Shoes

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by Forksref

Personally, I like all-black because some of the white stripes, zig-zags, whatever, look clownish. Also, a "uniform" means all the crew members should wear the same design. I could maybe go with some white if all of the crew looked like a team.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Is it not uniform to wear the same style in shirt or pants? Because if you look at many different uniform items like shirts, pants or even flags and bags they are different too.

And since shoes are so personal of a feel and not every shoe is going to be sold all black, not sure what the big deal is. The fans or coaches never say a word about our shoes.

Peace

[Forksref]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

Is it not uniform to wear the same style in shirt or pants? Because if you look at many different uniform items like shirts, pants or even flags and bags they are different too.

And since shoes are so personal of a feel and not every shoe is going to be sold all black, not sure what the big deal is. The fans or coaches never say a word about our shoes.

Peace

If there are different shirts or pants in our crew I have never been able to tell. I don't care about fans or coaches. We have our own standards of dress. Must be my military experience, but I like a "uniform" appearance. Those shoes that are not sold all black are made black by our crew members to make us look like a team. "Attention to detail," as I heard so many times in the Navy. It pays off.

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by Forksref

If there are different shirts or pants in our crew I have never been able to tell. I don't care about fans or coaches. We have our own standards of dress. Must be my military experience, but I like a "uniform" appearance. Those shoes that are not sold all black are made black by our crew members to make us look like a team. "Attention to detail," as I heard so many times in the Navy. It pays off.

Actually you can tell the different shirts apart rather easily as well as pants, especially the black style all have a little differences you can notice quickly if you are familiar the styles. Most of the time you do not have to be very close either to tell the differences.

Then what do you do when someone has a shoe that is black because they either had to black them out or the sole of the shoe has gray or black and the other crew members are not so obvious?

The point is we can nitpick all these things. I just know that I am not going to wear a shoe you like because they feel good on your feet. As stated before, no one cares about this but officials. And if we all have to be the same, we better buy everything from the same company or order the same brand or we will not be perfectly uniformed.

Peace

[Texas Aggie]

The white on the shoes look better with the black pants. All black shoes, to me, don't look very good. On my crew we all wear the NFL Reeboks (not Zags) and they're good shoes. I'd like to see what Nike comes up with for the NFL guys. For subvarsity (and on varsity with others not on my crew) everyone is going to have their own different shoes -- Reebok, Nike, Adidas, NB -- its all good. The only reason you can tell who's wearing what on TV is that they show the officials up close. From the stands, no one knows what the wing on the other side of the field is wearing.

I couldn't care less what anyone thinks about my shoes. I wear running shoes for hoops and have a difficult time finding mostly black ones. Several years ago, I told my college supervisor it (the running shoes) had to be that way and he said it was fine.

[jchamp]

Originally Posted by Forksref

If there are different shirts or pants in our crew I have never been able to tell. I don't care about fans or coaches. We have our own standards of dress. Must be my military experience, but I like a "uniform" appearance. Those shoes that are not sold all black are made black by our crew members to make us look like a team. "Attention to detail," as I heard so many times in the Navy. It pays off.

On the football field it works to a fault. Unfortunately, the officials community is too small of a market to demand many manufacturers cater to our needs. But that aside, the DoD has varying allowances for the nature of member's equipment in garrison. It's hard to find boots that don't say "Belleville" on them, and my last DO always had sunglasses with a giant Wiley-X logo on the side. Even in a deployed environment, way out in the sticks, the Army's grunts and even the snake-eaters types personalize their equipment or customize it a little to make it work better with their bodies. This even includes colors on weapon components (analogous to flags/whistles, etc.) This does include wearing glasses, footwear, or MOLLE attachments that have logos on them. I've never heard of a Specialist getting even a "counseling" session for it. ... Probably also helps that at those places, you almost never seen anyone above O-4.

Point is, while the military example on the surface (for planned formations) works quite well, once you get into the day-to-day operations, the military example breaks down quicker C-5 in the Med.