#3 in a series: AAC logo usage

Well, I completely forgot about doing this post for about three weeks, what with finals at school and the start of a new soccer season, then another week for spring break, but now that spring break is over I finally found time to finish up the post on the American Athletic Conference, home of the defending men's and women's national basketball champions, Connecticut. In the AAC, there is a large divide in groupings of the 10 teams. 8 teams are aligned with Nike, but only 2 with Under Armor and 1 with adidas. The conference patch placement is also very uniform, with all schools using the conference's primary logo; 7 schools place it on the front right side of the jerseys, 3 put it on the left side. The school-by-school breakdown is as follows:

SMU Mustangs

The top team in the AAC is the SMU Mustangs, led by Larry Brown, the oldest coach in the conference. The best way to describe SMU's Nike uniforms would be paint-by-numbers: the only change from jersey-to-jersey is changing the placing of colors. SMU is also the only team in the conference to change the color of the conference logo from jersey to jersey: it is in red on the white jerseys, white on the red jerseys, and red on the blue jerseys. On all three, the logo is on the right side of the jersey.

Tulsa Golden Hurricane

Tulsa holds the dubious record as being the only team in the American with more than three uniforms: Nike provides the Golden Hurricane with four. On all of them, the conference patch is located on the right side of the jerseys, on the white, gold, blue, and black jerseys. The only picture I could find of the Tulsa blue jerseys came from this article, which gives a more in-depth look at the jerseys.

Temple Owls

The Owls of Temple are just one of two teams in the AAC supplied by Under Armor, and just one of three with only two uniform combinations. The most interesting part about Temple's uniforms is that they wear cream, not straight white, at home. On both the home cream and road maroon jerseys, the conference logo is on the player's left collarbone.

Cincinnati Bearcats

The only team in the AAC to be supplied by adidas, the Cincinnati Bearcats are therefore the only team that recieved a special set of postseason uniforms, which to me seem incredibly pointless. On all Cincinnati uniforms, the American logo is placed on the front right side of the uniforms: home whites, road blacks, and the pointless (and sleeved!) postseason uniforms.

Gampel Pavilion-UConn

Connecticut Huskies

XL Center-UConn

The defending national champion UConn Huskies are the only team in the AAC to play multiple home games at two different arenas. They also join the trend of GFGS uniforms, adding a grey alternate to their normal home and road jerseys. UConn placed the conference patch on the left side of all three uniforms, white, grey, and blue.






Memphis Tigers

Sadly, Memphis has joined the growing legion of teams to add a GFGS uniform, which drops down an otherwise solid uniform set. The Tigers, just like UConn and East Carolina, are one of just three teams in the American to put the mandatory conference logo on the left side of the jerseys, doing so on the white, blue, and grey uniforms (which I could not find a definitive picture of, only side shots).

Tulane Green Wave

Add the Green Wave as well to the list of teams with a GFGS uniform, which is quickly becoming more and more prevalent in sports. Tulane has a very modern set of uniforms, in contrast to its 82-year-old arena, Devlin Fieldhouse. Tulane is another of the seven AAC  teams with Nike, and join  the majority by placing the conference logo on the right front of their white, green, and grey jerseys.

East Carolina Pirates

Joining the ranks of Nike teams in the American, the East Carolina Pirates are one of the few teams in the NCAA to utilize purple in their color scheme. However, with the depth of ideas that could be put forward by the pirates, their uniforms fail to appease the imagination. The placement of the conference patch, as well, is confusing. On the white, yellow, and purple jerseys, the conference patch is always on the left side of the jerseys. Surprisingly, with the amount of black used by the Pirates in their color scheme, it doesn't look as if they have a black jersey.

UCF Knights

Now that UCF has cut down on half of the garishness of their basketball program, removing the pinstriped uniforms (although keeping the dark grey court at CFE Arena), you can actually start to look at the Knights more as a D-1 program, and not a minor league start up. With that said, their uniforms now are quite solid (at least compared to what was worn before). The Knights put the conference logo on the right side of the jerseys for each of the three different uniforms worn: white, gold, and black.

Houston Cougars

Houston, one of seven Nike teams in the AAC, is just one of two teams in the conference with just two jerseys. On both, the conference logo is placed on the right side of the uniform, white and red.

USF Bulls

The final team in the AAC, the USF Bulls have fallen hard from three NCAA Tournament victories in 2012 to just 9-23 this season. The Bulls are one of just two teams in the conference to be supplied by Under Armor, and have some of the worst full-time jerseys in the conference. The AAC patch is applied on the right side of the jersey on all three uniforms: the home whites, road greens, and alternate gold uniforms.

The AAC will be expanding to 11 teams in 2015-16, with the addition of Navy from the Patriot League, which will be covered later on in this series. Now that I have the time, I will try to continue working with the Atlantic 10 up next, hopefully within the next week or so.