KU hoops’ Larry Hare talks uniform planning, his favorites and one that didn’t fly

Larry Hare made a shared Google Document during the 2022-23 Kansas men’s basketball season to catalog game-by-game uniform plans and help his colleagues across the athletic department plan accordingly.

For Hare — Kansas’ assistant athletics director for equipment services who’s entering his 19th year in Lawrence — the apparel index was a crafty new way to streamline information for weekly meetings about marketing, communications and licensing for KU hoops.

Every uniform the Jayhawks put on is surrounded by methodical plotting. Some are tied to events like Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, mental health awareness or reunions for great Kansas teams of old.

Those occasions are often preceded by special releases or photo shoots that promote the story of the uniforms before they’re worn. Retailers are also apprised of selections so they can move replicas to the front racks of fan shops.

From social media to storefronts, there’s a collaborative effort to promote each fresh set of threads — and by extension, the university, and the people and virtues it champions.

“There’s an awful lot of synergy that goes into this nowadays,” Hare said in a recent interview with the Star that explored the differences in his job now compared to when he joined the profession more than 30 years ago.

“It’s not just at three o’clock, me asking Coach, ‘Hey Coach, you want to wear this tonight?’ ‘Yeah, Larry, let’s do that,’ and off we go. While there was a time that could be done, nowadays there’s too many other stakeholders in such a process. And really, you want to have some synergy.”

As head men’s basketball equipment manager, it’s also important for Hare to be on the same page with coach Bill Self. Hare said he “never surprises” Self and has garnered his trust in nearly two decades together.

The greatest challenge is that Hare’s always showing Self kits far in advance of when they’ll be worn — for example, the Jayhawks’ primary uniforms for fall 2024 are already finalized. But Hare and Self have an email trail about the choices so they don’t sneak by the coach.

Hare will often hang newly-arrived items in director of basketball operations Fred Quartlebaum’s office with a note attached for Self — to secure his approval or to jog his memory about when the uniforms will be worn. Hare also makes sure to give Self pregame reminders and ascertain last minute needs at every shootaround.

Each coach has idiosyncrasies and desires that managers have to account for, but Self’s flexibility makes Hare’s job easy.

“Coach is really about as accommodating as they come on this,” Hare said. “He has a very simple, very direct appreciation for how a uniform looks — clean, classy. … He is incredibly accommodating with his time, so I never want to waste it.

“I go in (and say) ‘Hey, Coach, here’s what we’re looking at,’ get his input. He’ll ask me my opinion sometimes. But he has a good feel for what he wants the program to look like and what he doesn’t feel is right for Kansas men’s basketball.”

Hare, who manages Kansas’ apparel contract with Adidas, also considers himself a steward of the university’s brand regarding uniform design. He shared with the Star the logic behind three of his favorite KU uniforms, and also offered perspective on a design that didn’t pan out.

On Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012, seven members of KU’s 1952 national championship team were honored at Allen Fieldhouse for the 60th anniversary of their achievement.

The 2011-12 Jayhawks wore commemorative retro uniforms against Oklahoma State that day and extra jerseys were presented to the alums. One recipient was the late Clyde Lovellette, the 1952 team’s outstanding 6-foot-9 center and a 1988 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee.

“You don’t always get to do that,” Hare said of presenting a jersey to Lovellette. “So that’s pretty special, moments like that.”

National championships in basketball are rarely repeated, too, given the work it takes to get through the NCAA Tournament field of 64.

That’s why Hare’s other favorite jerseys are the ones Kansas has won championships in during his tenure: The blue uniforms from the 2008 title over Memphis and the whites from the 2022 championship over North Carolina.

Those 2022 whites have a special message in the threads, as well: The piping shows the 13 original “Rules of Basket Ball” created in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, the game’s inventor and Kansas’ first coach. The historic papers that Naismith typed the rules on are on exhibition at the DeBruce Center, adjoined to the northeast corner of Allen Fieldhouse.

“In the course of the schedule, in the grind the life of college athletics sometimes can be, you have to take moments to realize how special those moments are,” Hare said. “I have such great appreciation for any team that can make it to the culminating event.

“So those are my favorites. I know we have such a great history of what we refer to as the ‘circus font’ that was worn in the late ‘80s and ‘90s and early 2000s. Anytime we can bring that back into the uniform fold for our fan base, they absolutely love it and gravitate towards that, so we’re aware of that too.

“But I think it’s pretty special, the 2022 ones, to win a national title while you’re featuring rules of basketball. There’s something ironic and poignant to that.”

At other times, Kansas has been presented with jersey designs that tried to achieve similarly admirable messaging but just didn’t align with the KU brand.

Hare said Adidas once sent him concepts of a Black History Month uniform using black, tan and purple. While it was nicely designed, Kansas wasn’t going to approve a kit that leaned toward the colors of regional rivals Kansas State and Missouri.

Fortunately, Adidas accommodated some adjustments. Kansas didn’t buy the shoes that went with the uniforms and was able to change the black elements to royal blue.

“We were appreciative where we can meet in the middle on that and clean those things up so it represents Kansas Athletics far greater than maybe the initial draft,” Hare said. “So that was years ago that that occurred, and Adidas has been a great partner of ours.

“And now we’ve got folks that will head that off before it ever gets to my plate, or our licensing director, where we had to look at it and say, ‘We probably need to think of this in a different way.’”

Hare, as he mentioned with the “circus font” jerseys, is cognizant of fans’ feelings about uniforms, which are publicly expressed more often these days via social media.

He knows many Kansas fans follow uniform releases religiously. Twitter and Instagram are full of praise and critiques that have to be taken all together. He appreciates the passion of the Jayhawk faithful and savors the compliments as evidence of a job well done.

“We take a great deal of pride in how the team looks, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Hare said. “You’re never going to have everybody love a uniform. You just aren’t. There’s people that have cast their opinions and you just have to roll. You have to feel confident in what you’ve done, and that you put your best foot forward in outfitting your teams each day in alignment with the logos of this university.”

More than anything, Hare tries to remind fans and prospective student managers that work behind the scenes makes possible what they see on television or in person on game days.

Before the Jayhawks ever put on a uniform, there were hours of laundry, repair, layouts and packing, there were marketing meetings, and there was Hare’s very detailed Google Document.