I hear ya.
I loved the black collar in Year-1 of the latest "redesign" phase. The initial uniform set was really solid, with lots of good options.
Then, a bunch of people b*tched about the black collar, so they quickly did a new iteration; getting rid of the black collar, and inexplicably making the numbers way bigger. It was a dumb change. Since that 2nd iteration, the uniforms haven't fit as well (which makes no sense because it seems all they did was make the numbers bigger); they look baggy, with odd-fits on different players. Go back and look at Monty/Butler in the initial uniform, which was Purdy's freshman year - perfect fit, perfect sized numbers, really solid overall. Getting rid of the black collar also makes it stupid to wear a black helmet with the Cardinal top/bottom (no, it simply doesn't look as good, or make sense at all as a uniform combo).
This time around? We will see. I am encouraged initially by seeing that the numbers do not have that odd "swirly" design/multi-color tone to them that this latest iteration has. Never understand it - no where else in any sport do we use a design
within the font used for the numbers. If they start using a bunch of white, I am open to it.
I agree
As for the gold? I go back and forth. I liked the Chizik/USC-esque design, for the most part. It was classic and simple. Where it got dumb was around ~2013, Nike re-did their template and made the shoulder stripes go all the way down past the armpits, and horribly stretched our numbers and made them bigger/taller. Clearly a half-ass "we don't give a sh*t about Iowa State" effort. Looked really, really stupid. Go look at Lazard's senior season - those shoulder stripes are beyond awful. But back to the gold - it's
not gold. It's yellow. And too much yellow doesn't look good on a football uniform. As long as their is
some yellow as an
accent, the uniforms will not at all remotely resemble NC State, Nebraska, Stanford, etc. A little fake-gold goes a long way