Should USC update its football uniforms

They're just fabric, and in theory, that's all they ought to be. After all, they serve no practical function beyond distinguishing one team from another on the field of play.

Yet hardly anyone would reduce the value of uniforms to threads and stitches alone. Instead, they are a banner, a symbol, the very introduction to what a football team represents when they run out of the tunnel to start a game and the last thing anyone sees upon they heading back to the locker room. Uniforms are a program's identity.

That's why there is never a shortage of consternation of which team is wearing what, when. It matters, for instance, that Notre Dame wears green jerseys for especially important contests while Oregon deploys new color schemes for even the most mundane game on the schedule. People paid attention last week when Maryland donned special duds to signify the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Baltimore and the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. Boston College's decision to adorn their uniforms with red bandanna patterns in honor of September 11th hero Welles Crowther has been credited, in part, for the inspiration that helped the Eagles upset USC in Boston on Saturday. While a typical weekend still finds most programs clad in their traditional hues, the last decade in particular has been such a boon for new uniform combinations that the question is becoming less about whether a school has an alternate color scheme than exactly how many.

Along with Penn State, no team epitomizes the opposite approach more than the Trojans. USC has stood fast to tradition to such a degree that even the smallest tweak to their uniforms -- wearing black socks instead of white this year and in 2011, for instance, or the Cardinal and Gold cleats in 2012 -- is cause for a full-on dissection by its fan base, which offers assenting and dissenting opinions for sticking with a classic look versus adding more a more modern touch to their wardrobe.

That debate only figures to intensify as time goes on and more elaborate uniform ideas are concocted, so we at TrojanSports.com decided to address it once and for all: Should USC stick to tradition, or is it time to fall in line with the rest of the sport and take advantage of newer looks?

The case for

In a word, recruits.

It's hardly news that teenagers are often enamored with the latest trends, looks and cutting edge products and so it shouldn't surprise anyone that they are paying attention to how schools look aesthetically almost as much as their actual performance. What might raise an eyebrow, though, is that uniforms truly can have an impact on their recruitments. Although Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell cautions that they are, in most cases, only a small piece of a program's overall package, they are becoming an increasingly effective way to make a first impression.

"It's not the deciding factor but it's certainly something that they take notice of," he says. "In this day and age, they all want to look great, they all like gear... It's very important to them. It's all about swag, Instagram, 'How cool do I look in my uniform?' It's going to be a peripheral, an added way to draw eyeballs and that's all you want to do with unis is to say, 'Hey, I'm going to look cool in that.'"

The grand exception is Oregon, who more than any other school has leveraged their ever-changing styles into a bona fide drawing tool. There is no way to delineate exactly what role the outfits themselves have played in the Ducks' rise prominence relative to their space-age facilities or the overall financial largesse of Nike bigwig and Oregon alum Phil Knight. What is clear to Farrell, though, is that the Ducks have leveraged them so effectively that they have become a primary influence in some players' decisions.

"It's a unique edge," Farrell says. "What I've heard over the last five-six years of kids who visit Oregon because of the gear [is that] they sometimes get them signed from there. If you can get them on campus for it, it's a real effective tool to use."

That clout is the reason why enough other schools are funneling resources into their wardrobes, to a degree that the Farrell predicts the Ducks' advantage may soon be blunted, challenged not only by other new wave programs like Maryland but even from tradition-rich programs like Michigan and Notre Dame. It's enough of a factor that USC Associate Athletic Director Jose Eskenazi, who specializes in the University's branding and licensing as well as digital and strategic partnerships, says that the school is currently in the beginning stages of a year-and-a-half long examination of all of the schools' athletic programs, in part to explore whether a more modern look is necessary to keep up with other programs.

"Since Pat Haden got here, we've made a commitment to look at all aspects of our program and by just sitting idly by or not making changes, I don't think we would be doing justice to the brand," he says.

Although Eskenazi is quick to caution that the research could conclude that it's best to stay the course, the very matter of a program so steeped in tradition contemplating that shift is a concession to a changing era in college football.

"We're heard about the arms race with regards to facilities," Farrell says. "You're going to hear about the uniforms race eventually."

The case against

For the bulk of their history, USC has only worn two types of uniforms: The wide-striped sleeves from the 1970's through the 90's, and their current look, which dates back to before the 1960's and was resuscitated soon after Pete Carroll came aboard in 2000.

"Most of [our look], to be quite honest, is based on our steep tradition," Eskenazi says.

Those two words -- "steep tradition" -- are perhaps the biggest reason why USC has, up to this point, swum so obstinately against the current of change. If uniforms truly are an identity, it follows that the same programs so eager to hunt for the next new update or tweak are trying to find themselves in a sense, searching for just the right look that will permanently declare to the college football world who, exactly, they are. Sticking to their time-honored setup, then, is testament to the fact that USC has an identity in the first place, one in which their blue-blood legacy actually doubles as their biggest point of differentiation from their competitors.

"I think the most important thing is that we're comfortable with who we are," Eskanazi says. "It's not that other schools aren't, necessarily, but we have a lot of equity and support in the SC brand and our look, the way we represent ourselves from a brand perspective. We don't feel that we have to make an impact with different audiences by changing who we are."

Which isn't to say that administration will hesitate to do so in the future. Although he won't go into specifics, Eskanazi confirms that the school has come close to unveiling special uniforms for certain games before deciding "in the 11th hour [that] decided it wasn't worth it at the time for us to make that wholesale change." There's the matter, too, of that internal review, one that may well lead USC conclude that now may finally be the time for football to go the way of its basketball program, which has modeled multiple uniform combinations and styles over the last decade. Yet Eskanazi believes that whatever tweaks -- if there are any at all -- would be more in line with a consistent alternate uniform instead of a bevy of single-game styles. Rather than emulate Oregon, he brings up Georgia and Cal, schools that have evolved in recent years but only within the context of their classic color schemes and looks.

"The biggest challenge is really striking a balance between staying true to the traditional roots and being able to be a little bit progressive and up to date," he says. "We're constantly looking at ways to do it to be true to the traditional without looking too stuck in the past."

For USC, the recent past means the Pete Carroll era, a decade that in many ways brought the program unprecedented triumphs. More than any other factor, Farrell believes that this could be the biggest deterrent to wholesale change -- that unlike a Notre Dame, which has struggled to know consistent success since the late , the Trojans have little reason to re-brand themselves too radically, not when they have won national championships and Rose Bowls in these very jerseys over the last decade. If Steve Sarkisian brings his team back to the national forefront, it won't matter what the Trojans wear while they do it. Victory is the ultimate fashion statement.

"We weren't talking about the Oregon uniforms back when they stunk," he notes. "If they were still a 2-9 program, no one would care. In the end it all comes down to winning.

"Everyone looks good when you win."