Dear Brad Bates -- or can I call you Brad? We're bros, right?
Rumors are swirling that BC may be planning an overhaul of the uniforms, perhaps as soon as this offseason.
All football jerseys on clearance at BC campus bookstore. New jerz coming?
— Heights and Lows (@BC_Heights_Lows) May 3, 2014
@blanksy3 @markmajewski @bcinterruption saw these last month(Before matheson got the C) didn't know if they were real pic.twitter.com/VbGD9KFhyY
— Cam Dezak (@Camm_and_cheese) May 18, 2014
It's a perfect opportunity to fix the Under Armour mistakes we've been saddled with for the last few years.
I know it's not your fault, Brad. You weren't here yet, so you weren't responsible for moving away from our clean-looking maroon and white primaries to the awkward, typical Under Armour are-we-a-college-team-or-a-euro-team threads Sir Jerry of York's boys have to wear now.
I'm not sure if you noticed -- you probably did, since you tend to pay more attention to hockey than your predecessor -- but it would appear that the hockey team doesn't think too highly of the jerseys either. Our slick gold 'alternates' have been used as much as the home whites at Conte Forum, and I honestly can't even remember the last time we wore the whites at a neutral site. And we play at a lot of neutral sites.
Hopefully the current primary hockey jerseys aren't long for this world. Most of us who follow the hockey team have been hoping for a new long-term design that would feel classic and would feel like our jersey once again. We shouldn't need to wear our alternate jersey more often than our primaries because they look so bad.
And so, Brad, I offer you -- at no charge! -- the following guidelines for how to create the perfect BC hockey jersey.
Step 1: Take the current gold jersey design and convert into white (home) and maroon (away). If we're being honest here, part of the reason the team wears the alternates so much is because they look great, as much as the primaries look bad. I know we have Under Armour (for now?) and overthinking jerseys is kind of their thing, but there's no need to overthink the BC hockey jersey. BC hockey is about history and class, so you want to put history and class in jersey form.
The current golds do a great job of this. You want to draw attention to the BOSTON COLLEGE on the front, not on some stained glass nonsense on the arm. More than anything, the font is very well done. It looks like what Patrick McSullivan, class of 1918, might have had on his sweater while strolling around campus in the winter. Perfect. Classic and clean. Just put one in white and one in maroon and don't mess with it.
Step 2: Stripes are fine, but what we have is too much. I don't mind the 5 stripes on the gold jersey, but the stripes down the arms and on the bottom of the primaries is overdoing it. Maybe keep the 5 stripes from the current gold, or go back to a similar look that we've had for several of our past jerseys -- a couple stripes at the end of the sleeves with the same on the bottom. I don't really care which, but take away the stripes down the arms. We don't need that nonsense. Remember, we're going for a clean look.
Step 3: Keep the ties. Keep the ties. For God's sake, please keep the ties.
Step 4: The most important piece -- Put the academic logo on the shoulder. You are as proud as anyone of the strong academic reputation of BC's athletes. If there is any school that should have its academic logo on the jersey, it's BC. No eagle, no interlocking BC -- just this beauty:
Once you've done all that, add a few more stars over the next few years, and you're done.
If you instruct those responsible for this sort of thing to make this jersey, I will take a check, write it out to the Flynn Fund, sign my name on it, and let you write any number you want on it.
Make it happen.