New NCAA uniforms

Discussion in 'Referee' started by RefIADad, Apr 18, 2023.

  1. fairplayforlife

    fairplayforlife Member+

    Mar 23, 2011
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    OSI has been slipping in their quality control recently. They haven’t been using the same quality zippers, the stitching has been off color, and the shorts seem to have no standard size.

    I agree that in general they have good stuff but there seems to be a lack of attention to detail creeping in.
     
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  2. RefIADad

    RefIADad Member+

    United States
    Aug 18, 2017
    Des Moines, IA
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I like OSI's other apparel, but their shorts have really slipped in recent years. I bought a pair of USSF-logo shorts, and they started "pilling" after the second wash. I asked around my officials association, and a number of other referees have said the same thing. For high school, many of the referees who had Capelli ECSR shorts wore them (with or without the ECSR logo) because they were simply better quality.

    I've never seen a real issue with Capelli's quality with the exception of some of their socks. My son's club wears Capelli, and we have a LOT of Capelli gear in the house between his club gear and my refereeing gear. Other than some of the socks, I've never had an issue with Capelli's quality. Their sizing has always been consistent in the stuff we have. I have to go a size up in my Capelli shorts compared to OSI, but it's always the same size up.
     
  3. El Rayo Californiano

    Feb 3, 2014
    How about now?
     
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  4. MassachusettsRef

    MassachusettsRef Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 30, 2001
    Washington, DC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Both blue and green were worn in MLS before they became officially sanctioned by OSI. I wouldn't infer anything from NWSL.

    I'm with @socal lurker on this. Until you get (or unless we all missed) something directly from USSF, well, pink isn't technically officially a uniform color. Of course, no one is going to care at any competition of note if a crew comes out in that color, I bet.
     
  5. fairplayforlife

    fairplayforlife Member+

    Mar 23, 2011
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Maybe, but the “official supplier” for US Soccer is making it with the US Soccer logo on it. And it’s also being used in the top Women’s league in the country.

    Technicality aside, all public and reasonable indicators are signaling it being an official color at this point.
     
  6. MassachusettsRef

    MassachusettsRef Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 30, 2001
    Washington, DC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    The top men's league uses Capelli and the top women's league used to use Puma.

    And, yes, no one is going to say anything anywhere about a crew wearing pink. But I think the technicality here is important, because it's about the expectation that you would have pink in your bag/wardrobe. And there's no indication from USSF that that is an expectation at the moment.
     
  7. El Rayo Californiano

    Feb 3, 2014
    For what it's worth, the Standards of Dress flyer included with the 2022-2023 USSF course material lists yellow as the principal color and black, blue, green, and red as alternate colors (pdf).
     
  8. RedStar91

    RedStar91 Member+

    Sep 7, 2011
    Club:
    FK Crvena Zvezda Beograd
    I don't imagine USSF will make pink be an official color considering we are about to go to year 7 of these "new uniforms." The uniforms were first rolled out around late 2016 and became official in the 2017 badge year.

    Basically, we are almost near a new uniform redesign even though it doesn't seem like.

    The previous design I think officially came out in MLS Cup 2007 (green) and the rest were rolled out in 2008. So we are almost coming up on a uniform redesign anyways. A year or two left before we need to get new uniforms.

    My guess is the OSI contract is coming up for renewal and I imagine Capelli wants to become the official uniform of USSF referees so I think they probably will make an offer that US Soccer can't refuse and that OSI can't match.

    Capelli isn't just a referee company, they are an apparel company so they can actually afford to operate their referee uniform segment of their business at a loss if they wanted to kick OSI out of business.
     
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  9. fairplayforlife

    fairplayforlife Member+

    Mar 23, 2011
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Meh. The uniform policies of the various leagues involved with US Soccer are a hot mess.

    Technically the PRO refs wore adidas while US Soccer was sponsored by Nike. And while the official uniform supplier of referees was OSI.

    And then you had Puma on the NWSL side. All while the various youth leagues had a virtual clown car of sponsorships varying from site to site and gender to gender.

    US Soccer has allowed all this to get way out of hand. I can’t wait to have someone complain about some brand or another I have on at regions this year so I can flip them the bird and ask for them to replace the item with whatever free gear they’re willing to supply.
     
  10. MassachusettsRef

    MassachusettsRef Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 30, 2001
    Washington, DC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This seems like a tangent on a tangent now. Not sure why it's a "meh" response. My point about NWSL referees wearing pink not being relative to the idea that USSF has sanctioned the color is supported by the history you lay out, not refuted. And it was WPS with Puma, by the way.

    The PRO leagues are simply outside the auspices of the USSF Referee Committee for this stuff. Or, if they are technically within the auspices, they have a special dispensation. NWSL referees wear OSI only because the league doesn't have a separate referee supplier contract.

