Back in 1884, students at the University of Minnesota came up with the cheering slogan of “Ski-U-Mah!” The rallying cry stuck and the school still uses it as a phrase for Golden Gophers athletics to this day. Much further in the future, a football coach named P.J. Fleck came up with the phrase “Row the Boat” as part of the grieving process following the loss of his newborn son in 2011 to a heart condition. Fleck heavily applied the mantra during his time as head coach of the Western Michigan Broncos and carried it over to Minnesota when he became the head coach there.
In 2018, the historical slogan and the new coach’s mantra formally came together as two elements on the football team’s new uniforms for the 2018 season and beyond. While the uniforms are devoid of the piping and striping that you would normally see on modern uniforms, the uniforms are still going to leave an indelible mark on the college football uniform landscape and that’s due to the helmet designs.
Instead of going with a traditional helmet stripe, the helmets on Minnesota’s new “HYPRR Elite” uniform have an oar design running down the center of the helmet. The front bumper has the phrase “ ROW” and the rear bumper has the “Ski-U-Mah” phrase on it. Therefore, an old tradition shares space with a new tradition on the most visual part of any football uniform — the helmet.
Again, you aren’t going to see any crazy striping patterns or weird number fonts on these uniforms. Minnesota and Nike kept things very simple in that regard and it’s to the point where the most important details are things that probably won’t be noticed from afar. There’s a sublimated “Row the Boat” pattern within the numbers and also on the collar and sleeve cuffs as well. There’s also a chrome gold helmet that doesn’t have the oar on it, but should still look very interesting under the floodlights of a football stadium and is also a very nice tribute to past looks.
The Golden Gophers will now have over 100 different possible uniform combinations and as long as they stay away from trying to shoehorn their gray choices into their uniform combos, then this could work out very well for Minnesota going forward.
What’s most important here is the fact that Minnesota and Nike proved that you can merge tradition with current trends and do it well. You don’t have to throw tradition out of the window in favor of going with a progressive uniform design and vice versa. “Ski-U-Mah” can share a canoe with “Row the Boat” and they can both use their oars to power the figurative canoe into the future.
While there is absolutely no guarantee that these uniforms will help the Golden Gophers in their never-ending quest to avoid getting smacked around by the heavy-hitters in the Big Ten, they’ll at least do so knowing that they’ve got a pair of powerful traditions proudly displayed on their uniform every time they take the field in 2018 and beyond.
