Nick Saban Makes Thoughts Clear on Potential Alabama Alternate Uniforms

Saban: “To me, there’s an expectation that when we run out of the tunnel, this is the brand.”

As long as Nick Saban is on the sideline at Alabama, don’t expect to see the Crimson Tide dressed in anything other than traditional threads. 

Flashy alternate uniforms remain all the rage throughout much of college football, with Oregon leading the way with its ever-changing array. Alabama, on the other hand, keeps it as simple and traditional as it gets.

At home, Saban’s club wears a crimson helmet, with crimson jerseys and white pants. On the road, the team swaps in a white jersey. No one can argue with the results; the program has six national titles under Saban, with seven College Football Playoff appearances since the start of the postseason tournament in 2014. Alabama also has regularly recruited the top class in the country, beating out programs with far more modern uniform choices.

For Saban, it comes down to tradition and maintaining a well-established brand of excellence. He mentioned a push for the program to swap over to white helmets for a game during this week’s Hey Coach radio show to reiterate this point.

“That’s why we don’t change uniforms all the time,” Saban said, per AL.com. “We wear the same uniform. They want to wear white helmets. Everybody wants to do this and that. To me, there’s an expectation that when we run out of the tunnel, this is the brand. This is the culture. This is what people expect to see.”

White helmets wouldn’t be unprecedented for the Crimson Tide. The team used that look throughout the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s and last wore them in 1983 and ’84. However, under Saban, the biggest change to the uniform has come with a few games in Nike’s “pro combat” uniform line, though the design changes there are minimal and don’t do much to change the traditional look of the Crimson Tide. 

“We have a responsibility and obligation to do it to a certain standard and level of excellence and with a lot of character,” Saban said. “That’s kind of how I try to preach it to them.”

So when the Crimson Tide emerge from the tunnel at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET to face Utah State, fans know exactly what they’ll see: crimson lids, crimson jerseys and white pants.

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