The iconic blue jerseys and basic black shoes are certainly near and dear to our hearts. But how does the rest of the country see it? The Big Ten Network recently released its uniform “power rankings,” which surveys one football writer from every school in the conference to decide just which school has the best uniform. Penn State finished third, behind only Michigan and Ohio State.

“When it comes to uniforms, the simpler is always better in my book, and it simply doesn’t get much simpler than Penn State,” wrote Tom Fornelli, an Illinois writer who was the only participant to rank Penn State first.

There’s some evidence that the names on the back of the jerseys installed last year hurt Penn State’s ranking among the national audience. Two different writers mentioned that they didn’t like the change.

“I can’t believe they added the players’ last names on the backs of uniforms last year. That’s called selling your soul, people,” Ohio State writer Dave Biddle joked. “I’ll always like the Penn State uniforms with the plain white helmets, even if I wish they would have kept their jerseys completely old-school and operated sans names on the back.”

Michigan writer Nick Baumgardner also had bad things to say about the names.

“The Nittany Lions would be a lot higher on my list if Bill O’Brien hadn’t tinkered with this otherwise classic look,” Bumgarner wrote.

Not everyone had bad things to say, however. Mike Fiammetta from Wisconsin ranked Penn State in the second slot and said he enjoyed the names.

“I’m a fan of the decision to add player names to the jerseys, though that’s more for reasons beyond just the aesthetics of the jerseys,” he wrote. “Both the home and away uniforms are near-perfect, in my mind, and they get points for standing the test of time, especially alongside some of the terrible modern alternates we’ve seen.”

All in all, only three writers had Penn State out of their top 6. Our own Ben Jones ranked Penn State solidly at 2.