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Northwestern has entered the season’s homestretch and is making its final preparations for the Big Ten Championship Game against Ohio State, a massive game by all standards for the football program. While this Saturday’s game may be out of the ordinary in the amount of attention it will receive from a national audience, the NU Athletics department held to their regular weekly tradition of announcing the uniforms the ‘Cats will wear in the game via tweet on Friday morning.
#GoCats | @UnderArmour pic.twitter.com/3jIXrRQvDU
— Northwestern Football (@NUFBFamily) December 18, 2020
The uniform is a classic one for the Wildcats, featuring the school’s iconic colors in the helmet and pants, which are purple, and jersey and cleats, which are white. The Wildcats’ helmets will have white facemasks, a rare uniform detail that was received well by fans in this year’s upset of Wisconsin. According to The Daily Northwestern’s Ella Brockway, the ‘Cats have worn this combination of a white jersey, purple helmet and purple pants eight times since 2012 and have recorded a 4-4 record in the uniforms during that timeframe. Technically, the last time this combo was worn was against Wisconsin last season. Those uniforms, however, were special throwback threads to commemorate the 150th anniversary of college football’s existence, so you’d have to go back to 2019’s opening road loss against Stanford to find the same color combo with the typical “Block N” logo and Morgan Poster Avec font usually found on NU’s uniforms. As for the beloved white facemasks, Brockway reports that the ‘Cats have worn them thrice and won each time.
Big Ten Championship Game Week Uniform Intel! Heard this combo is one the players have really wanted to wear this season.
— Ella Brockway (@ellabrockway) December 18, 2020
Record since 2012 in W-P-P: 4-4
Notable past wins: Notre Dame (2014), Michigan State (2015)
Record in the white facemask helmets: 3-0 https://t.co/tiBdVo3htn
The Big Ten Championship Game kicks off at 11:00 a.m. CT on Saturday and will be televised on FOX.