Week 4: September 23, 2023

For their highly-anticipated home game vs Deon Sanders & Co. Colorado, the Ducks opted for a black and green combo. While it's a decent uniform, I question why so much black vs. a team that wears black a lot-especially helmets and pants. Let's hope that Colorado goes for all white like their game vs. TCU (but hope that the outcome for CU is different.)

The black helmet with carbon fiber wings appears to be the same as game 1. Black pants worn for the first time since last season's game 2. The last time they wore this black/green/black combo was a week 4 game in 2021. Before that you have to go back to 2017 and 2011 for the only other times this combo has come up.

The uniform reveal included "heat activated color changing" cleats paired with real chameleon! which seem cool but are just a Nike marketing stunt.

Week 3: September 16, 2023

Against Hawaii, Oregon opts for a really bright and colorful combo. I'ma  huge fan of when they use their green and yellow, and even more so when it is not in mono. This green-green-yellow is not a common combo, and this appears to be only the second time they have worn it since Civil War 2013 (dark green helmet though). the most recent was vs. Stanford last year.

Week 2: September 9, 2023

For their first road trip of the season—to Texas Tech—the Ducks went all white with chrome helmets. 

This is the first chrome helmet since the 2020 season (Rose Bowl in January and later game 5). The chrome helmet was first worn famously in the 2012 Rose Bowl. But they were a very common thing in the Taggart and Cristobal years. They wore them five times in the 2017 season; three times in 2018; and twice in 2019.

Chrome with mono white under was a pretty common scheme in those years and they wore this exact look seven times in just the 2107, 2018 and 2019 seasons. And the last 2 years this has been the most common road jersey/pant combo.

In the last few years, gray/silver and white has not been the luckiest for big games or OOC games, but the road victory against Ohio State in 2021 hopefully put that to rest. Thankfully the current white jerseys have a good amount of green accents to offset the curse of non-school-colors.

Carbon Fiber Returns

As I mentioned in my weekly post about week 1, the Ducks wore a carbon fiber item for the first game in a long time. The game featured a matte black helmet with carbon fiber wings. This item looks to be a new helmet variation. The closest you can get to this is the Polynesian version from 2020 that had dark green/black helmet with very subtle black patterned wings.

Black helmets have become a common part of Oregon's uniform of late, but carbon fiber usually made appearances as the base helmet shell. It first appeared during the magical 2010 season and was a common element throughout the Mariota years and pretty much stopped being used after the 2014 season.

The Oregon company that got it started was called Hydro Graphics, and interestingly the first game that the carbon fiber shell appeared in was game 3 vs. Portland State—the same opponent as today's game.

https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2010/10/glamorizing_college_football_h.html

Here are some great examples of carbon fiber used on helmets:

2010 vs Portland State: The first time it appeared

2010 Civil War : a classic game that sent the Ducks to the NCG!

2011 National Championship Game vs Auburn

2012 game vs Stanford: Ranked #1 they lost to #14 Stanford

2012 vs. Fresno State

2013 vs Washington

2015 National Championship game vs Ohio State: seemingly the last time they have worn carbon fiber wings

Week 1: September 2, 2023

As I expected against Portland State—a team that wears green and black—the Ducks are wearing a yellow-heavy ensemble with black helmet with "carbon fiber" wings. 

The last time the ducks wore this combo of black-yellow-yellow was a game 2 win vs Virginia in 2016 during the Mark Helfrich era. But they did wear nightmare-yellow-yellow in week 3 of 2019.

Carbon fiber was a motif used a lot in the last 15 years but not much lately. Carbon fiber was especially prominent in the 2010-2014 era between the two National Championship games. It was  first was worn in the Civil War in 2020 that marked the perfect Pac-12 season for Oregon. 

BIG news

In what was the least surprising news out there, Oregon formally announced today that they—and Washington—are joining the Big 10 conference in the 2024 season. While that does not affect the "Ducktracker" much,  it does kinda put some interesting wrinkles in my other tracking gig...The Pac-12 Uniform Tracker.

The Press Release from Oregon:

https://around.uoregon.edu/content/university-oregon-join-big-ten-conference-2024

I'll save my commentary for later and/or on the Pac-12 site since that is where most of the angst will happen!

2023 Color schedule

 The Ducks released their schedule for what fans should wear to each game which—like the schedule itself—gives a clue to what the team will wear for each game. 

Here are my thoughts:

1: vs PSU. Since Portland State wears green, I'm assuming the Ducks will go all yellow.

2. at Texas Tech. Presume the Ducks will go all white stormtropper here.

3. vs Hawaii. Another opponent who traditionally wears green, so I'm surprised the Duck fans will be in green. But on the road the Warriors will probably be all white or black/white?

4. vs Colorado. I'm surprised that they chose yellow for this game since the Buffs wear "gold" in some of their uniforms. But presumably CU will wear mostly black and white?

5. at Stanford. Stanford occasionally sneaks in a blackout game, but thankfully September can be hot in Palo Alto, so they won't. But maybe the Ducks will go black and white?

6. at Washington. Makes sense to wear white-probably a stormtropper look.

7. vs WSU- makes sense to wear green.

8. at Utah. If fans are in green, maybe the ducks will be green/white.

9. vs. Cal. Baffles me why the Ducks would wear yellow against a foe that wears yellow.

10. vs. USC. Great candidate for blackout.

11. at ASU. Might still be warm in Tempe, so white sounds good.

12. vs OSU. I always thing the green is best against the orange of the Beavers.