Rainy, windy and chilly. That’s not what the forecast called for earlier in the week. I was expecting sunny and 75 degrees and perfect weather for the entire weekend. Then Mother Nature said “NOPE” and added a lot of rain Friday that led to a chilly and overcast and bleh Saturday. I was rained on and sunburned in the same day. That’s what two baseball games and a half of a football game will do to you. I spent most of my day at the baseball games, but this post will be all about some notable things from the A-Day football game.
So, like I said, I spent most of my day at Plainsman Park for the double header. As soon as the first game finished I walked next door to Jordan-Hare for the beginning of the scrimmage. I really wanted to stay for the ring ceremony and to watch my boy Jonathon Wallace throw a pass, but a long day and a low phone battery forced me out early. I went to the Student Center to hopefully save some of my battery for the rest of the day. Let’s just say I made it home at 7 p.m. with 8 percent left of my battery. Once I had the chance to sit down and relax for a bit, I made my way over to the photo galleries. The main thing I was looking for was the new Riddell SpeedFlex helmet, but I still haven’t seen an Auburn player sporting this lid yet.
One of the most notable features of many spring games is the use of the recycled uniforms. I had a lot of people asking me about the different SEC patches. We got to see two different patches Saturday, and if you factor in the current game jerseys, we’ve seen a total of three conference patches in just a few months. All of these jerseys were worn before, and the equipment team keeps them on hand specifically for days like today. It just doesn’t make sense for a team to have separate uniforms available for one day out of the year (when you aren’t Oregon). So they just keep old jerseys and reuse them for spring games. Plus it’s better than seeing the practice jerseys on the field, like Texas did. Seeing the inconsistencies in the patching really drives me nuts every season. Oddly enough, Jeffrey Whitaker’s jersey was missing his SEC patch.
One of the coolest touches from the game was the SEC Champions logo. The grounds crew placed the logo on the 25 yard lines were the SEC logo always goes. But the equipment managers thankfully placed the same logo on the back of the helmets, where the conference logo usually goes (Auburn wears an NCAA pennant decal, other teams wear the circle SEC logo). It’s a great logo first of all, and Auburn adding it anywhere they could was a fun addition to the game. I would absolutely love to see the Tigers wear that decal through the fall, but I wouldn’t place money on it.
Once again, the non-contact orange jerseys make their way into Jordan-Hare and the debate of the orange jerseys makes a rebound. Obviously, these jerseys were never meant to be used outside of practice. I wouldn’t mind seeing the sleeve stripes added for A-Day so they blend better and we can see a mock up of the orange tops a lot better. The odd thing I noticed while watching ESPN was that Alabama added a patch to their black non-contact jerseys. Even weirder, it was the old pennant logo. They must have just had a few old ones laying around. Boy do they look forced…Speaking of the quarterbacks, for Tiger Walk they all wore either a blue or white jersey, when they would be wearing orange for the entire game. They always wear orange during practice, so it was really odd they even wore the blue and white tops. That just feels like a waste of time because now they have to change once they get to the stadium.
I’m going to leave you guys with two oddities about A-Day. First, the team wore the post-2010 tapered stripe pants. Auburn usually wears the pants from the previous year, but these pants don’t have the WAR EAGLE tramp stamp, making them the 2013 pants. Does this mean new pants will be on the way for 2014? Also, and this is funny here, the back of the A-Day ticket stub has a coupon like any other ticket. But this time, the expiration date was four months ago! Proof reading anyone?
War Eagle!
The helmets were re-used as well. Cameron Artis-Payne was wearing a helmet with number '102' on it, which I think was Cam's old helmet.
They very well could have been re-used, but with today's concussion concern and the attention paid to helmets now, I doubt they would have used such an old helmet.
As for the 102, yes, Cam Newton was number 102 in the equipment team's eyes. When it comes to duplicate numbers, the second guy, whether he came in late, was a younger player or whatever, gets a triple digit number to compensate.
Good catch on that.
One by-product of recycling the old jerseys for A-Day is the absence of nameplates on the back. It offered a brief glimpse of a clean and simple look that was prevalent during the Dye years.