A brilliantly insightful new survey of 100 uncommitted high school student athletes who project as future Division I FBS football players has shined a light on just how important a program’s perception of cool is to gaining top recruits, and what those recruits think makes a cool uniform in the first place.
As reported by Pick Six Previews, which commissioned the survey, 72 percent of athletes asked said that a team’s uniforms were either moderately important or very important to their collegiate decision. However, within those results were more telling results: The recruits overwhelmingly gravitate toward Nike, and they really like the flashiest uniforms they can find.
Of the 94 who completed the entire survey, 60 identified Oregon as having the nation’s best uniforms. The next closest choice was Baylor, followed by TCU. All three are Nike schools who have employed one-off uniform designs for big games in recent years. Conversely, the top two results in the “worst uniform” category were both strong heritage brands: Alabama and Penn State. Other stalwart power programs such as Michigan, Texas and USC also received votes.
Clearly, it’s safe to say that recruits are attracted to “modern” (read: varied and gimmicky) uniforms more than their more heritage-based counterparts. And those decisions count when it comes to recruiting, too: The schools on the best uniform list averaged 8.8 wins while the worst uniforms earned just 6.5 wins in 2015.
Of course, if uniforms were the true be-all, end-all, Oregon would finish with the top recruiting class every year. They haven’t yet, which means that success on the field still counts for a lot in recruiting, at least as much as a fourth silver uniform.