Inside The Huskies

Huskies Get All Dressed Up to Face Arizona State in Rematch

The UW rolls out new, all-purple uniforms for Saturday night's game.

Dan Raley

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Oregon began this trend of wearing new-age, new-design and often one-off uniforms, because college football players, including those at the University of Washington, like shiny, new things.

Traditionalists, however, warn that you're just messing with the football gods and stirring up unneeded trouble by breaking from the wardrobe norm and pulling on unrecognizable jerseys and helmets while going into battle. 

After all, teams such as Alabama, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Texas, Oklahoma and USC, to name a few, just don't tinker with their game-day look.

However, here come the Huskies against Arizona State on Saturday night, dressed all in purple, with fancy gold stripes, numbers and names stitched in to the fabric, topped off by the most noticeable alteration of all — the re-emergence of the purple helmet.

"I like them a lot actually," senior wide receiver Giles Jackson of the uniforms, this coming from someone who once wore Michigan's maize and blue helmet with its classic winged design.

The players made available for interviews this week to seem to enjoy the fact they get to model an adidas-designed example of 21st century football threads.

Yet one long-time staunch UW supporter immediately launched into a diatribe over the willingness of the school to let the 2016 CFP-bound and 9-0 Huskies go all black against USC and proceed to lose 26-13 at home.

"See how well that worked out," he said. 

Another team follower pointed to the 2021 Huskies making a big deal of wearing the throwback uniforms of the 1991 national championship team against UCLA only to lose 24-17 that day. 

Over and above new uniforms, UW offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb earlier in the week talked about how he would try to motivate his players this week against the last team, Arizona State, to beat the Huskies.

"I just thought of the same scenario of overwhelming favorite playing an underdog team," Grubb said. "[It was] just the same amount or preparation so the challenge is easy. If we say we're all about the standard, and the standard doesn't change, whether you're playing the Ducks or Arizona State. I told the guys I'm excited to be out there and see if that's just talk or really who we are."

Which brings everyone back to the UW's new football threads being rolled out, which is different from the standard. 

Change is good, yet change is nerve-wracking. Let those Husky runway models hit the catwalk, show off what they're wearing, and see how it turns out against heavy underdog Arizona State. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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