Pac-12 Championship: Dec. 2, 2016

With two new participants in the Championship game, we get to see something other than Oregon, Stanford or USC/Arizona schools.

At first I was wondering how this might shake down since both UW and CU use gold in their uniform sets and have gold primary helmets and pants. Colorado, being the "Road" team chose to go "whiteout," which makes it easier on the eyes, with Washington's "purple reign" set.

Week 13: November 26, 2016

A pretty normal week for the Pac 12. Cal did come out with gold jerseys for the first time in 2 seasons. ASU went gray/white against a full-on-red uniform.

Week 12: November 19, 2016

This week was one of the least "unique" weeks in the Pac-12. Nobody came out with an alt uniform and even the Ducks wore something from 2 weeks ago!

Week 11: November 12, 2016

With it being Veteran's Day weekend, the Pac 12 came out with a  decent amount of Red, White and Black! (Apparently for the Military). Two of the usually stalwart-traditional teams dressed in alternate uniforms that supposedly honor the troops.

Washington did a blackout with a flag W on the helmet. UCLA pulled a similar flag logo, but used all blue for their uniforms and the helmet appears to use the dark navy blue that they sometime use as an accent color. The royal blue uniform does not appear to be a color that they have used in the recent past. While I love flags, I personally find using the flag as a "pattern fill" for complex logos like UCLA to be really graphically annoying.  It takes an already hard to discern visual and makes it impossible.

And then the teams that were not overtly military seem to be sticking to their red/white uniforms: Arizona, Utah, Stanford and WSU all went for the most red and white versions of their livery.

ASU did a Blackout like Washington, but nothing in the uniform was specifically military.

Cal went light gray.

Week 10: November 5, 2016

Week 10 was a pretty sedate week.  The home teams—by and large— all did traditional color unis, while the road teams kept to traditional whites.

The only teams to do ANYthing remotely different were Oregon and WSU. And even then, both these combos were "off-the-shelf" mix and match combos from the past. Oregon went full "Stormtrooper" white out with sparkly helmet, which has become a tradition when playing at the LA Coliseum (They usually pull a Ninja/blackout when playing USC at Autzen)  Washington State was the only team with gray this week and they went full-on gray, which is completely appropriate for them since gray is a color of theirs. (Colorado and WSU are both some of the few teams that do legitimately have gray as a school color)

Week 9: October 29, 2016

Week 8: October 22, 2016

Week 7: October 15, 2016

This week saw many teams on bye, so what was left was pretty drab. Those teams that were at home happened to be teams that wear dark colors like black for OSU and Colorado, and dark navy like Arizona.

Week 6: October 8, 2016

It was Throwback week for two of the Pac. Oregon and Utah pulled out some "old" looks. Unfortunately, most of Oregon's history includes losing seasons, so maybe it was appropriate to harken back to 1916? I'm sure the Huskies appreciated looking back at least 12 years! Utah reused the red and white throwbacks that they wore last October.  Besides these teams, the rest of the Pac was pretty much business as usual, with a fair amount of gray thrown in, and a very funerial Stanford Blackout! OSU went full pumpkin as well in their win over Cal.
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Week 5: October 1, 2016

This was the first full week of all-Pac-12 play, so half the teams were home and the other half away. Last week there were many mono-colored looks, but this week was a bit more normal. Nobody (including Oregon) did anything weird! The closest was WSU that did pull out its mono "anthracite" uniform against Oregon. This appears to be a darker gray than their "normal" school-color gray that pops up a lot.

Both Arizona and Utah went "Whiteout" paired with the usual road whites that Stanford usually wears. Utah continued its trend of fancy helmets (last week it was custom artwork) this week it's the chrome logo on white.

The North was where the good colors were. Both Cal and Washington rocked the classic home colors, while both Oregon schools did unusually "normal" and colorful representations of their distinctive school-colored helmets and pants paired with white jersey. And both helmets had cute critters with the happy duck and the beaver. This should be the standard road uniforms for both these schools.

The South felt like a black-and-white movie with the only teams sporting ANY color were the LA schools in their classic home colors.

Week 4: September 24, 2016

Almost half of the Pac-12 who played wore mono-colored outfits. It was a weekend of Name-Your-Color-OUT!

