Martin Stadium’s New Football Field Design for Washington State Cougars Is Nasty!
By Josh Davis
If you’re looking for innovation around college football these days, you can find it at Washington State. Now there is a (leaked) field design for the Cougars and while others may like it, or love it or whatever, I personally can only put it into one category; Nasty.
I don’t mean ‘eew that bugar is nasty’ or ‘gross, why are you wearing purple, that’s nasty’ type of ‘Nasty’. Nope, I’m talking Lebron James liftoff-to-posterize you, Seahawks in the 2014 Super Bowl, new WSU football operations building ‘Nasty’. Basically, just like everything the Cougars have designed recently, this is one of the slickest concepts and field designs in the entire country (if it’s real) and would further build the WSU brand.
Changes in the photo include the obvious color palette of the end zones with the dark/light striped diagonal design that reflects what was done on the FOB walls, which is completely unique. Multi-tone end zones are very rare among the college landscape (only LSU and Maryland?).
According to the leaked photo, the fonts of both the lettering and field numbers at Martin would match the unique Nike-design for the school. If this picture is real, the field would actually feature a three-tone end zone scheme (crimson, gray and white). White has become something of an unofficial school color for the Cougs under Bill Moos.
The only thing I don’t like about the pic is that the lettering seems small, for whatever reason I prefer the letters that fill out a good portion of the end zone. For something of a comparison here’s what the most recent end zones in Martin looked like:
The Pac-12 currently has several teams that sport colorful end zones including the Washington Huskies, USC Trojans, Oregon State Beavers, Cal Golden Bears, Utah Utes, Arizona Wildcats and the UCLA Bruins. The Oregon Ducks also have a slightly darker green (that matches their two-tone green field design) in their end zone.
My favorite designs ever for WSU-themed endzones were designed specifically for their two most recent Rose Bowl appearances in 1998 and 2003. There are many great images of either, but I found a couple that can give you an idea. First the 1998 appearance against the Michigan Wolverines, a white background with crimson lettering:
A couple photos from the 2003 game show a gray-design with crimson lettering, which was pretty sweet as well.
Cougfan also did a nice piece yesterday comparing the new design and a few interesting field designs from around the country. I am ready for some Cougar football!