This afternoon, the California Golden Bears unveiled new uniforms for the 2024 season, and did so…surprise…with a hype video.
For the New Era🧵#GoBears | #ALLIN pic.twitter.com/04Yy1ClpvG
— Cal Football (@CalFootball) July 15, 2024
Unfortunately, at least as of this writing, the team has not released any still photos, so I’ve taken several screengrabs. Let’s look at these now. (New photos at the end of this post were just released.)
The team will have two helmets. The classic navy blue script “Cal” as well as the “Joe Roth” throwback. Both helmets have been worn before, although the new navy blue helmet will have a glossy finish this season.
Two jerseys — a navy and a white — were introduced. The team will also have three pairs of pants: navy, white and gold.
NAVY
The navy jerseys return to a classic look, with a gold/blue/white/blue/gold modified Northwestern stripe on the sleeve caps. An “ACC” patch (Cal’s new conference) is on the right upper chest, and a small, script “Cal” is at the base of the collar. Numbers are rendered in a classic, serifed block font in gold.
The blue jerseys can be paired with gold, white or navy pants.
The back of the jersey features NOB and numbers in gold.
WHITE
The white jersey follows the same design as the navy — a modified Northwestern striping pattern of blue/white/gold/white/blue is on the sleeve caps, while a small script “Cal” logo is at the base of the collar. The only difference is in the numbers, where a thin gold outline surrounds the block blue front number. Like the blue jerseys, the white jersey is shown with blue, gold and white pants.
While the pants striping is in the same style as the jersey, a closer look (seen above and below) shows the pants have thicker outer stripes and thinner middle ones, compared to the jersey striping).
The only shot I was able to get of the back of the white jersey is below. NOB is in navy, while the numbers are navy outlined in thin gold, mimicking the front of the white jersey.
And as previously mentioned, there were two helmet options shown: the classic navy with “Cal” in gold script, and the Joe Roth throwback helmet, which is gold with a blue/white/blue stripe.
The stripes on all the jerseys have returned to the look worn previously, including by Joe Roth. More recently, Cal had moved away from the modified Northwestern striping to a distinctive pattern (first introduced by UnderArmour, but retained when the school switched to Nike). Other differences are the moving of the script cal to a smaller logo on the base of the neck, and a full serif block number. You can see the differences between last year (left) and this coming season (right) below:
In addition, in past season Cal has sported an alternate gold jersey, as well as a white road top. Both of those jerseys featured blue sleeve caps with the same striping pattern as the blue sleeve caps. It was not announced whether the team will have an alternate gold jersey for 2024.
UPDATE: The team (finally) released some still photographs which show off the uniforms in better quality. These are below. If additional photos are posted, I’ll add those to this post as well.
I LOVE the new uniforms — they’re a harkback to a more classic time, and my biggest complaint about the prior uniform set was the distinctive (but odd) striping pattern. The new jerseys and pants return the team to the classic look of years past. Whether the team will add another jersey (gold) or a Joe Roth throwback (as they’ve worn previously) remains to be seen. I’d just as soon the team stick to gold pants for both home and road, but the only look I really don’t like is the mono-navy. But even with that, this is a really nice upgrade for the California Bears.
Your thoughts?
Nice overall, but the blue jersey/yellow numbers with the white pants looks odd. If the numbers were white with yellow outline, it would look fine. I had the same issue with Minnesota’s look in years past (maroon jersey with solid yellow numbers matched with white pants).
One of Cal’s better looks recently. I hope the all blue combo sees limited action
Makes sense that they look like robots
I never knew “The Bay Area” was actually referencing Green Bay. haha
And it’s been a big offseason for the Triple Stripe pattern!
Although I like these a lot
Since they now play in the ACC, might as well be the Tampa Bay area.
Absolute beauties! Good work Berkely!
“The navy jerseys return to a classic look.” Is it just me or has every new college uniform that has been released before this season gone back to some sort of classic look? What is going on? Something to do with all of the major conference realignments? The college football video game being brought back to life by EA? Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving it, it just seems like a sudden U-turn after the Oregon-era.
Agreed. It’s the marketing at the age group that was young when unis looked like this the first time, perhaps? Pretty interesting trend imo.
They have enough elements to not duplicate the same look twice. Yay, college football?
Lifelong cal fan here. It’s a good classic look. The Joe Roth throwbacks are gorgeous and I hope they continue at some point. I can’t countenance the mono white marshmallow look and agree 100% that the yellow pants should just be standard, with blue at home and white away.
Go bears! All the way to the east coast apparently…
Go Bears!
Sad to see yet another iteration of this template. Different teams’ uniforms should differ in ways other than the colors. The pant stripes are a silver lining!
I love these, but teams don’t need all of these alternates. I like how simple UCLA keeps it with just two uniforms with gold pants only. Cal doesn’t need these monochrome looks. Keep it blue on yellow and white on yellow only.
Hey, Phil, I’m not complaining, but it’s crazy how “conservative” or “old school” Nike is going with a lot of the new uniforms this year. What gives? Any insight?
Just seems like laziness to me, or a way to cut down on manufacturing costs by standardizing the uniforms. Every single new uniform they’ve released this year is the same: remove anything distinct and put some kind of triple stripe on the shoulder. IMO, it would be good for NFL teams, but with the huge amount of programs in college football, a dash of uniqueness to uniforms is important to give your team an identity. Glad my school is with Adidas.
Solid look. Still can’t wrap my head around Cal being a conference rival on Tobacco Road. But the look is beautiful.
Only Cal game I ever went was in the Joe Roth era unis, vs. USC, long time ago.
I miss the bear paw logo from the Kapp era, never understood why they got rid of it.
These are nice
I preferred the distinctive striping based on campus features. This is just off-the-shelf stripes. Great colors though. Hard to mess up with colors so strong.
I too liked the “ownability” of the Sather Stripe which is what I think they called the stripe the last few years. It seems that a lot of teams are going “old school” this year, but ironically Oregon is actually going “old-school” for them, but that just means 2000s “early” wild and not actually 1980s. old school.
Like Purdue, another P4 uniform with direct sewn Swooshes usually reserved for G5 catalog jerseys.
What a massive upgrade! I absolutely love these. Cal is going to be one of the best dressed teams in their new conference.
Surprised they didn’t just go the EA College Football 25 approach
The navy helmet is so dark, it looks black and doesn’t match the navy blue of the rest of the uniform. Big thumbs down.
Kudos to Cal for bucking the mono trend and actually featuring mixing of jersey, helmet, pants colors. They look great!
Sorry this annoyance has become an obsession of mine. Just seems lazy.
I must say, I like Cal’s previous uniform set better. I wish they’d have kept it, but with a glossy helmet.
Same template as the other Nike schools. I guess the designer works for EA Sports.