Purdue's new uniform design took time, collaboration

When Nike presented its new uniform designs to Purdue a year ago, the new threads weren’t exactly what the program had in mind.

The jerseys incorporated the stars from the Indiana state flag, introduced a new Purdue hammer logo, had three bold stripes near the shoulders and sported peculiarly shaped pointy numbers.

“It was a total miss,” assistant equipment manager Barry Boyd said.

But not all was lost. A Purdue committee made up of equipment manager Mike Shandrick, Boyd, AD Morgan Burke, Coach Darrell Hazell, Creative Services Manager Paul Sadler, marketing and ticketing director Chris Peludat, sports information personnel and others reiterated its message to the worldwide apparel company, outlining what it liked — the color scheme was perfect — and what it didn’t. It was similar to the message the Boilermakers had given a couple months earlier, when Nike first came to Purdue seeking ideas for a redesign.

“(They wanted ideas): What we thought Purdue meant, what we thought a Boilermaker meant, what we thought our color scheme meant,” said Shandrick, pointing out that Nike’s imitative was part of its eight-year contract with Purdue that ends in 2021, in which the Boilermakers get new uniforms approximately every 4-to-5 years. “And they basically targeted Coach Hazell, (asking) what is your coaching style, what are key words in how you coach, what do you tell your team?

“Nike’s whole thing is that they believe, when the final product is done, they’ve developed a story for you. That your uniform is going to tell a story, so that’s their concept.”

And Nike hit the concept on the second attempt, designing the uniforms that were unveiled by Purdue on April 15 — exactly a year after the failed designs and a day before the ’16 spring game.

They fit what Purdue sought, a clean design with solid colors — home black jerseys, road whites and an alternate gray that might be able to be worn both at home and away (depending on opponent) — plus a cowcatcher outline on the shoulders, a small Purdue train logo on the V-neck and numbers that match the rest of the Boilermaker athletic teams.

“On the shoulders, the concept (we’ve always wanted) has been like the outline of the cowcatcher,” Shandrick said. “That’s truly Purdue, really the biggest significant Purdue-related (graphic), on the jersey.”

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And the jerseys have some nuance, like the “Boiler Up” inside the back neck line that — generally — only players will see while they’re putting them on pregame. And the grays will say "Purdue" across the nameplate, rather than players' surnames.

“We love it,” junior cornerback Da’Wan Hunte said of the uniforms after the spring game.

The uniforms are the second-generation of the Nike Mach Speed, first introduced in the 2014 national playoffs, then worn by about a dozen to 18 teams last season. Purdue is in the second wave. They’re snug, which the players like, says Boyd, allowing for free range of motion and the feel of increased speed.

But look is important too, and now Purdue has a ton of options. Not on the level of Oregon — few team are — but regardless, the Boilermakers can look significantly different every week of the season. With three helmets — traditional gold, white and black (Purdue even had the black painted anthracite for the cancer game last season, then repainted black) — four solid-color, no-stripe pants (gold, black, white, gray) and the three jerseys, there are 36 combinations. And that’s not including adjustments for helmet decals — Purdue has done different stickers for cancer awareness and military appreciation games, along with others, in the past — or other accessories like socks, gloves, etc.

“I like it because it gives us so many different looks now,” Shandrick said. “It gives us everything from truly bland traditional that still looks good, to something where you can go white on the road with gray pants, something totally different that we haven’t done before.

“That’s something that everybody fought for. The theory was to wear something different every game, how many combinations could we do?”

It was a big improvement from those first designs in April of last year. Purdue, Boyd said, understood that the look was only a first Nike draft, but it was off the mark. Nike took the message Purdue conveyed, like Hazell’s thoughts that the university is forward-thinking in its academics, technology and research, and tried to put it into a uniform.

But it didn’t work.

“One (design element) was a secondary patch that they created that would be like our Purdue logo, which no one (understood) that,” Shandrick said. “It had something to do with Indiana (with the stars of the flag) and we’re not Indiana obviously — we have nothing to do with being a Hoosier, you know? — and they didn’t quite get that concept.

“And No. 2, the uniforms at that time were similar to what we have now, but they looked more like UCLA at that point. That was one thing. And the numbers, we just couldn’t agree on. We didn’t like their version of the numbers.”

The second try, which Nike presented last August, was better. And now, Purdue will have multiple combinations for 2016, with a couple already picked out for the first two games. And Purdue will again have a cancer awareness game, although it might not use the bright Volt highlights that it’s had the past couples years but something else instead, and military appreciation.

Since they were unveiled nearly a month ago, the unis have been well received.

“I don’t know the feedback from the fans,” Boyd said. “But the players like it. The players love it. They’re anxious to get in it.”

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