Tinker ready to Raise OSU’s Brand

It was great to read Kerry Eggers story in the Portland Tribune yesterday that Mike Riley and De Carolis are both warming up to letting Nike come up with some new branding ideas to be ready by Fall 2013. Even the checkered endzone idea was mentioned but Tinker expanded on it by saying he has done work in the Innovation Kitchen on a Beaver tail waffle design that takes the checkered look to an even higher level of detail and makes it specific to OSU. You can read the new Tinker article here.

Tinker mentions teams like Michigan St., Oklahoma St. and Penn St. as teams OSU may share some things in common with. Besides having the Joe Pa of the West he was implying OSU works well with traditional designs with classic and tough elements and that is why in the Giant Killers they kept the helmets solid black besides the striping. People like to talk bad about the ‘sports bra’ uniforms and forget that we won our most recent Civil War in Eugene with those unis. The intention to introduce both school colors in the same jersey top was sound. Only the lines were slightly off. Our current unis are better than those but with so few combos they are already getting boring. I also have had feedback from some close Beaver friends who say their favorite of all my designs were the orange pant with black jersey home mockup. People who point to a few losses in the past wearing any particular look are missing the point of having extra combinations and what Tinker wants to do for Oregon State.

It is a holistic approach to improving programs, growing the brand and raising the bar for the level of success that is possible. It gets things going in the right direction again unlike what has been the case the past couple years. You then are increasingly likely to recruit more top athletes, sell more season tickets and merchandise, and the growing level of excitement hastens other improvements as the Pac-12 under Larry Scott continues to become more cutting edge in every way.

My personal hope is we let Tinker create something that is powerful and innovative and gets OSU noticed. Bring those traditional elements we like into the modern era and don’t be too conservative. It needs to have the cool factor. That said I wanted to get a sense of the teams OSU fans would most like to see aspects of in these future designs. Pick the team brands that you most think OSU should take some essence from in our ultimate designs.