The wait is over: ASU football unveils Adidas uniforms

When Arizona State and Adidas announced an eight-year partnership in 2014, there was a sense of anxiety over the future look of Sun Devil Athletics.

After all, change is hard.

ASU's contract with Adidas runs through the 2022-23 season and pays the school $4,225,000 a year – a significant jump from the $2.1 million that Nike paid ASU in 2014.

The hype was certainly there from the start. After the announcement was made on Dec. 14, rapper Snoop Dogg welcomed ASU to the Adidas family with a video on his Instagram account and Jake Plummer showed off a pair of custom ASU Adidas cleats.

Not bad for a splash of starpower.

But for those who wanted to wait and see what Adidas had in store for the Sun Devils' uniforms, that wait is over.

ASU and Adidas released the new football uniforms for the 2015 season Thursday morning. At first glance, the change isn't drastic. The Sun Devils chose to stick with a look that ASU fans and players have grown accustomed to since 2011.

"The way I look at it is it wasn't what Nike had, it's what Arizona State had," Mark Daniels, Adidas Global VP of Team Sports, said. "They had very clean, bold looks that had some DNA that was very authentic to their school. We wanted to stay true to what the university's North Star was. And of course, we have elements that are very, very different."

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Daniels helped lead the design and marketing partnership between Adidas and ASU. They did the uniform redesign on a much shorter timetable than what the company is used to.

"These are usually 18- or 24-month conversations to just update something, and that's with an existing partner," Daniels said. "We didn't have that period of time, and this got done very late in 2014. So, we were in a hurry-up offense."

According to Daniels, Adidas did not want to dictate the design process. His team worked in constant contact with Vice President for University Athletics Ray Anderson, head coach Todd Graham and even got some players involved.

They asked, "What does Arizona State mean?" Daniels said he felt that this collaborative effort produced a result that stayed consistent with what ASU wanted from a design standpoint.

These uniforms retained the fonts, "PT42" crest and similar sleeve stripes from recent designs, but Adidas looked to enhance those components with a glossier, metallic accent. A larger pitchfork logo has also been added to the pants.

"When you look at where we placed the fork on the pants, on the gloves, on the shoulders in all this, you get a metallic element," Daniels said. "That's an upgrade. It gives it more of that premium, swagged-out look."

While the design isn't a huge change, the technology behind the uniforms presents an enormous difference.

Adidas introduced a new compression jersey system called "Primeknit," which is 30-percent lighter than the standard football jersey. The patterns that are knitted into the uniforms on the shoulders, torso and pants are part of this new technology.

Daniels said that these uniforms offer a greater range of motion and cooling ability than what players are used to, but on top of that, these jerseys also will make matters tougher on ASU's opponents.

"The real big story in this tech that is the most exciting thing about this uniform system is that it is the only true compression jersey, and that makes it harder to grab," Daniels said. "And what's harder to grab is harder to tackle. That means more first downs, more touchdowns, more wins. It gives Arizona State an unfair advantage against their competition."

ASU was Adidas' fourth high-profile uniform unveiling in July. Pac-12 rival UCLA has a new look. Miami showed off its uniforms in a South Beach nightclub. Nebraska has new black alternate uniforms.

Those uniforms all featured the Primeknit technology and marketed "speed" as a key word.

The Sun Devil Athletics Twitter account tweeted Saturday, "A new level of speed. A new brand of fear." Adidas sees ASU as team that plays fast on the field and is growing rapidly as a university. The two sides set out to connect the uniform's design to the marketing approach on all fronts, promoting "speed" as the Sun Devils' new "DNA."

This is just the beginning for Adidas and ASU. Daniels did not rule out the potential for new alternate uniforms and ways to honor ASU's past, specifically Pat Tillman. Those decisions will come from ASU, but for now, Adidas is excited to launch this new look for the Sun Devils.

"This is a new era for Arizona State," Daniels said. "That doesn't mean we are going to make a right-hand turn from what Arizona State stood for, but it's certainly amping that up in a very big way."

ASU uniforms through the years:

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