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UF equipment manager likes high-tech uniforms



By this time, your uniform is beginning to bog down. It’s the start of the fourth quarter and you’re saturated with two hours’ worth of sweat and moisture from the hot, humid air.Your drenched jersey feels pounds heavier as you slosh down the field in water-logged cleats.Get more news about uf equipment producer,you can vist our website!

As you line up across from a number clad in garnet in gold, you smirk. You’re not wearing last week’s uniform.

Jason Baisden, Florida head football equipment manager, believes the Gators will have a technological edge while wearing the team’s new Nike Pro Combat uniforms against the FSU Saturday.The new gear is almost half the weight of FSU’s uniforms, Baisden said.

“It doesn’t sound like a lot to the layman, but that is a tremendous amount during the game,” Baisden said. “It’s a big advantage when the fourth quarter comes around.”

Nike’s football division has completely revamped Florida’s football equipment line for the upcoming rivalry game.The Gator will be wearing new high-tech helmets, jerseys, pants, pads, gloves and cleats, free of charge to the university.

Baisden describes the uniforms as a “futuristic-retro design” with its ’60s-style, white helmets and sleek, aggressive lines across an all-blue jersey and pant combination.

Currently in his fifth year with the team, Baisden expects the uniform’s impact to come late in the game, when the players’ equipment normally becomes heavier from the water and sweat it accumulates.With the Pro Combat gear, this moisture is shed off the material, making it 46 percent lighter than a typical Gator uniform when wet, according to Nike.

In addition to wicking away moisture, the four-way stretch twill that is used in the jersey and pants effectively “shrink wraps” itself around a player’s body, said Nike spokesperson Loren Hoppes. This allows for the uniform to contort to every angle in which pad and flesh meet, preventing opposing players from grabbing onto a Gator’s jersey.“It’s a much better fit,” Baisden said. “Everything moves with the athlete now. It’s not like you have these big thigh pads sticking out. It’s all a full extension of the body.”

Baisden likened the possible game-day effect of the Pro Combat technology to that of professional swimming’s polyurethane suits, which glide through water with unprecedented speed.

And in Florida’s case, it could make the nation’s top-ranked team that much quicker than the competition.

Three of the four teams that have worn the new uniforms have won by an average of 17 points (TCU, Virginia Tech, FSU and Ohio State). Only injury-plagued Oklahoma has lost.