The college football uniform landscape has been one of the most volatile platforms for uniform experiment for a decently long time now, and it’s widely accepted that we have Nike and the Oregon Ducks football program to thank for that. For years, the team experimented with different color combinations, patterns, helmet designs, jersey designs, pant designs — basically everything that you could mess with on a football, Oregon messed with it.
Things may be changing for one aspect of Oregon’s identity. According to a report from The Oregonian, the Ducks are reportedly going to tone things down when it comes to the color scheme.
“We’re going to try to stick to more traditional colors this year,” Kenny Farr, UO’s football equipment administrator, said last week after a spring football practice. “Trying to kind of simplify a few things but still keep it modern and keep it looking really good.”
At Oregon, “traditional” could mean anything from silver and highlighter green to kelly green and yellow. The Ducks wore silver and white in the 2015 College Football Playoff national championship game, and for years, fans have cheered as Oregon zigged when other programs zagged.
Naturally, this coincides with the team having its worst season for about a decade-and-a-half last year, so this is probably just another example of a football team trying to cut out “distractions” in an effort to get back to winning ways. However, this is still a welcome development. Oregon’s traditional color scheme of green-and-gold is already great to begin with, and while bringing in supplemental colors could help boost the look, it’s also a look that can clearly stand on its own.
So while the quote above does note that silver could be considered a “traditional” color at Oregon, I still think that we’re probably going to get a break from all of the wacky color combinations that we’ve seen from the Ducks in the past. Maybe that means no more blue-and-gold alternates — Maybe that means no more all-black looks.
Either way, we may see the trailblazers of progressive uniform style in college football finally tone things down. If this results in other college football teams following suit, then Oregon’s status as the trendsetters in the sport will have been cemented as their legacy. But what do you all think of Oregon going back to “traditional” colors?
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