Today at my office it's "tailgate Friday" in anticipation of the big LSU/Alabama game and everyone was "encouraged" to wear their team apparel. Looks like I'm the lone Dawg in a sea of LSU, Southern, and Southeastern (and BAMA!!!???) gear.
I'm wearing one of my several generic "State T" blue shirts and was thinking how cool it would be to bearing a Bradshaw or Roaf jersey right now. Naturally, the only "official" jerseys I can find are on ebay. I swear several years ago I walked into the Tech book store and could find Bradshaw and Roaf jerseys on the racks. What's happened to all that stuff? Is it a Barnes & Noble thing? I notice that B&N is the official store for Tech and the two ULs. They have jerseys available on their website, but they're just generic, cookie-cutter jerseys that all have the same exact jersey pattern and don't look anything like what's actually on the field. Same stripes, same font on the front of the jersey, only available in black or white (although both ULs get a couple of other options that may or may not be a little more accurate to something they wear or used to wear, IDK.) You can customize the jersey number and NOB, but there is no player specific merch.
Tech jersey
ULM jersey
ULL jersey
The basketball jerseys are the same thing, same exact pattern, just the colors and the logos are changed. At least the ULL and Tech baseball jerseys are a litte more accurate.
Contrast that with the LSU team store (run by Fanatics, which runs every NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA team store) where you can actually scroll down and find merch for specific players; Joe Burrow, OBJ, Fournette, Shaq, etc. Obviously LSU is going to move a little more fan gear than any of its little brothers, but why are we stuck with what we have? Seems like it would be fairly easy to set something up between big name players like Bradshaw and Roaf and some other prominent players to sell gear with their name on it. How hard would it be to come up with gear that is patterned correctly?
