Iowa is headed to Happy Valley (6:30 PM CT, CBS) to play Penn State in a Whiteout game on Saturday night (6:30 PM CT, CBS) -- and they've decided to wear a little extra black for the occasion. After first teasing a modified look in a tweet last night:
Iowa officially confirmed their new (or at least tweaked) uniform approach for Saturday night's game: black pants, black socks, and black shoes in another Tweet on Tuesday morning:
In classic Iowa fashion, the look itself is not a wholesale reinvention of Iowa's traditional uniform appearance -- the black pants with a a gold stripe are an inversion of Iowa's normal pants, which are gold with a black stripe. The black pants-black socks-black shoes combination is also one that Iowa has worn in the past, notably for last year's "Blackout" game against Wisconsin.
In fact, that's probably the biggest surprise about this move -- that it's being done for an away game. While the Hawkeyes don't switch uniforms nearly as much as many schools around the country, they have developed a tradition of wearing a new/modified uniform roughly once per year -- generally an all-black uniform. But all of those previous occasions have been home games.
One notable exception to the all-black uniform approach? The last time they wore an alternate uniform against Penn State:
To the best of our knowledge, Saturday's game will be the first time under Kirk Ferentz that Iowa has worn something other than its traditional away uniform for a game: black helmet, white jersey, gold pants, white/black socks, and white shoes. But Sunday night's game will be Iowa's biggest stage of the regular season, so it makes sense to do something to catch a little more attention.
Will the modified look have any impact on how Iowa plays against Penn State on Saturday night? Who knows. Still, Iowa will probably need every edge they can get against the Nittany Lions, and a move like this is likely to give the players a little added juice for the game.
