When fashion and football collide

Yesterday, SI.com launched its brand-spankin'-new college football blog, The Sweep. Immediately, key contributor Luke Winn used his journalistic savvy to research, recap and analyze some of the most ground-breaking changes that shook the college football world this offseason. No, not coaching changes. Not player suspensions, either. We're talking about changes that stare you in the face week-in and week-out. We're talking about uniform changes.

For two seasons, Winn's been chronicling impressive and eyebrow-raising fashion and grooming developments in his college basketball style archive, but this is his first crack at ranking the good, the bad and the ugly on the gridiron.

Without further ado, The Good:
-SMU brings back the white helmets
-Oregon State simplifies its jersey
-Virginia Tech goes retro with its helmet
-Hawaii gives tradition a nod
-Cincinnati get clawed

And The Bad/Ugly:
-Colorado gets an Oregon-esque shoulder design
-Michigan goes for the WVU-look
-The Hurricanes go all Darth Vader on us
-Georgia Tech introduces yellow pants
-Virginia Tech's adds a jersey side-stripe

While Winn hit the nail on the head with some of these (nothing beats a creamy white helmet, Oregon State had nowhere to go but up and Michigan abandoning its traditional jersey is downright sacrilegious), SIOC feels compelled to respectfully disagree with a few others. Cincinnati's claw-pant design looks like the starters kit for a skeletal Halloween costume. As the city's NFL team has taught us, a uniform that incorporates too many animal features is no uniform at all. And while Oregon's shoulder-designs have gotten completely out of hand, Colorado's actually look cool. Speaking of Oregon, it feels wrong to make a list of bad uniforms and not have the Ducks on it. And Miami's new black jersey, while anything but traditional, is straight-up badass.

But alas, we at SIOC are not fashion connoisseurs. This is an issue best settled by the masses, so chime in and tell us what you think.