Looking back at 2016-17

The Pac-12 ended its season with USC in the Rose Bowl, but this past season saw some new faces in the spotlight and some established teams on the fade.

With Oregon's fall from the top of the Pac-12, came a change in the veracity of its uniform reveals. At the beginning of the season, when its record was still respectable, it had several specialty and alternate uniforms. But as losses mounted, the uniforms began to calm and each week brought much more normal and sedate choices.

The stalwart traditionalists stayed the same: UW, USC, and Stanford pretty much stuck with home and away sets. UCLA—a uniform maven last year—also regressed like Oregon to a more normal rotation. Cal felt boring, but when I tallied their sets, it came to seven separate combos!

People love to lambast Oregon for its uniforms, but the mountain schools have taken over that mantle! Arizona made great use of normal colors mixed and matched, with one real nice alternate USS Arizona uniform. ASU went off the rails with all kinds of wacky helmets and color schemes this year.

But, the winner for number of combos is Utah. They only went with one throwback uniform and several special helmets, but made varied use of their red, white and black, with three mono-color schemes as well.

WSU and Colorado (the win cinderella's this year) pretty much stuck to several colors that they mixed and matched to nice affect.

"Pink-tober" and "GI-Joe-vember" were almost—thankfully—absent!

Here's my tally of regular season uniform combos* (12 games)

*not counting different helmet decals (looking at you Oregon!) if that was only difference. Not counting bowls or championship since all teams did not play in one.

Fashion mavens (how many variations can you have?):

• Utah: 12 (one throwback and one handprinted helmet)
• Oregon State: 11 (12 if you count the Men of Roses being slightly different than Civil War)
• Arizona State: 11 (Oh so close to all different. Gold/crimson/gold got reused with sparky decal)
• Arizona: 11 (three different mono-colored sets and repeated red/red/white once)
• Oregon: 10 (11 if you count a different decal. Shocking that Oregon reused two sets this year!)
• Colorado: 10 (Reused their classic gold/black/gold 3 times)

Mix & match (a few pants, jerseys and hats add up quick):

• Washington State: 7 (They repeated 5 combos twice, and made appropriate use of several shades of gray)
• Cal: 7 (with a rare gold jersey and gray-out, they had more combos of blue, gold and white than met the eye)

Stalwart traditionalists (home and road, what else do you need?):

• UCLA: 3 (home, road and they did got navy-out once)
• Stanford: 3 (home, road and they did got black-out once)
• Washington: 3 (home, road and they did got black-out once)
• USC: 2