    Regardless, your post is mostly about brands but the question was about color. Look at MLS right now--orange and navy have been used and those have not been official USSF colors. All I was saying--and the flier that @El Rayo Californiano linked to confirmed--is that pink is not an officially sanctioned color for matches played directly under the auspices of USSF. Brands are a different question. And the actual use of pink is, as we've all said, a totally different question. But is a USSF referee expected to or required to have pink in their bag? No, they are not. And initial posts about that idea here were incorrect.
     
  11. fairplayforlife

    fairplayforlife Member+

    Mar 23, 2011
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Not really. You brought up that MLS wears Capelli and I am just pointing out that what is “technically” allowed/required is sort of a nebulous concept at this point.

    And as to if a USSF referee is supposed to have the uniform in their bag, I would wonder if the USSF referees doing NWSL and being told they will be wearing pink think they could fight back and say that it want “technically” a color. I’m guessing they’ll just go ahead and buy it and move one.

    If you want to take the win and say that pink isn’t mentioned as an official color then by all means raise a glass to your victory. But this whole topic started when we found out that NCAA is going to have multiple vendors supplying the uniforms and all the potential brand shenanigans that can come about as a result.

    Us not drawing any parallels to how this may or may not apply to what might be the next generation of USSF uniforms seems rather short sighted.
     
  12. MassachusettsRef

    MassachusettsRef Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 30, 2001
    Washington, DC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This quickly turned into the classic online debate that isn't really--or at least shouldn't be--a debate.

    I brought up Capelli to further demonstrate that the professional leagues are outside USSF auspices. It was in response to your point that NWSL uses pink. You quite literally posted that you believe pink is an official USSF color because it is worn in NWSL. NWSL is a professional league. The officials for NWSL get a game notice. If it says they are wearing pink, they are wearing pink. If, next year, it says they are wearing lavender Nike kits because Nike is their new supplier, then they are wearing Nike lavender kits.

    I'm not "taking the win." This was a factual question that people were debating. The facts do not seem to be in dispute. USSF has five official colors. For any USSF match outside the professional leagues, you could be expected to have those five colors available. You are not expected to have and do not need to have pink for matches outside the professional leagues. It's really that simple.
     
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  13. fairplayforlife

    fairplayforlife Member+

    Mar 23, 2011
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    So the USSF uniform policy has an addendum that says it doesn’t apply to the top divisions of each gender? I must have missed that part.

    I digress, whether or not it is an official color is something only worthy of being debated in a forum like this.

    I honestly don’t care one way or another. But if the official uniform supplier is making them I doubt this was done without some discussion with US Soccer. But if it makes you feel like you’ve got some technical victory in this discussion because they don’t list it in their pamphlet then kudos.
     
  14. MassachusettsRef

    MassachusettsRef Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 30, 2001
    Washington, DC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Uh, yes? More accurately, not all USSF policies necessarily apply to the professional divisions.

    Policy 202-1, Section 1, clause d, sub-clause 4 says that "each professional league shall be, subject to all rules and regulations of the Federation, autonomous in its operations." An MLS match is subject to the ultimate jurisdiction of USSF if it is played in the United States, but it's not a "USSF match" and does not have to adhere to all USSF policies. This logic is embedded into all the USSF policy documents.

    And while I can't find the language from when the Board of Directors approved the referee uniform (per Policy 531-4) the last several times, I do believe it explicitly carves out the professional leagues just to be clear. And, to hammer the original point home, action under 531-4 is what would be necessary to add pink as an official color--that's how blue and green got added.

    Regardless, pretending otherwise is silly. At a very simple level, there are Canadian teams and referees in MLS (and were in USL previously)... are we to believe USSF policies would apply to those locations and individuals? If not, how would that issue be solved? And are you just arguing that MLS and other professional referees have been going rogue for over 25 years (note MLS started with Umbro) and no one noticed?

    This is bizarre. My only point in weighing in on this thread is that pink is not an approved color by USSF. And that's true.
     
  15. MassachusettsRef

    MassachusettsRef Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 30, 2001
    Washington, DC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    To add here, because I do think this is important... I'm not irked by your last paragraph here, despite what seem like conscious efforts to get under my skin.

    But to the first point, I think this actually is worthy of clarification. It's a question of whether or not an up-and-coming referee needs to buy 10 jerseys or 12. If the rest of these NCAA discussions are worthwhile, then steering a kid or young adult in the wrong direction and making them believe they need to have two pink jerseys just because OSI produces them seems equally important.

    This isn't about me scoring some technical win in some online argument. Right from the beginning I conceded that no one actually cares if a crew comes out in pink. But the entire debate started with someone saying pink was official and another person just saying OSI started selling it because other companies did. And that second person is correct. Insisting upon accuracy on that point is not something I'm going to be embarrassed about.
     
  16. Pelican86

    Pelican86 Member

    United States
    Jun 13, 2019
    When would we ever say that "USSF" is expecting referees to have a certain jersey color anyway? If I'm reffing a U12 game and some brand new teen ref shows up and all he has is yellow, we're wearing yellow (or I'm chasing down another ref to borrow an extra jersey if one team is in yellow). And personally, I'm not spending money on long-sleeved jerseys or a black jersey because I live in the south and it's too hot for that.

