We need to have a conversation about MSU’s new football jerseys

It was a beautiful morning in East Lansing. With the spring game just hours away, I had planned on writing a preview. Unfortunately, something got in the way.

Just before 10:00 Saturday morning, the official Michigan State Spartans football Twitter account posted pictures of the team’s new alternate uniforms for 2019. The best thing I can say about them is they are, in fact, jerseys.

Featuring a lime green logo on the helmet and matching pants, the jerseys are dark green, with that same lime lettering. Making matters weirder, the lettering reads “STATE” across the chest, in font so big that it doesn’t fully fit from armpit to armpit.

In general, I’m a fan of letting Nike get a little weird with some of the uniform combos for MSU. It has resulted in some very distinct looks, most of which aren’t awful, even if they don’t last more than a year. These, on the other hand, can be scrapped as soon as possible.

Maybe they are just following their own trend set with Nike’s New York Jets uniforms. Maybe they want these to look like cheap, unlicensed knockoffs bought online. I’m not a fashion guy, they could be ahead of the curve on this one and I’m just missing it.

But you can definitely miss me with these.

Best case scenario, these go down in Michigan State lore as the jerseys worn that one year where the team put on an outstanding performance. Similar things have happened before for the football team when they rocked the gold helmets and lettering. Most famously, this happened in another lime fiasco, when the basketball team went full highlighter and earned a big win at home against Maryland.

In professional sports, teams regularly wait until Friday evening to make announcements they know fans won’t like. Maybe, being on a college campus, MSU knew the student body would be too excited on a Friday to miss it, so they dropped this before most woke up on Saturday.

But hey, if they beat Michigan in these, I will immediately buy one.