You guys know I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the Oregon Ducks uniform machinations for almost two decades, and I’ve probably covered their various uniform releases more than any other team over the years. The team had, until the Rose Bowl, a perfect season and No. 1 ranking (and No 1 CFP seed), along the way doing what Oregon does: wearing a different uniform for every game. And once again, we can break out this evergreen meme.
I was thinking of taking one last look at the Ducks uni-season, but as it turns out, my pal and our SMUW B1G Tracker and Duck Tracker (and Oregon alum), Dennis Bolt, has done just that, so I’m going to let him write the epitaph on the uniforms worn by the Ducks for their 2024 season.
by Dennis Bolt
Now that the Ducks have ended their wonderful/horrible 13-1 season (see the spreadsheet here), I take a look at color and combo trends:
- 14 unique combos (no repeat)
- 2 complete mono
- 6 sandwich combos (helmet/pants match)
- 5 uneven combos (2 out of 3 match)
- 1 mixed (all 3 different)
- heavy use of green in pre-conference
- almost NO green in-conference
- heavy yellow/black in-conference
- chrome/gray only after week 10
- GREEN: 10 items
- YELLOW: 8 items
- WHITE: 9 items
- BLACK: 11 items
- GRAY:1 item
- CHROME: 3 items
- No one helmet color dominated
Here is my personal ranking of their 2024-25 uniforms. As with my ranking last year I have a methodology that leans toward:
- favoring green and yellow uniforms
- liking “sandwich” looks that have matching helmet/pants over ones where adjacent parts are matching
- all three elements mono is ok, but not preferred
- disliking combos that have no use of school colors
- disliking white pants paired with dark uppers/non-matching uppers
- I am not a traditionalist only, but this season the school colors were throwback
From least favorite to most favorite:
14. Big 10 Championship Game: The result was good, but I just found the set a bit dull, even with the bright helmet. Maybe green pants would have helped?
13. Wisconsin Game: The Oreo look is classy, but boring. Points for matching helmet/pants. Apple wings and maybe apple numbers might be fun?
12. Ohio State Game: All-black may be cool and menacing but it’s just too dark for my taste.
11. Purdue Game: Love the yellow helmet and white jersey, and I will tolerate white pants with white jersey, but I would have liked green or yellow pants.
10. Washington Game: The “Raider” look was only marginally better than all-black due to semi-matching helmet/pants. But against our rival, I wanted more color.
9. Rose Bowl: The ONLY saving grace of this combo (and game) was the very nice chrome/green helmet paired with the green jersey. The matchup with scarlet OSU had a very Rose Bowl quality to it. At least they wore color and didn’t just wear black and chrome. BUT they need to re-evaluate using white pants for the very foreseeable future!
8. Michigan Game: I prefer all-white to all-black and the chrome dome made for a very bright sparkly ensemble. The matchup in the sunlight against UM was really nice looking, though.
7. Boise State Game: Another white pants with colored helmet game, but the green saved it. White pants not with white jerseys should be retired! The two roughest games of the season were when they wore white pants and green jerseys. The match with bright blue and white Boise was easy to look at though.
6. Michigan State Game: I’m glad it was not solid yellow, and the Stomp Cancer is a good cause, but my least favorite of the yellow-black looks.
5. Illinois Game: Bumblebee is a decent look for the Ducks, but Iowa does it better.
4. Idaho Game: Mono-green is best of the mono looks in my opinion. Against the yellow and white Vandals, it was a good look.
3. UCLA Game: Classic road look with the throwbacks. Nice looking matchup!
2. Oregon State Game: Another strong road look. The Civil War has been color-on-color lately and I think that should always be the case. I wish OSU had worn more orange to compliment the bright white and green.
1. Maryland Game: I have no idea why this combo was used against Maryland. Ironically Maryland looked more like modern UO and Oregon looked like retro UO! This is the what the UW game should have been. OR at the least the Big-10 Championship or Rose Bowl. Maybe they were “saving this for the “Natty” that never came?
These last three games…as you can tell I like a “sandwich” look where pants-helmet match. In a traditional world, these last four sets would be pretty much the only ones they wore.
Readers? What did you think of Oregon’s uniforms this season? Now that so many teams wear multiple uniform sets per year (and some also never repeat a combo), do you think Oregon should maybe consider fewer unis? Or is that still part of their DNA? And what do you think of Dennis’ rankings? Agree or disagree?
The formatting of this article is a bit wonky, with lines separating the captions from the photos they’re paired with, with no lines separating the captions from the next photos, making for a difficult read.
Try it now.
Not sure why that happened, it was fine when I previewed it.
I agree with your top 4 being their best, and it’s not even close. Anything with black is gawd awful, and I’m no fan of their chrome helmets they wore for the playoff game and the Michigan game. I also liked their Boise State and Purdue game uniforms, but not as much because of the white pants. Oregon should stick with their actual colors, since that combo of green and yellow is great.
