When it comes to how the Gophers football team dresses on game day, coach P.J. Fleck is big on variety.
On Thursday, the program unveiled the helmets the team will wear for Saturday's game against Maryland at TCF Bank Stadium. The theme of the game is "Salute to Service Members/Champions,'' and the helmets are white with metallic specs and feature an American flag-themed stripe down the middle.
On front of the helmet stripe will be Minnesota National Guard logo, and on the back will be the USS Minnesota logo. In between, four logos from a unit or subsection of the Minnesota National Guard will appear. The equipment staff needed five different stripe combinations to accommodate the logos the team will use.
The Gophers will be sporting their fourth different look in as many games. The opened with all-maroon against Buffalo, went all-white at Oregon State and sported all-gold with a big Goldy Gopher logo on their helmets against Middle Tennessee. Their combo against Maryland will be revealed Saturday, a spokesman said.
"You're not going to see us get out of school colors and do weird things like that, things don't match,'' Fleck said Tuesday. "In terms of when you start to see alternate uniforms this year, and then in the future, you're going to see a lot of things maybe you haven't seen before.''
Also on Saturday, the Gophers will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1967 team that won Minnesota's last Big Ten football championship. Members of the 1967 team will be signing autographs at Gopher Garden starting at 9 a.m. Saturday and will be recognized on the field during Saturday's first-quarter break.