• Colorado went "White-Out" on the road in Eugene.
• Arizona went full "Blue-Out" at home against the Huskies.
• Arizona State hosted Cal while "Maroon-Outing"!
• Utah used Oregon's-playbook and went full ninja "Black-Out" while hosting USC.
• Oregon State almost went all-black, but gave us their shiny orange helmet.

Oregon unveiled a 4th completely different uniform in four weeks with it's "Once a Duck, Always a Duck" green ensemble. Check out more pics and explainer here.

As usual, the traditional teams (all four California teams and Washington) gave us little new to work with.

Week 3: Sept 17, 2016

A quirk of scheduling had the bulk of the Pac-12 North at home (except for Oregon) and the bulk of the Pac-12 South on the road (except for Arizona) which made for an all-light-jerseyed South and mostly colored-jersey North. And speaking of the two exceptions, both Oregon schools and Arizona had the most interesting uniform combos of the week.  OSU opted for a white-out at home, which was an oddity. Click here for a separate explained of the Arizona tribute to the USS Arizona. Click here for my Oregon uniform tracker.

USS Arizona uniforms

Arizona is getting on the alternate uniform bandwagon with some nice one-offs for this weekend's game against Hawaii. They mark the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor (minus 3 months) and the USS Arizona.  I'll let Paul Lukas from Uni-watch describe it for you:

Arizona is hosting Hawaii this Saturday, and the Wildcats will be wearing a uniform that honors the USS Arizona, which was stationed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii when it was bombed and sank by the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941. Arizona and Hawaii, get it?
Okay, so it would be better if the game were taking place closer to Dec. 7, but the uniform is a good one. Arizona has put together a really good video that explains all of the details, although you might want to mute the soundtrack (and all the info in the video is also available in this PDF)
Lots of good stuff there. But ugh, that neck bumper — a glaring apostrophe catastrophe. Punctuation illiteracy strikes again.

Video on Twitter here. 
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Week 2: September 10, 2016

Two teams had the week off and half the remaining teams had late games after 7pm, so a lot of uniforms were viewed under the lights. The one fashion maven was—as usual—Oregon who brought out new "Electric Lightning" highlighter yellow uniforms vs. Virginia. These lit up Autzen Stadium without need of lights. The rest of the Pac-12 went relatively traditional with both LA schools and UW opting for tried-and-true home uniforms. Utah went mono-red and WSU went mono-white, while ASU went black and white.

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Week 1: Sept 3, 2016

For most of the Pac, it was pretty much business as usual in the uniform world. 11 out 12 basically re-used uniform schemes from last year. (Yeah UCLA tweaked their shoulder strip and colors a tad, but nothing seismic)  So that leaves it up to the perennial fashionista Oregon to make our week interesting!  See my Duck Tracker blog for a bit more detail.

Being that this is a traditional week for home games against overmatched non-conference teams, it was mostly home dark jerseys.

The three teams traveling wore white and got beat.

Funnily enough the 3 of the 4 teams that wore red jerseys also wore white pants.
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Ranking the Pac-12 uniforms

A favorite way to get clicks and fill space in the offseason is a good old ranking! Not to be outdone, CBS Sports' Tom Fornelli ranked the Pac-12 uniforms this summer  and gave UCLA the nod for best uniform. And surprisingly, established uniform maven Oregon was #7. And surely to rankle the Duck fans even more, but both Washington and Oregon State were deemed better. Arizona State (a new member of the crazy-uniform-club) was ranked dead last, while stalwart dresser Colorado was #3.

Check out the poll here with explanations about his reasoning:

http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/ranking-the-pac-12s-best-and-worst-football-uniforms/

Bowl Season 2015-16

A record 10 Pac teams made a bowl game this year and it was looking like they might all play some good games...that is until Jan. 2  when both the Ducks and Sun Devils lost heartbreakers to give the conference a 6-4 record.

Only three of the 10 teams wore "home" uniforms, so that left the majority in white. And the only team to introduce anything majorly new (beyond Utah's all-silver helmet logo) was—of course—Oregon, who's helmet was a reprise of the "Galaxy White" sparkly hat, but with a  "beveled" O logo. The understated all-white uniforms harkened back to the last time the Ducks were in the Alamo Bowl, but with a bit less apple green, and some new almost-invisible shoulder "wings" and reworked numbers. Unfortunately for them the result was not like last time, and more like a few of their other more heralded white/gray bowl loses.