West Virginia football to be the 'men in coal black' with new uniforms this fall

The only fashion advice I ever offered to anyone was to tuck their shirt in.

So, then it is fair to ask why I am going to venture into the world of fashion and chat about West Virginia’s new, black uniforms that they will wear on occasion this season to honor the state’s “black gold” known as coal and the brave, honest, hard-working people who have mined it.

My credentials for talking about it?

None.

I spent more than 30 years with my wardrobe consisting of sweatpants and T-shirts. If it was cold out, I wore a hoodie. If it got really cold, I added a second hoodie over the first, which I think now is labeled as layering.

True, there was a time in a wild and misspent youth when I attempted to coincide with the dress codes of the day. Actually owned a sport coat or two — never more — and a couple of ties (no, not clip ons) – and I “topped” it off with having my hair permed into an Afro, grew a mustache and was told more often than not that I looked like a poodle.

Let’s begin by stating that over the years I have maintained that I felt a university’s team should don uniforms that featured the team colors, and I clung to that belief as long as I could.

In fact, I still do not understand any symbolism behind wearing a grey uniform. Battleships are grey. Ol’ mares are grey. Used to be visiting baseball teams wore grey.

But a team with old gold and blue as its colors should feature gold and blue uniforms.

Times change, though. Don’t see many hoop skirts these days. Bell bottom trousers are as out of style as pegged pants. No more ducktail haircuts and rings are worn through your nose rather than on your finger.

Uniforms always have been a sacred item to their fans. The Yankee pinstripes that Ruth wore, DiMaggio wore, Mantle wore, Jeter wore and Judge wears. The Cowboys’ star means as much to their fans as the Flying WV does to WVU fans.

But marketing now rules the world. Somewhere along the line someone realized that they could make some money selling uniform tops and Mountaineer jackets and that you could get rich if you had a sneaker line that would soon grow into a clothing line.

You go to a WVU game at Milan Puskar Stadium and you probably see 50,000 jerseys, now with players’ names on them so the players get a cut out of it, too. One only wonders what Pat White might have made with his No. 5 jerseys had NIL been in place a couple of decades back.

But just one jersey wasn’t enough, because while the demand remained high, there was nothing to buy.

So, they began changing jerseys, different strokes for different folks. Home jerseys, road jerseys, jerseys for Gold Rush games and for a “white out” or to stripe the stadium.

Most recently honored was “Country Roads” with its own uniform, featuring a slickly designed road map through the state.

The demand is there. The fans speak loudly, while the schools and the manufacturers and the players turn gold and blue here and team colors everywhere into green.

But this coal uniform is different.

To begin with, they didn’t go to Georgio Armani or Christain Dior for suggestions, but, instead, went and spent a day with actual coal miners.

“If our football team was going to have a black alternate uniform, we wanted it to tell a story and mean something to our fans,” Athletic Director Wren Baker said in the release announcing the uniforms. “Every design element of the uniform has been researched, carefully thought out and implemented based on what our designers observed on their visit to the mine.

“Coal mining has a deep history in West Virginia and the work ethic of coal miners is woven into the fabric of our culture.”

Now it will be in the fabric of the uniform.

This is the way they described the uniforms:

“The jersey focuses on elements that bring light to the darkness. A key emphasis of miner safety is reflectors throughout a mine that play a substantial role in underground work, safety and navigation. The numbers on the black jersey are a reflective twill, and the wordmark “West Virginia” and an outline of the state are in white to further bring light and complement the reflective twill.

“The pattern adorning the sleeves and collar of the jersey was sourced underground in a West Virginia coal mine. A photograph of a sheared mine wall was vectorized before proper palette colors and was applied to bring the goal pattern to life. The sleeve design shares space with a reflective stripe to mimic the safety stripes of a miner’s uniform. Yet another key element of the jersey is the arm cuff pattern, designed to replicate the black of a mine shearer. Known as the backbone tool of the mining operation, the gool aggressively cuts and is one key to a successful mine shift.

“The reflective safety stripes of a miner’s uniform are also incorporated on the side panel of the black pants along the pattern of the same sheared wall of coal as seen on the jersey sleeves. The state outline in white adorns the upper right leg panel.

“The final touch to a miner’s uniform and ultimate safety is the helmet. The “Black Hat” in the mines is the experienced miner and the Mountaineers will don black matte helmets when wearing this uniform. The on-field helmet contains an outline of the state and specks of metallic gray in the pain to resemble the shimmer of fresh-cut coal. The center stripe features the coal patterns used on the uniform, but with a white to transparent gradient mimicking the light of a miner’s headlamp, which provides vision and safety underground.”

Now that’s some pretty high falutin’ language to describe a football uniform and it probably could have been boiled down to “cool.”

As for the presentation, saw an interesting concept on Twitter when the uniforms came out that suggested the crowd wear black, the stadium lights be turned off, leaving the stadium in total darkness, then have the team emerge from the locker room, all wearing miner’s helmets with the lights lit as they rush onto the field.

I will add that they should be playing Tennessee Ernie Ford’s classic, “Sixteen Tons” as they emerge.