Confessions Of A Nike Pro Combat Uniform Addict

Published August 2, 2011 - 11:47am

NEW: Discuss this topic in the Google+ community for SEC fans.

When it comes to men surfing the internet, there are some general laws that remain in place. There are some big businesses on the internet that feed off these very laws. Law #1 is that a lot of men look at pornography. Law #2 is that college football fans read lots of information about their teams on the internet. Since we at Saturday Down South don’t want anything to do with law #1 for a whole variety of reasons, we went with law #2 as the basis for creating this site.

Now, there are some sub-laws to law #2. Let’s call them laws 2a and 2b. They are as follows:

• Law 2a: Sometimes, college football websites will attempt to get boost page views by pulling some strategies from law #1 when it fits the context. For example, consider an SEC news site that randomly has an image gallery of Erin Andrews on their site. That gallery is crucial to delivering the news to SEC fans!
• Law 2b: Sports fans are also hugely drawn to uniforms – especially when they are Nike Pro Combat Uniforms. This isn’t easily explained, but it shows some eerie characteristics to those of you who check out pornography on a regular basis.

The reality is that nike pro combat uniforms are the safe-to-view-at-work equivalent of pornography for millions of men, except of course ignoring the fact that pornogarphy is damaging to your relationships, yourself, and probably a bunch of other stuff…. eh, you get the point.

Check Google Trends and you’re likely to see the top searched items on a random Wednesday in August are Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears and Nike Pro Combat Uniforms.

If you run your own business, talk to your IT administrator and see if you can get anything related to Nike Pro Combat Uniforms blocked on your firewall. You’ll probably see a nice increase in productivity from your employees. Nike is slowly but surely catching up to fantasy football as the #1 office productivity killer for men between the ages of 25 and 45.

The difference of course is that the Nike Pro Combat Uniform productivity kill is more of a short lived productivity stall out versus a multi-month productivity drag. For example, Bob in accounting might still be productive in the fall, but he’s running at about 80% capacity for a string of several months due to fantasy football. Now, when Nike releases the Pro Combat Uniforms for his team, his productivity drops to 0% for a couple of hours or days while he tries to comprehend the 5 trillion wondrous color combinations that his team can now wear on Saturdays.

For those of you really weird folks out there who want to turn the 24 hour shutdown in productivity from a uni release into a more prolonged drag on your productivity similar to fantasy football, there is the site Uni Watch. The slogan is “The Obsessive Study of Athletics Aesthetics.” I can’t decide if that is incredibly nerdy or really awesome. Probably both. Similar to two fantasy baseball gurus arguing WHIP and slugging percentage over lunch which I’ve been known to do.

Here’s a tip for Uni Watch… devote an entire section of your site to Nike Pro Combat Uniforms – similar to MrSEC and the Erin Andrews gallery, but more relevant. Shoot, maybe SDS will add a Nike Pro Combat Uni section?

It’s no surprise that one of the hottest articles here on SDS over the last couple weeks was the post on Georgia’s Nike Pro Combat uni’s to be worn against Boise State opening night. The article didn’t even include a photo of what the uniforms will look like, instead it includes a photo of what some obsessed uniform nerd skilled in photoshop speculates it might look like.

The first time we ever tweeted a link to an article for a Big 12 school was when it recently came out that Oklahoma State had received their freshly designed myriad of uniform possibilities similar to Oregon – yes, they were Nike Pro Combat Uniforms.

Is it just me, or is the label Nike Pro Combat Uniform about half of the awesomeness that is attributed to these things? I mean honestly, I can hardly even tell the difference half the time between the regular uniforms and the Nike Pro Combat Uniforms. The major exception is when Nike did an utter fail on those miserable one-shoulder colored uniforms for Florida and Virginia Tech. Those were awful.

When is Nike going to produce the Pro Combat Uniform line for the regular slobs that buy Nike gear? Can I get some Pro Combat gym shorts? Even better, how about some Pro Combat slacks and button downs to wear to work? The productivity boost from those would surely have to be more than enough to compensate for the time I spend at work on Uni Watch.

If you thought that Nike Pro Combat Uniforms were a big deal in regular season games, well, it’s nothing compared to when Nike brings out the goods for BCS bowls. For last year’s BCS Championship, Oregon – the prize of Nike – was participating so Nike decided to go big. My only concern is why they didn’t come up with some name even more crazy than standard the standard Pro Combat Uniform. Something like Special Forces Osama Bin Laden Death Squad Uniform.

Nobody who visits this site gives a crap about Oregon, yet this article got 90 comments. Again, college football porn.

With Auburn – one of the flagship schools for Under Armour – facing off against Oregon in the title game, it was the perfect storm for uniform nerds. Uni Watch considered shutting the site following the game because simply put, this moment would never be beat. Meanwhile, the hippie fans of Oregon thought that having Nike backing them meant they could beat a better SEC team. Cam Newton, Michael Dyer and Nick Fairley could have been wearing wooden clogs made in Holland and still have torn up those neon-clad Ducks.

If you visit the Nike site, you can read the following excerpt which is sure to get you pumped if you’re into this stuff:

Around this time of year, diehard college football fans start looking for the signs. Any indication that we’re getting closer to watching college gridiron warriors trade paint on Saturdays is enough to get the heart rate accelerated. One of the more recent harbingers of Fall is the announcement of the new Nike Pro Combat uniforms for the upcoming season, and which teams will be sporting the next-generation battle gear when they storm out of the tunnel come gameday. It’s a buzz that lasts from opening weekend through the National Championship game, and this year’s lineup is guaranteed to bring it.

As is the new tradition, the Nike Pro Combat uniforms were each designed to be a tribute to the unique heritage and history of the individual college football programs. And as would be expected from Nike, they’re also the pinnacle of on-field innovation from head to toe. Built to be lighter, faster, stronger and tougher than anything ever worn on the football turf at any level, the 2011 Nike Pro Combat uniforms are truly a look into the future of gameday gear and apparel. And just wait till you see how they look.

Tradition and innovation collide this Fall in the 2011 Nike Pro Combat college football uniforms. Prepare for battle.

Awesome.

The teams slated to suit up the Pro Combat Uniforms are:

• Oregon (vs LSU, Cowboy Stadium, Sept 3rd)
• Georgia (vs Boise State, Georgia Dome, Sept 3rd)
• Boise State (vs Georgia, Georgia Dome, Sept 3rd)
• Michigan State (vs Michigan, Oct 15th)
• LSU (vs Auburn, Oct 22nd)
• Ohio State (vs Wisconsin, Oct 29th)
• Stanford (vs Notre Dame, Nov 27th)
• Army (vs Navy, Dec 10th)
• Navy (vs Army, Dec 10th)

Tags: Nike, Nike Pro Combat Uniforms