Iowa State is changing football uniforms again, which isn't news. No team in America has swapped out its togs more often than the Cyclones. Every new coach in my lifetime has found a lot to dislike about the preferred attire of his predecessor and ISU and many have found something not to like about their own uni choices and made yet additional changes. Nobody's wheel of uniforms has spun faster than Iowa State's.

Clay Stapleton had uniforms that were attractive enough to serve as the inspiration for the San Francisco 49ers. Yet Johnny Majors saw fit to make a change when he came to town. Majors took Iowa State to its first two bowl games ever, yet Earle Bruce thought a new look was needed when he assumed the helm in Ames. Bruce chalked up 24 wins in a three-year period and went to two more bowl games and Donnie Duncan then decided his Cyclones could look better than Earle's. Then came Criner, then came Walden, and then came McCarney. New unis, new unis, new unis. Now comes Chizik. New unis.

Iowa State has never been successful enough for any one uniform style to gain sacred cow status. Even after Joe Paterno retires at Penn State, the uniforms will stay the same. Michigan's uniforms won't change. Ohio State's uniforms won't change. Texas' uniforms won't change. Alabama's uniforms won't change. Not much anyway. When you see an old game on ESPN Classic or whatever, you realize that some changes –mostly for the sake of modernizing - have been made to even the most classic of unis through the years. But there is something about massive success that stitches a uniform style into the very fabric of a university with no room for change.

But back to ISU. Engaging the fans to help create yet another new look for Cyclone football is a positive step. Hopefully this change won't solely reflect the arbitrary wishes of a new coach with no training or ability in the ways of fashion design. The typical coach knows as much as apparel design as Vera Wang knows about the Tampa 2. But that hasn't stopped every Iowa State coach in the last four decades or so from knowing on his first day on the job that new uniforms were badly needed to define his new era of greater success at Iowa State.

Two changes stand out as the worst made at Iowa State since the 60s. One was Duncan's USC knockoffs in 1979 that featured the "golden jockstrap" ISU insignia on the first red helmets that Iowa State had ever worn (to the best of my knowledge). Duncan said Iowa State needed to "look like a winner" or some such, so he patterned the unis after Southern Cal. Never mind that ISU had looked like a winner in each of the previous three seasons when it was actually winning games. Duncan turned 8-3 into 3-8 and, wow, did that '79 team look like a winner! Not.

The second change that made no sense was McCarney's switch between the 2002 and 2003 seasons. Now the "dog bones" uniforms of 1999 through 2002 had their issues primarily because things were being done on the cheap and the jerseys and pants and helmets never actually all matched each other at any one time. That falling down aside, they were unique and most importantly, Iowa State won games wearing them. The fashionista that I am married to accurately predicted the '03 collapse before it happened on the basis of the uni change alone. As she put it: you don't mess with the uniform mojo when you're winning. Amen honey, amen.

An irony of the upcoming change is that Chizik cited the tenure of his mentor, Mack Brown, as an assistant coach in Ames as one of the motivating factors behind a return to a more traditional uniform. And Brown's years in Ames (1978-81) were the pinnacle of Iowa State's uniform "tradition" in that there was a different uniform in each of those four seasons. Duncan was as bad at making a decision and sticking with it as he was at making Dwayne Crutchfield work out. There's no way to know exactly which of the four uniforms from Brown's four years on the Cyclone staff that Chizik was so enamored with, but one of them apparently tripped his trigger.

The funny thing about tradition is that everybody identifies with something else when it comes to what's "traditional." A self-proclaimed ISU purist will say that no blue should be included in Iowa State's uniforms because the colors are "cardinal and gold." True enough, but when George Veenker coached Iowa State College in the 30s, the home jerseys were navy blue. ISC's first All-American, Ed Bock, wore navy blue for his entire career. So is that not part of Iowa State's tradition?

Going further back, the schools colors at "Ames College" were not cardinal and gold at all, at least until the turn of the century. If Iowa State wants to REALLY be traditional, how about silver, gold and black? Yep, those were the school colors at one time and it was the emergence of athletic pursuits that brought about the adoption of cardinal and gold. Read this passage from a school publication in October of 1899:

""The matter of colors has proven a stumbling block and this is not to be wondered at. As we have stated before, the silver, gold, and black are approaching their last days. They are pretty, but absolutely impossible to use in any way that would uniform our athletes...so the colors adopted for a college athletic team determine what shall be the colors of the college. It follows then, that we should be very careful in this matter. What the Council does now will probably hold for all time and they must not blunder this time.

"At Thursday's Council meeting the special committee appointed to investigate and report on suitable colors for the sweaters, reported in favor of a cardinal sweater with a gold letter...This is a commendable improvement and makes a distinctive and striking set of colors. From the prominence of cardinal and gold at the Nebraska game, it is evident that common consent will very soon adopt these as the college colors." 108 years later, the same basic discussion is taking place.

So if nothing else, an attempt should be made to include as much true tradition as possible and not just what some person or persons THINK is tradition. Yes, forget the silver, gold and black but don't be so quick to scuttle the blue. It has a traditional basis for being included as an accent color, even if the decision makers in the 90s who introduced it to sell more gear didn't realize that. And gold is gold, it's not yellow. Ask the 49ers. And cardinal is cardinal, it's not red. Ask USC. Even though everyone is saying the right things, there is an underlying fear that someone's personal tastes are going to win out over true tradition and that would be a shame.