    Obviously at the pro levels the referee jersey colors are determined in advance and maybe they pick any of those colors. Out of curiosity, how far down does that extend? The highest level game I ever did was filling in last minute as AR2 on an NPSL game, and it was up to the refs what we'd wear. If you go to a big national or regional youth event, are they telling you what color you have to wear?
     
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  17. MassachusettsRef

    MassachusettsRef Moderator
    Staff Member

    Apr 30, 2001
    Washington, DC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    To use a real possible example that’s been in my mind, let’s say you have a men’s amateur match or UPSL game where you know the colors of the team ahead of time because they are on the league site. And your referee emails and says “we are wearing green.” That works and it’s efficient.

    If he says “we are wearing pink,” some 19 year old AR needs to be able to say “no we aren’t because I don’t have it and don’t need to” instead of clicking on to OSI’s site to see how much overnight shipping is.
     
  18. ManiacalClown

    ManiacalClown Member+

    Jun 27, 2003
    South Jersey
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    US Soccer's referee portal linked directly to the page selling, amongst other colors, pink shirts. That, along with the appropriate branding and the fact that they have been worn by a USOC crew in a recent round is all the confirmation I need that they're "official."

    But I also know basically no one has them so I would never in a million years expect to wear it with a full crew. Am I going to pull it out on some youth solo whistle eventually? You betcha.
     
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  19. ManiacalClown

    ManiacalClown Member+

    Jun 27, 2003
    South Jersey
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    There are those who would point out that green and/or blue were used at the pro level before the USSF board ever approved them as official uniform colors. Personally I'm shocked to see such pedantry in a referee forum discussion.
     
  20. Lucky Wilbury

    Lucky Wilbury Member

    Mar 19, 2012
    United States
    Overexposed, commercialized
    Handle Me With Care
     
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  21. USSF REF

    USSF REF Guest

    Mass Ref is right in all of this.

    What I think has occurred is that a handful of small equipment manufacturers (think Referee Superstore and the like) began producing pink for October breast cancer awareness matches. They weren't official anyway so who was going to stop them? If they got a little profit of the back of a novelty well good for them.

    OSI sees that and says "if they can do that, what's stopping us?" or, Maybe they even approached USSF and said, "this cool if we make it?" And maybe the answer was... We don't care keep paying your license fee though. Just speculating of course.

    But now, the fans of pink get to buy their October kit from the official supplier. The little marketing move also had a long game. If enough referees really like pink and buy it and there is enough popular demand is not out of the realm of possibility that it could one day become an official color, or maybe it replaces a different color (like the under worn Blue, or maybe it's seen as a kind of duplicate red... Dunno).

    But yeah, Professional matches do their own thing and have since at least in my mind 94 when the Adidas grid brought something other than all black. And maybe in the USA there was a zebra long ago but I wasn't born of too young to remember if that was Thing. And sometimes they do this to a fault. Match sheets every Once in a blue moon indicate colors which look correct in a league office but then on the field or on TV look all wrong... A red and an orange that are just too close hearkened on a recent USL match when there were a few different options. And who is to blame, the game notice because nobody caught the problem in advance.

    Pink isn't official, at least not yet and don't look at what PRO officials (who are given their kits) are wearing.
     
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  22. fairplayforlife

    fairplayforlife Member+

    Mar 23, 2011
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Do you really think that’s how this is going to play out. Do you think that some 19 year old ref is going to be able to tell anyone they aren’t buying a jersey for a game and get away with it?

    Because from what I’m hearing from the people I know working these games on the regular is that the people without the color are in fact having to call OSI and ask for overnight shipping.
     
  23. USSF REF

    USSF REF Guest

    If refs are doing that to teenager refs then we've lost the plot. Let's work to grow the community rather than push them away.
     
  24. socal lurker

    socal lurker Member+

    May 30, 2009
    And petition USSF to limit the colors to three in the next cycle . . . . Oh, to dream . . .
     
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  25. soccerref69420

    soccerref69420 Member+

    President of the Antonio Miguel Mateu Lahoz fan cub
    Mar 14, 2020
    Nat'l Team:
    Korea DPR
    Or petition USSF to go to only black and white stripes, or solid black and allow no teams to be black. Like plenty of other sports. The other sports that don't put the impetus on referees to spend literally hundreds and hundreds of dollars on their own equipment. Also, remove the need to spend $10 a pair on special socks and just let refs wear whatever socks they want where you can get a 6+ pack of ankle or crew socks for $10.

    A big thing this whole NCAA farce has shown me is: How did soccer end up being the only sport whose referees get screwed like this? How did the other NCAA sport refs not have to deal with multiple designs, competing associations signing contracts with specific manufacturers, etc.? Obviously it isn't like other sports refs unionized and refused to abide by these ridiculous requirements.

    Does soccer have the largest college sports participation so of course vultures were going to come in like this? Because usually it's college football being the biggest revenue-generating sport that stands alone with financial matters.
     

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