Looking back and ranking Oregon's 2024-25 uniforms

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
• like "sandwich" looks that have matching helmet/pants over ones where adjacent parts are matching
• all three elements mono is ok, but not preferred
• dislike combos that have no use of school colors
• dislike white pants paired with dark uppers/non-matching uppers
• I am not a traditionalist only, but this season the school colors were throwback

This season had no real dogs until late, so even my least favorite set might be a decent one in years past. The one thing that hurt them this season was the fact that they had a ful set of colors to choose from but some colors were in Throwback look and other in Modern look, so that limited the mixing of the two.

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?

Rose Bowl: January 1, 2025

 

This is the Duck's 6th Rose Bowl appearance in the "modern era" of Oregon football. The previous five: 

Jan. 2, 1995

Rose

Penn State

L 20-38

Jan. 1, 2010

Rose

Ohio State

L 17-26

Jan. 2, 2012	Rose	Wisconsin	W 45-38

Jan. 1, 2015

CFP Semifinal | Rose Bowl

Florida State

W 59-20

Jan. 1, 2020

Rose

Wisconsin

W 28-7

The Ducks are going with a highlight-reel of past Rose Bowl uniforms for their 2025 tilt with Ohio State:

2012

2020

Chrome helmet, with apple green wings for the first time: pays homage to the 2012 and 2020 victories against Wisconsin while wearing the chrome. The reflective helmet famously reflected the sunset over Pasadena. The 2012 game was the first time Oregon went with the chrome helmet.

2025 Season schedule

The Big 10 announced next season schedule and the Ducks have 4 conference home games. The most taxing games appear to be at Penn State (but in Sept so no bad weather)

From uniform perspective:

1. Vs. Montana State: A blue and gold team. Hopefully a good game for green and yellow.

2. Vs. Oklahoma State: An orange and black team, so hopefully not a lot of black for the Ducks?

3. At Northwestern: A purple and black team, so hopefully yellow and white Ducks?

4. Civil War. Hopefully color on color.

5. At Penn State. They will most likely do white out, but blue jerseys? So anything possible with Oregon. 

6-8. A bunch of red teams. Red, white and green? Merry early Christmas.

9. At Iowa. Black, yellow, white and green?

10. Vs. Minnesota and USC. Lots of maroon, yellow and green?

11. At Washington. Skys the limit. 

Big 10 Championship Game, December 7, 2024

The Ducks are wearing green-black-black for the first time since the Belotti era—his last game to be exact. 

The Ducks in 2007 and 2008 wore this combo 4 times, including the Sun Bowl and Holiday Bowl, just before  the Chip Kelly era. This was the era of the first shoulder designs-namely green with diamond plate, but still the mallard green color changing helmets that are much darker than this apple green. But fore that it was a very common home look when the shoulders and side stripes contrasted with the black uniform. This was a definitive Joey Harrington look.

IMHO, I wish they had gone more traditional and colorful vs. Penn State, but this dark look is similar to the 2 most important wins this season.

2008 Holiday Bowl win-the last game for Mike Belotti.

2000 Holiday Bowl

Week 14:November 30, 2024

Husky hate week! The first season where UW takes the place of OSU in the last game of the season during rivalry week!

The Ducks break out their gray pants to pair with their chrome helmets and black jersey.

Last time the Ducks wore gray-black-gray was in 2012 (only season loss to Stanford!) and 2011 (win vs ASU), but it was a carbon fiber helmet rather than chrome. This is the first chrome helmet and black jersey combo.

Against the Huskies i'd have preferred a more traditional look with green/yellow, especially this is the 30th anniversary year of "The Pick" and their throwbacks this year would have been very appropriate.

2011

2012

Looking good at the end of the season

The Ducks are off this week waiting for the Huskies to come to Autzen next week. But I wanted to look back at the last and only time the Ducks were 11-0, in December 2010.

The stakes for the 114th Civil War game were higher than for any of the previous meetings, with the Ducks assured of a spot in the national title game with a victory. In the then-BCS era—before the conference championship game, #1 Oregon had to win to stay in the top 2 of the BCS poll with Auburn and TCU nipping at its heals.

This was one of my all-time favorite Oregon uniform games, eventhough I tend to disdain all gray combos. I loved how in isolation, the Ducks kinda looked like they were in a grayscale image. And Oregon State has some wonderful "Giant Killer" 1967 throwback uniform.

• The first-generation shoulder Northwest-native inspired wings— a classic staple of the Chip years— were first worn in game 10 of Bellotti's last season in 2008.
• Gray first used week three 2009
• This combo was the first time Oregon had worn just gray and white.
• Only the second time to wear a gray/silver/chrome helmet, but fifth time wearing gray pants.

So what will the Ducks wear next week? Yellow-green-yellow would evoke the "The Pick" game from 1994,  or green-yellow-green, since they have not worn that combo yet.

 

Week 12: November 16, 2024

The Ducks' biggest road test against Wisconsin and they opted for black-white-black. With the Badgers opting for a "red out" it kinda reminds me of that old joke, "What's black and white and red all over?" (a newspaper) 

This combo is similar to Oregon's win last season at Utah. Before 2023, the last time the Ducks wore this combo was 2015, and this year marks only the 5th time they have ever worn it. See the last few times they wore this combo.  For several years they opted for their Nightmare Green instead of black in this combo. The black helmet gets used for the 4th time this season, but with chrome facemask.