The outcry concerning Ohio State’s new football jersey seems rather unnecessary when one takes into consideration that uniforms do not win games and that style does not gain a team bonus points or afford it better field position.

With that said, for some fans, a jersey symbolizes something more than a team. It represents history, tradition, ideals and in some cases something grander than all three. Herein lies the “issue” surrounding the OSU jersey change.

It has nothing to do with football and everything to do with a school’s sports culture and identity. The previous uniforms carried a lot of weight with them – a National Championship and three Bowl Championship Series bids are just current examples.

The notion that OSU would make such a clean break with such a successful and (here’s the most important part) recognizable jersey is what is problematic for most fans. For OSU fans, the previous Buckeye jersey stood for dominance and was a tangible symbol of success.

The removal of the color gray from the jersey is one of the biggest complaints among angered Buckeye fans, despite the fact that gray has been omitted from previous versions of the uniform top. The jersey’s sleeve length and placement of auxiliary numbers have also been ridiculed even though OSU uniforms from the late ’60s feature similar styles. (In fact, OSU sells a Jack Tatum throwback jersey from that era and no one seems to mind buying those.)

OSU’s contract with Nike has some Buckeye conspiracy theorists claiming that the jersey change was the clothing giant’s doing.

So what does this mean about current Buckeye fans? Are they ignorant about their past? Are they caught up in the team’s recent history? Do they think OSU is only out to appease its Nike masters? Or, do they just want to complain about something for the sake of complaining? The latter is most likely the real reason. After all, this is Buckeye Country and few fan bases in the nation love to moan more than OSU’s.

Buckeye fans will rant about a 21-point win against San Francisco State Tech., because it “should not have been that close.” None of this is really surprising though, because its a part of OSU’s culture. And no one wants to mess with that.