For only the second time in the Kirk Ferentz era at Iowa, the Hawkeyes will be wearing gold jerseys for a football game. After the Hawkeye Football Twitter account teased gold jerseys in a series of tweets on Thursday, Tyler Barnes, the director of recruiting for Iowa football, posted an image of the jerseys on Twitter on Friday morning:
The gold jerseys will be worn with Iowa's traditional helmets (black with a gold tigerhawk) and black pants with a gold stripe for Iowa's game against Minnesota on Saturday. That will be third time that Iowa has worn those pants in the last five games. Iowa wore those same black pants on the road against Penn State last month.
The Hawkeyes also wore those black pants as part of an all-black uniform against Michigan State the following week.
As noted, this will be only the second time in the 25-year history of Kirk Ferentz's tenure at Iowa that the Hawkeyes will don gold jerseys for a game. The only other time it happened was in 2019, when Iowa wore "winged" gold jerseys that called back to a jersey that Iowa wore in the mid-90s during Hayden Fry's tenure. The 2019 gold jerseys were paired with gold pants to create a very gold look for a game against Penn State.
Wearing alternate uniforms for home games against Minnesota has increasingly become a tradition for Iowa. The Hawkeyes first wore alternates for the 2015 Minnesota game, when they broke out a unique all-black uniform set with a modified jersey, pants, and helmet.
Iowa went with a more traditional all-black look for the 2019 Minnesota game, pairing black pants with the traditional black jersey.
Iowa wore black pants again for the 2021 Minnesota game, again pairing black pants with the standard black home jersey.
Iowa has posted an 8-2 record in home games in alternate uniforms, with wins over Kent State (2004), Eastern Illinois (2010), Minnesota (2015, 2019, 2021), Ohio State (2017), Wisconsin (2022), and Michigan State (2023). The only losses came against Purdue (2012) and Penn State (2019).
Perhaps most notable is that this will be the fifth different uniform set that Iowa has worn in a game this season. That wouldn't be remarkable for most modern college football programs, but for Iowa it represents a significant change from standard operating procedures.
For years, you knew exactly what Iowa was going to wear for a football game-- black jersey and gold pants at home, white jersey and gold pants on the road. At most, Iowa would change things up once a year with an alternate uniform. That's changed this season -- time will tell if this is just a one-year aberration or a concession that players (and recruits) often want more than 1-2 uniform options.
