louisiana State put up about as much of a
fight as Notre Dame did in the Big House five weeks ago.
Speaking of the Irish, they were the second round uniform
opponents for Michigan. At this point in the bracket, the Irish
were the only team with two different outfits still left in the
draw. Their traditional blue and gold battled the Maize and Blue,
while the Irish’s bright green “Tackle me, I’m
Irish” uniforms matched up with the Boston Red Sox’s
throwbacks.
And out of 160,278 votes cast, the Fritz Crisler-inspired
Michigan attire grabbed 50.1 percent of the votes. Sorry, Rudy.
Good effort painting those helmets, though.
The rivalries kept coming in the Sweet 16 for the boys from Ann
Arbor, as they were matched up with Penn State’s traditional
white and blue uniforms.
Kudos to the Nittany Lions for not wanting to break with that
tradition, but TV’s were able to handle color years and years
ago, so it might be time to take advantage of that.
The JoePa-faithful put up a fight for the Wolverines, but as per
the norm nowadays in Happy Valley, the Nittany Lions came up on the
short end of the stick.
Michigan garnered nearly 60 percent of the vote, and the team
that made the Big Ten into that awkward 11-team phase was left by
the side of the road.
At this point, the bracket brings back some awful memories for
the Wolverines. Michigan’s win over Penn State took it out of
the College Football Region and matched it up with the baby blue of
North Carolina basketball.
You remember North Carolina —1993 national title game,
Chris Webber, TIMEOUT!
But wait! Thanks to NCAA sanctions, that game never happened!
With a fresh burst of confidence, Michigan bullied past North
Carolina’s just-feminine-enough-to-be-masculine entry into
the field.
So it was on to the Final Four for Michigan, and a showdown with
the San Diego Chargers’ powder blue, white and yellow
alternate uniforms, which are covered in lightening bolts.
The other side of the bracket continued to keep open the
possibility of a Michigan vs. Detroit Red Wings final, as the
Wings’ red-and-white effort (for the last time, the logo in
the middle is a wheel with a wing coming out of it —
it’s the Motor City) were battling the Broncos.
The Chargers, champions of the Wild Card Region with a
surprising victory over those
Notre-Dame-football-meets-the-Hulkish-bright-green-uniforms-of-the-Irish
in the Sweet 16, then knocked off the Chicago Cubs in the Elite
Eight.
The Cubs, no doubt because of their playoff run as opposed to
the fashionableness of their blue jerseys with the letter
‘C’ hugging a baby bear, had come out of the MLB
region.
San Diego’s electric (get it … lightning bolts,
electricity … forget it) powder blue uniforms proved no
match, as Michigan advanced easily into the finals.
And then came the controversy. The Broncos’ unis —
dark blue with some XFL-ish orange stripes down the side and what
appears to be a decapitated, on-fire horse head on the helmet
— made a stunning last-minute rally, receiving, according to
ESPN, 42,500 of the last 50,000 votes cast to pull off a John
Elway-esque comeback.
As you already know, though, the Wolverines were declared the
victor (or is it The Victors?), forever shaming Denver.
Or at least, shaming them as much as those Creamsicle inside a
huge blueberry uniforms do.
So, when those uniforms come storming onto the field on Saturday
— enjoy it Ann Arbor, the Wolverines are (kind of) national
champions.
Chris Burke can be reached at
“mailto:chrisbur@umich.edu”>chrisbur@umich.edu.