Wardrobe malfunction

Devoted Blobophiles ('What?" you're saying) know its long-standing ambivalence toward novelty uniforms in college football. Sometimes they're OK, and even outstanding -- i.e., the helmets Navy wore for the Army game one year. Most of the time, though, they're those hideous candy-stripe helmets IU occasionally wears, the ones that make the Hoosiers look like the love children of Santa Claus and Yuri Gagarin.

Or they're Oregon, which has so many novelty unis it doesn't have any definable look at all.

And top college programs should have a definable look. They just should.

If you're Penn State, that means you wear plain blue-and-white threads with plain white helmets. Michigan should always wear that winged business on their helmets. And Alabama should never, ever, ever wear anything but solid crimson helmets with the numbers on the side.

And then, of course, there's Notre Dame.

Which has taken to breaking out novelty threads for the Shamrock Series, a practice the Blob finds distasteful but occasionally can live with. The one year they had the leprechaun on the side of the helmet, that was kind of cool. The all-green look, OK, I guess I could live with that.

But come November the Irish play Syracuse in Yankee Stadium. And so to commemorate the occasion, they've come up with this.

And also this.

Sorry, but no. No, no, a gazillion times no.

First of all, a might-as-well-be-black navy helmet?

No. You are Notre Dame. You do not wear black helmets. You wear gold, dammit, with actual gold-flake paint. Black'navy makes you look like stupid posers trying to keep up with the cool kids. It makes you look as goofy as Ohio State looked when it broke out black helmets. It's like Penn State breaking out black helmets.

It's just wrong, in other words. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And that uniform?

OK, I get it: The pinstripe sleeves are an homage to the insufferable asses who usually inhabit Yankee Stadium. But look at those things, for God's sake. They're not football jerseys. They're company softball jerseys. You might as well go out there with the name of some software supplier on the front.

The Skynet Business Solutions Fighting Irish. The South Bend Federal Credit Union Fighting Irish. Something.

Oh, and while you're donning those lovely things?

Don't forget these, lads.