Local high schools get new threads for upcoming football season
Two local schools, Pike Road (left) and Montgomery Catholic, will wear the new “Jumpman” football uniforms this coming fall. (Contributed)
By TIM GAYLE
New and trendy uniforms have become the athletic fashion of late as four college football programs and approximately twice that number of college basketball programs have switched to the Jumpman brand, a sub-brand of Nike supplied by former NBA great Michael Jordan.
The Jumpman brand will be supplied to 200 high school teams this year as well, with just four teams in each state receiving the opportunity to don the new apparel.
Two of those programs, Catholic and Pike Road, are in the River Region. Dothan High, a third school utilizing the Jumpman uniforms in 2020, announced their decision recently as well.
“It was a unique opportunity for us and our kids to play in the best that Nike has to offer,” Catholic coach Aubrey Blackwell said. “When it became an exclusive deal, it was absolutely interesting to us and something our guys were extremely excited about. It helps us boost our brand at Catholic. That’s been the goal here since 2015, to create a brand that’s different and unique. This is just another opportunity to continue what we started. When you get the opportunity to wear a Jumpman uniform, you’re increasing your brand in a good way.”
This will mark the third apparel change in as many seasons for Pike Road, who donned Battle brand uniforms in their inaugural season before switching to Nike in 2019.
“We were contacted by BSN and Nike about the opportunity and they told us there were only 200 teams in the nation that would be offered the opportunity to wear Jordan uniforms and we saw it as an honor and a great opportunity,” Pike Road coach Patrick Browning said. “The kids like it. They love the different uniform combinations and are really excited about the black ‘alternate’ Jordan uniform.
“For now, our other uniforms will still be Nike. Everyone is just allowed to have one Jordan uniform.”
Interestingly enough, BSN officials happened to choose the two teams kicking off the season in the AHSAA Kickoff Classic at Cramton Bowl. While it is a neutral-site game, either Pike Road or Catholic will be designated the home team, providing the opportunity to debut the Jumpman uniform in the first game of the 2020 football season.
“That’s something we’ll look at and discuss,” Browning said. “We haven’t been told whether we’re the home team or away. With that being a neutral-site game, nobody’s really the home team. I’ll need to talk to our BSN rep to see whether that’s something they would want or would they just want us to wear it at home.”
Blackwell had the same opinion.
“That would be the hope and the goal, to be able to wear them in game one,” he said.
While the uniform will merely serve as an alternate home jersey for Pike Road, it will be the primary home jersey for Catholic, which will add white-on-white uniforms next year for road games. Catholic will also have its black Nike jerseys available for home games and Blackwell indicated his home games will split the use of Nike jerseys and Jumpman jerseys in 2020.
“We were in the market to purchase a new uniform anyway,” Blackwell said. “You always have to consider the cost of (replacement uniforms), but the cost didn’t sway us from the opportunity to boost our brand. We thought we could absorb that cost and that it would be worth absorbing that cost.”
The two local teams will be among a select few wearing the Michael Jordan brand of Nike apparel in 2020. Among college teams, the University of Michigan was the first to switch in 2016. A year later, Jordan enticed his alma mater, North Carolina, to switch to Jumpman uniforms and Oklahoma and Florida followed suit later that year.
Those schools also wear Jumpman uniforms for basketball and the University of Houston’s basketball program became the seventh school to make the switch prior to the 2018 season. In addition, the Jordan-owned Charlotte Hornets adopted the new uniforms as well.