The Alabama Crimson Tide have the worst uniforms in college football. The Oregon Ducks, of course, have the best.
So says a new survey by Mike Nowoswiat at Pick Six Previews. The poll asked 100 FBS football recruits, sophomores or juniors in high school and uncommitted at the time, to rank the schools by uniform.
As most can expect, Oregon won by a landslide. Alabama, on the other hand, ranked as the worst alongside Penn State.
And here is where things get interesting—recruits might wind up picking schools based on the look of jerseys. Nowoswiat provided some interesting numbers to analyze the idea:
However, the 22 teams receiving votes for “best uniforms” averaged 8.86 wins in 2015, while the 29 teams receiving votes for “worst uniforms” averaged only 6.5 wins in 2015. Since average number of wins takes into account actual coaching ability, we also looked at the average 2016 recruiting class ranking according to Rivals.com. The 22 teams receiving votes for “best uniforms” had a combined average recruiting class ranking of 24.0—the 29 “worst” looking teams had a combined average of 53.9 (note: teams ranked outside of the top 96 were given a ranking of 97).
Will how the next wave of college talent views uniforms decide the power shift of the landscape? Probably not, not with so many other factors coming into play. But it’s quite the interesting look and how teams might evolve their jersey games in future years is something to watch.
Not everyone will go all out like Oregon, but the jersey landscape continues to change. And right now, it appears Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide stand as the worst at something.