August 30 marks the beginning of a new era for the Michigan State football team, as Jonathan Smith begins his first season as head coach.
Last year, under prior leadership, MSU rolled out a fresh set of uniforms, with three color options each of jerseys, pants, and helmet shells. Along with the traditional green and white, the Spartans unveiled the all-new “Shadows” uniform, an all-black look.
As we have seen in the last few seasons, the Spartans like to change up the decal on the helmets. We have seen everything from the traditional Spartan head logo, to the throwback Block S, to a long-awaited Gruff Sparty, and many more show up on helmets.
With a new coach comes a new culture, standards, and traditions. It may also bring changes to the Spartans’ uniforms.
It has yet to be seen what Smith will do in terms of the threads his team will wear. He hasn't tipped his hand yet and he hasn't been asked about uniforms by the media. Smith has made no statements on social media or in any issued statements.
What we can do, however, is look back to what his Oregon State teams wore during his six-season tenure as head coach.
The Beavers' uniform choices were very similar to the Spartans' current uniform options. Three different colors of jerseys and pants: Black, orange, and off-white. This trio of colors created a plethora of different combinations that OSU could choose from on any given Saturday. Both schools also wear uniforms designed and manufactured by Nike.
Up top, OSU was a bit more reserved with its helmets compared to the last few seasons in East Lansing. The Beavers wore an exclusively black shell in the Smith era until an orange helmet was introduced in 2023.
The Beavers did, however, use varying colorways for their primary Beaver logo. This served as the source for most of the helmet variety.
According to one of my favorite uniform sites, The Helmet Project, Oregon State wore four different helmets during the 2023 season. It appears that under Smith, throughout non-conference and the first few weeks of conference play, OSU would keep things standard and wear its most-worn helmet first worn in 2017. Later in the season in conference play and bowl season, the Beavers would then switch up their helmet logo nearly every week.
Something also interesting to note is that Oregon State and Oregon have gone color versus color in their rivalry matchup in recent years. In the "Civil War" - later renamed "The Rivalry Game" - the Beavers wore their orange uniforms while the Ducks wore their green.
On Veteran’s Day weekend in 2023, the Beavers changed the white numerals on their black jerseys to white and gray digital camouflage - this is another example of a unique twist under Smith.
For the fans of the weekly Thursday jersey reveal - which MSU began posting to social media in 2020 - OSU did not do anything of the sort. Seeing as the reveal became a weekly tradition for Spartan fans, gathering much excitement and praise, I would not anticipate MSU ending that tradition.
The question to be answered is: after four seasons of a new MSU uniform combo nearly every single week, will Coach Smith continue that trend or go a bit more conservative with uniform choices?
From the early impressions I get from Smith, I think there is more reason to believe it’ll be a nice balance between the two. Smith doesn’t strike me as the man who will let aesthetics and off-the- field things distract from the on-field product.
While I think there will be a little bit of variance in what MSU wears throughout a season, I think things will be a bit more predictable from week-to- week. As time goes on, the Spartans may open up the wardrobe a bit more just as the Beavers did later in the season in recent years.
Either way, myself and many of the Spartan faithful are excited to see what Coach Smith rolls out this season. It all starts in just 45 days on August 30 when Florida Atlantic visits Spartan Stadium.
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