Penn State football reveals uniform patch, helmet stickers to promote unity for 2020 season
Penn State football’s basic blues will have a little something extra on them this season.
The Nittany Lions will don an image of Pennsylvania with two hands interlocked over top of it on the front of their uniforms and on the back of their helmets. The uniform additions are part of the program’s “Penn State United” campaign announced Tuesday.
“Penn State football student-athletes will wear a logo in competition this year to symbolize our journey for unity,” the tweet announcing the campaign said. “Our goal is to construct a culture of respect, appreciation and empathy for all differences.
“We are a country, state (and) institution rooted in diversity, shared experience (and) hope. We believe now, more than ever, we can help create a better society by publicly (and) peacefully acknowledging our pursuit to move beyond simply tolerating differences to recognizing these differences can enrich our commonwealth.”
Penn State head coach James Franklin said earlier that his program intended to take advantage of the NCAA’s July decision to allow players in all sports to wear patches or change the names on their uniforms to convey social justice messages.
He used the opening remarks of his Tuesday press conference to speak about the conversations his program has had regarding social justice issues over the offseason, and how they arrived at the decision to wear the patches.
“We’re just really proud of our players and our program,” he said.
The Nittany Lion head coach said his team saw other leagues, conferences and professional basketball using their voice and wanted to show their unity as a result.
He stressed that the message was to bring people together, not to be divisive.
“(We) had a lot of conversations this offseason,” Franklin said. “A lot of discussions that I think were very, very important. The transparency that we had, the discussions that we had, the education and the learning that was taking place in those meetings from so many different perspectives was great.”
The logo, which will also be present on warm-up T-shirts, was was born out of a discussion with the football program’s leadership council, according to Penn State.
“I am so proud of the work done by our football student-athletes and staff this summer regarding social justice,” Athletic Director Sandy Barbour said in a release. “Penn State United is the one of many steps we have and will take as an athletics department to address social justice issues facing our country.”
While patches were previously allowed in football, such as last year’s “150-year anniversary” patches, the change allows them to be worn on the front and back of jerseys with the approval of the conference and school.
