Auburn vs Ole Miss Uniform Disaster Was the Worst Look of the Super Regionals
The Super Regional matchup between Auburn and Ole Miss on Saturday gave us great baseball and the worst uniform clash of the college season.
Auburn wore their orange alternates. Ole Miss wore their traditional red. Both teams wore white pants. From the broadcast booth to the cheap seats, it was almost impossible to tell who was on which team without zooming in on a number.
Social media noticed within an inning. Chris Marler of the Vern Funquist account called it “the dumbest uniform matchup ever.” Jimmy Reign at AU FinalBoss demanded answers from Ole Miss about why they were wearing red as visitors twice in a row against an orange opponent. Even neutral fans piled on by the third inning.
This is one of those things that should have been fixed in a 10-minute phone call between the schools. The host team usually gets to wear whatever they want, and the visiting team is supposed to coordinate to make sure the colors do not bleed together. Auburn’s orange and Ole Miss’s red are both warm tones that read as the same color on a television broadcast.
Auburn was the home team, so they were entitled to the orange. Ole Miss was the visiting team, and they had options. The Rebels have a powder blue alternate. They have a navy alternate. They have a clean white set. They chose red, and it ruined the look of the entire game.
The problem actually went beyond aesthetics. Auburn pulled off a diving play in the field, and viewers needed several seconds to figure out which player made the catch because the shirts looked identical at speed. Baseball is a game of visual cues, and the uniforms made the broadcast harder to follow.
This is also a College World Series win-or-go-home situation. These games are supposed to be the best college baseball can offer. Instead, the conversation on Saturday was about whether Ole Miss did this on purpose to mess with their own brand or whether nobody on either staff bothered to think about it.
The first game of the series had no issue. Auburn wore navy. Ole Miss wore red. The contrast was obvious and the broadcast looked clean. So somebody at Auburn or somebody at Ole Miss made an active choice on Saturday to switch and create this mess.
The NCAA needs to step in here. College baseball’s biggest stage cannot have uniform coordination problems that any high school athletic director could solve. There should be a default rule that the visiting team wears the most contrasting color in their wardrobe, and the host team has to sign off on the matchup the day before.
The good news is that the on-field product was excellent. Auburn played solid defense. Ole Miss kept the pressure on. The crowd at Plainsman Park was rocking. The actual baseball was the best the SEC has to offer.
The bad news is that nobody who tuned in for the first time is going to talk about the baseball. They are going to talk about the uniforms. That is a self-inflicted wound by two of the most visible programs in college sports, and somebody in both athletic departments should answer for it.
Auburn took Game 2 and is closer to a trip to Omaha. The next time the camera comes back, please pick different shirts.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
