Nike basically gives Syracuse’s football uniforms to Illinois

We were talking about the Syracuse Orange’s football uniforms just yesterday, so it’s only natural that some related news would appear today.

The Illinois Fighting Illini, also a Nike school, unveiled their new threads on Friday and these uniforms will likely look very familiar to Syracuse fans...

They’re pretty much the same jerseys.

As we talked about yesterday, Syracuse’s current template is fine, if we just reduced the use of #PLATINUM and fixed the numbers. Illinois’ uniforms do just that here, utilizing the same basic template we have, including the number style, just without the “44-degree angled” lines. These jerseys aren’t great, but they’re cleaner than what SU has at current. The blue collar on the white uniforms is a subtle upgrade that does a lot of heavy lifting.

All of this likely points to one of two things: Either Syracuse is getting new Nike uniforms or... Syracuse is potentially done with Nike. That’s speculation, sure, but Nike also avoids trotting out the exact same design for multiple schools at once. This is the exact same design, so something has to give. As we pointed out in yesterday’s post, however, Syracuse is conspicuously absent from the Nike college team page (though you can still search the gear).

That said, we’ve also been here before with Illinois. In 2014, both schools got new uniforms, only to have us preferring the more “traditional” look of what the Illini were given. And then there’s the clear encroachment onto Orange turf from last year’s football schedule poster. Having the teams look identical on the field at this point would just be par for the course.

Anyway: Sure seems like something’s going to happen soon. In the meantime, get rankled that Illinois stole our look.