NC State 2020-2021 Uniform Retrospective

The Pack 9’s season continues on in the Super Regionals down in Fayetteville, AR this weekend (June 11 - 13). However, unless they’ve held onto some kind of new jersey to break out during the Supers (...or during a hopeful run into the CWS out in Omaha), that should mean that we’ve seen all of the new jerseys that Adidas put together for NCSU in the 2020-2021 athletic year.

During that whole “no sports” period last summer, I did a deep dive into the MBB, FB, and Baseball uniforms worn by State during the 2010’s. Links to each of those can be found below:

Baseball: Part 1 | Part 2

Basketball: Part 1

Football: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

With the 2020-2021 athletic year now nearly complete, I wanted to detail out the new additions that we saw on the field / court / diamond over this last year.

Football:

Oversized Tuffy Head Helmet Logo:

This isn’t a new helmet or jersey that was introduced, but my favorite thing that State did with the FB uniforms in 2020 is that they increased the size of the Tuffy logo on the helmet. In previous years, the Tuffy head logo on the helmet was much smaller and harder to see on TV and in the stadium IMO.

This oversized Tuffy head was first introduced on the Ice Wolf alternate uniform sets introduced in 2018, and was also used in the Stealth Wolf alternate uniform set used in 2019, but was not made standard across all of the helmets until 2020.

For Comparison:

2017-2019 Tuffy Head Helmet Logo

2020 Tuffy Head Helmet Logo

Blood Moon Alternates:

NC State broke out a new Football alternate against Florida State in 2021. These Blood Moon alternates featured a red top with black numbers / striping and “WOLFPACK” across the chest.

I’m admittedly not a huge fan of these uniforms. I don’t think the two dark colors work all that well together, plus the pants and helmet were just carry overs from the normal black alternates.

Basketball:

State MBB and WBB had some overlap with their jerseys in 2020-2021, but there were some minor differences in the primary home/away white/red uniforms. The WBB uniforms largely remained the same in 2020-2021, but the MBB uniforms received a couple of noticeable changes from the previous year, not all of which were for the better.

MBB Home Uniforms:

The primary changes in 2020-2021 were, (1) they got rid of the alternating red/black piping along the arm sleeves and made it entirely white, and (2) they decided to finally add a black outline to the “NC STATE” wording across the chest.

However, my issue with these jerseys is they don’t look nearly as good as the all-white jersey set that they broke out totally out of nowhere in 2019 and then oddly never used again. I’m also not a fan of the fact that they got rid of the “PACK” written across the shorts leg on all of the 2020-2021 uniforms (which can also be seen at the bottom of the photo from the 2019 jersey linked above).

MBB Away Uniforms:

The primary changes in 2020-2021 were, (1) they got rid of the alternating red/black piping along the arm sleeves and made it entirely black, and (2) they also decided to finally add a black outline to the “NC STATE” wording across the chest.

Photo by Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

I’m just not a big fan of these in general. I know the whole “we’re the red & white from State, not the red & black from State” crowd deservedly catches a lot of grief when it comes to ever using any colors other than red or white, but I’m just not a fan of mixing too much black and red like these do. I’m much more in favor of keeping the black coloring for outline purposes, and to be used as the main color on alternate jerseys like the ones linked below.

WBB and MBB Black Alternates:

Both the WBB and MBB wore these new black alternates in 2020-2021. I don’t believe the MBB team wore them again after that frustrating OT loss at Clemson, but the WBB team wore them a good deal, including in the 2021 ACC Tournament Championship game against Louisville.

I really liked these. I’d also personally be all in favor of making a permanent change and going with “WOLFPACK” across the chest of the FB, WBB, and MBB uniforms.

Baseball:

Red/White Pinstripe Set:

State unveiled a new red pinstripe look on Opening Day in 2021.

I’m a big fan of the red pinstripe uniforms and love the addition of WOLFPACK” across the chest on this new set.

Black Uniform Set:

As shown above, State introduced a new black jersey with red “NC STATE” lettering and alternating red/white/black rings around the sleeve. This is much better than some of the past black uniforms used by the Pack 9, but still doesn’t really stack up against some of the other uniform options that State Baseball has.

Gray Vest Uniform Set:

White Vest Uniform Set:

As shown in Part 1 of the baseball uniform retrospective from last year, State has used the white and gray vest looks a lot over the years, primarily with a Block S on one side of the vest.

I still personally prefer the Block S to be used over the Tuffy exclusively for baseball, but if they’re going full Tuffy, and thus phasing the Block S out for across the entire Athletics Department (aside from the camo baseball hats apparently), then I’m all in favor of using “WOLFPACK” on the chest of these vests rather than throwing another Tuffy head somewhere on these with that same logo already on the hat.

Edited to Add 6/11:

There were also two additional baseball items that I think were technically introduced last year, but given the shorter season, there’s not very many pictures of those games from last year. These two are:

(1) White Hat / Red Bill / Tuffy Logo

(2) Red Batting Helmet / Tuffy Logo

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That’s all of the new uniform looks I took note of over this past year. I’ve included a poll below to collect a vote on everyone’s favorite of the new looks introduced in 2020-2021.

Go Pack. Beat Arkansas.