The Space Game Uniforms Are Here and They Are Out of This World

The UCF Knights’ new annual tradition of the Space Game returns on Thursday November 1, and the uniforms just came in. Prepare to have your mind blown:

You could be forgiven for thinking nothing could top last year’s Space Game uniforms (our photo gallery from last year’s Space Game is over here). Really, you could. But this year’s uniform has the Citronaut on it!

The Citronaut dates back to UCF’s days as Florida Technological University and was the school’s first mascot. It has appeared previously on uniforms for baseball and soccer, but has never previously graced the football field.

Like last year’s Space Game uniforms, the constellation pattern on the 2018 edition is loaded with fun UCF references:

The constellations used represent roads and buildings on campus at UCF, including Orion (the name of the road that circles Spectrum Stadium) with his club or sword drawn at Taurus the bull, the victim of Orion’s strike. Taurus represents the opponent and the conquered.

The outline of the Arecibo telescope, the largest fully operational radio telescope on the planet – the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is under UCF Management

The flight coordinates “SS50 R-090/31 LC39A” that shows how the 50-yard line of Spectrum Stadium lines up on the exact latitude as Launch Complex 39A, NASA’s most historic launch pad, 31 miles to the east.

A shape of the planet named after UCF (UCF1.01)

The sleeves feature a large Pegasus constellation where the Pegasus logo would typically be on our uniforms.

We, of course, are most partial to Orion getting ready to take out the bull.

And UCF continues to set a new standard for its big, splashy, announcements. The rollout video uses parts of JFK’s famous “moon speech” on the audio. It’s a choice that feels incredibly apt for a “chip on our shoulder” moment in program history. The “moon speech” even has a college football joke (which, for reasons that make sense, UCF doesn’t use in the audio). From the speech itself:

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

These uniforms are a tremendous celebration of UCF’s historical ties to the space program. Best. Ever.