On the same stage he was introduced as director of athletics two years ago, Mark Hollis stood in the Clara Bell Smith Student-Athlete Academic Center and made one of the most groundbreaking announcements of his already influential tenure at MSU.
Hollis, along with Todd Van Horne of Nike, introduced the athletic department’s brand and identity program Friday afternoon, which includes a new line of uniforms with consistent font, color, logos and numerals for all 25 varsity sports teams.
“I’ve been around Michigan State for a very long time,” Hollis said. “I’ve heard us referenced as the sleeping giant. I view us as a sleeping giant no more. We’ve taken a number of actions that have demonstrated that with events, playing hockey and basketball in football stadiums — we’ve changed the landscape of so many different activities that are taking place.
“This is another one of those events.”
The program is the culmination of nearly two years of work with Nike, which outfits dozens of other schools across the nation but likely hasn’t put together anything of this magnitude for any other university.
“There’s only a few and the first one that comes to mind is the University of Oregon from our start, but the difference with that is that took years to do,” said Van Horne, Nike’s Creative Director. “This is the reset button all at once and, in my 20 years at Nike, I can’t remember ever a university having the vision to be able to do that all at once.”
Nearly 800 student-athletes will be outfitted in the same style of uniforms highlighted by changes in typography that is similar to the numerals on uniforms, a darker hue of green and addition of silver and bronze to accent the green and white.
Hollis emphasized the darker green will be consistent with varsity jackets, the marching band, the university website, printed materials and all other uses.
“In the past, as recently as this year, you see seven or eight or nine different colors on teams that would compete under the Michigan State name,” Hollis said. “No more. It will be a unified color, a unified font and a unified logo. It will be Spartans.”
All uniforms keep the traditional Spartan head logo, which was rumored to be changing months ago. Hollis said the tremendous amount of feedback he received on the prospective change weighed on the decision to keep the original logo.
“It would have been naïve of me not to take those comments into consideration,” he said. “But (the MSU community) better be receptive to change because I want to win and I want to win on levels that we haven’t before. Sometimes you have to shake the trees to have something like that fall out.”
The football team will have green home jerseys and white road uniforms, as well as an alternate green uniform.
“We’ll definitely wear (the alternates) probably for like Notre Dame or Michigan or a big rivalry game,” senior linebacker Greg Jones said.
The basketball jerseys remain as simple white home and green away uniforms but junior guard Kalin Lucas said he and fellow junior guard Durrell Summers might talk to head coach Tom Izzo about some possible alternate basketball jerseys.
“We haven’t talked about it yet, but I think me and Durrell are going to sit down and talk to Izzo and hopefully we can get some black alternate jerseys for special occasions,” Lucas said.
Jones and Lucas joined players from the men’s and women’s basketball teams, hockey, football and volleyball teams to model the new threads.
The revamping comes at no cost to the program and was done as part of the university’s partnership with Nike.
“We treasure that partnership, so it’s something we offer to them,” Van Horne said. “Michigan State had their vision of what they wanted to do and now we have this deal that we’re outfitting so many of their sports, so it makes sense to invest that time and resources. We’re proud to be able to do that.”
Also of note is the removal of the “State” bridge logo on the men’s and women’s basketball jerseys. It’s replaced with “Spartans” in the new typography while the home and road football jerseys have “Michigan State” across the chest. The home alternates have “Spartans” on the front and white material on the shoulders.
“I believe in championships and I believe in Rose Bowls,” Hollis said. “We do things right at Michigan State and this project is very right. It’s right for our alumni and, most importantly, it’s right for our student-athletes. We’re a sleeping giant. We’re waking a sleeping giant.”
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