Arizona football: Ranking the Wildcats’ new uniform combos

We here at AZ Desert Swarm are more of a fashion expert site than an Arizona Wildcats fan page, so you can bet that when something like new football uniforms happens, we’ll be all over it for you. Also....it’s the end of June.

The reaction to the new threads were kinda meh (except that fire blue helmet), but as is the case with these things, there are combos that work better than others.

I basically feel like there are three tiers of combos in this, with each tier being made up of three different options. So that’s what’s coming next. This is the definitive ranking of the various uniform combos that Arizona released on Tuesday. All other rankings are wrong.

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1. Blue-White-Blue

So first things first, the matte blue helmet is the best thing to happen to Arizona football since the new locker room.

The reason this one gets top honors is not just because of Layth Friekh’s flow coming out of the glorious new lid, but the white jersey is the best thanks to Nike not putting any kind of white outline around the numbers on the other tops. The blue pants and the blue helmet tie together nicely, and the perfection of this combo makes it the only thing that this team should ever wear on the road this year.

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2. White-White-White

I’ve always been a fan of the all-white look, especially when it was this helmet:

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

That helmet was magical.

With the new design, the all-white looks super clean, and hopefully leads to some sort of whiteout game in Tucson this year. Yeah, it looks good.

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3. Blue-Blue-White

This is by far the best of the colored jersey options. It probably has mostly to do with the helmet, but I find this to be a very good home, night game choice.

Again, I think it would be made better with white outlines around the numbers, and even possibly some white in the shoulder area. Take it from an expert, you can’t read these numbers in person, and that makes it impossible to tell who’s actually doing what when you’re not watching on TV.

But the blue with the red shoulders actually turned out alright.

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4. White-Blue-Blue

This is the beginning of the second tier of uniform combos. It’s vastly inferior to number three, but vastly superior to what lies below.

The problem with this one is the lack of white on the actual clothing, and that makes the helmet stick out in all the wrong ways. To make this one work, the helmet needs the old school striping.

I think an all-blue option (which wasn’t given) would be really good because of the pants. Maybe we’ll get that in real life at some point.

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5. Chrome Red-Red-Red

So the chrome red helmet survived, and if you didn’t see it in person last year, the picture doesn’t do it justice on just how great it is.

However, the red jerseys are a mess. Putting blue numbers straight on a red jersey is such a bad idea. It’s very unfortunate, but other than that, the all-red is definitely middle of the road here.

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6. Chrome Red-Blue-Red

Maybe it’s just me, but Nick Wilson’s pants look really bright with this particular combo, and it doesn’t seem to match as well as Jacob Alsadek’s all-red look did. You could make the case to me that the helmet, numbers, and pants are all a different red and I wouldn’t argue with you.

It just looks odd, but the chrome helmet saves it from being in the upcoming bottom tier.

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7. Red-White-Red

Ok, this is when things turn ugly.

I know I said I liked the white jersey earlier, but not as the meat of a red bun burger.

The tomato can helmet should probably be phased out. It’s by far the worst of the helmets, and since the chrome one survived, I think we could all live with it going away forever. It’s almost as bad as the copper ones.....almost.

Just looking at this one makes me wince, and it shouldn’t, but it does.

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8. White-Red-White

This is just like the red-white-red except the jersey is a million times worse, so it goes here at number eight.

You can’t put a white helmet on this without having some white in the shirt. You just can’t. This looks ridiculous.

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9. Red-Red-Blue

And the prize for worst combo possible goes to this one. Honestly, tomato can helmet with unreadable jersey and mismatched pants? What are we doing?

However, good old Luca Bruno did have the best moment of the unveil video:

So he has that going for him.

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So now that you’ve had some time to digest them, what’s your favorite? Be sure to vote below so that the football team will only wear the good ones.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that sources have told us that there will be a special midseason reveal of another uniform that is not on here. So stay tuned for that on this Arizona fashion site.