The green and yellow is such a strong combination and so visually intrinsic with the concept of “Oregon Ducks” that I can’t believe they let Nike talk them into all these different black and chrome combos that reference precisely nothing about the school’s colors or history and not only that, let them talk them into it for over a decade.
Preach it!
“They” and “Nike” are kind of the same person here. Oregon football isn’t Oregon football without Phil and Nike. Oregon doesn’t get the money and 12000 combinations without Phil. So given the impact on the program, I don’t think it’s shocking that the powers that be are cool with it. It was innovative back when they were first playing into the chromes/blacks and non-traditional colors (even just using the 2011 title as an example), and better or worse it helped catch a lot of eyes and interest. While it’s not their look I prefer, I honestly kind of think the metallic black-grey scale is a defining part of the team image now (and really going back to the stamped metal) given the level of success. But damn they really need to be in more of their colors for some of these big games.
Honestly take the Rose Bowl look, and I think if you make the O on the helmet yellow (opaque metallic), and even just did green or yellow socks and cleats to balance things below the white pants it could have worked really well. That’s where I’m with the guidelines at the top of the article, but often we don’t talk leg wear for college – the white pants and socks/shoes in addition to the “white” chrome helmet make the top really stand out and feel imbalanced. I felt the same on OSU’s all scarlet with grey lids – if you’re going to do that I think they all need grey cleats/socks
As a Washington fan who hates Oregon with a passion this is one of my favorite years of their uniforms. i really enjoy all the green and the yellow. I mostly agree with these rankings but personally their uniforms from the Wisconsin game and the Purdue ones should be higher.
Will-you and I are the same, but opposite! If I was not a Duck I’d totally consider the UW colors the best in the Pac/Big. I wear a lot of green but purple is my second favorite color.
The Big 10 championship and Rose Bowl were the worst imo. They both just seemed like two different uniform sets thrown together… which I guess they basically were. The Rose Bowl was easily my least favorite! It just seemed like it had no cohesion and anything typing the whole uniform together.
Anything with the green and yellow I love. I don’t care how they paired them. The white pants didn’t bother me at all. Not my favorite, but wasn’t a negative. I love a team with about 3-4 uniform options (helmet,jersey,pants each) and seeing them mixed and matched. As long as they can look like they belong together. It’s a reason I don’t hate the no stripe pants that’s big now. Again, not my favorite, but I can get it if a team WILL mix and match a lot.
They’re at the point where their chrome nonsense with wings unis and helmets are so dated and overdone that the only way forward is a return to simplicity. It was nice to see the classic green and yellow start showing up more this season.
The rose bowl was by far the worst. Basically three different templates mashed together.
I agree with the top four (although I hate the mono green combo). Since I hate #4, stands to reason every other combo is awful in my opinion. The other combos where they at least wore green and yellow (you know, the actual school colors) were hampered by the silver lid, white pants, etc.
As a fan of the prior PAC12 and a resident of Pasadena, I was really routing for Oregon to get it done in 2024 at the Rose Bowl. Unfortunately they come up short and wonder if all the flashy uniform changes are a curse like Notre Dame and their green jerseys. I just would prefer Oregon just picks a uniform for the season and stick with it and focus on playing some good ball instead of this silly fashion show.
Unpopular opinion, but I really enjoyed the Rose Bowl combo. Definitely would love the templates to mesh more but something about the three different elements worked for me.
So glad Oregon is back to rolling with interesting combos and better designs after a rough five years or so.
I almost agree that combo isn’t bad, but with those honking yellow numbers, the white pants with them make it a nasty look. If the numbers were primarily white with yellow trim, it would be better, but still wouldn’t mesh enough with that silver lid IMO.
link
“The University of Oregon’s institutional colors are green and yellow. These colors should figure dominantly in your design work.”
A good number of these uniforms, I don’t see Green or Yellow. I know this is their communications visual identity, but doesn’t a sports uniform represent your brand (and your identity)?
They did include this note, to be fair
“Don’t forget to build white space into your design. Like the pauses in music, white space builds visual breathing room into your design and can help focus attention on what’s important.”
80 percent of them are brutal, but evidently that’s what the kidz like…
“Maybe they were “saving this for the “Natty” that never came?” It is a weird sentiment right, “this look is great, let’s save it for something special” whereas my thought would be, “this look is great we should make it our standard attire week after week”.
1 & 3 are hands down the best combos for home and road, obviously they could use pants stripes matching the helmet stripes, but not much else to complain about. The green helmet in 2 is pretty good too and you could swap the yellow helmet from 1 & 3 with the green helmet and the uniforms would still be really great.
Maybe it’s the gold/yellow or even the white outline, but something about the throwback sets just look too bright or generic