The pre-New Years bowls showcased the 4 "north" teams going mono, with all four of the Oregon/Washington schools going jersey/pants mono (except for UW gold chrome helmet). The Rose Bowl had Utah using the red version of their throwback set with rose decal on helmet.
With the regular season wrapped up, I thought it would be nice to show you MY favorite single-game looks for each of the 12 teams in 2022. The order is alphabetical by division, so no judgement ranking. (You can check out my ranking of the teams from preseason here) Some of these looks might not have been the best visual matchup with their opponent that day, but rounding those up is another list. In general color is going to be better than white or mono, so in all cases I picked a home look with alternating school colors for these teams, and tradition almost always trumps innovation so my favorites tend to be classic.
With Oregon losing to OSU and Washington beating WSU, the Utes filled the second spot in Las Vegas, after a convoluted tiebreaker between UO, UW, UU.
A battle of the two teams that use "red" the best in the Pac-12. But too bad Utah did not go with black helmets to contrast more with USC.
Interestingly, this is the first year that the North/South divisions were not used to seed the the game. So Washington lost out again ( in 2020 they had Covid). Ironically the North had been dominant in winning the game the last decade, but this year it's two South teams playing.
Rivalry week in the Pac! (with the non-conference rivalries USC/ND and Stanford/BYU) Oregon vs Oregon State was color-on-color—an exact repeat of last season. ASU went traditional with 1990s-era gold pants and a gold helmet with Sparky on it. WSU went all-crimson vs all-white UW. Colorado vs Utah was a black vs white. The only unique set was Cal's Joe Roth throwback.
The 125th "Big Game" and 40th anniversary of the "The Play" Cal vs. Stanford produced a real nice Cal faux-back that included a yellow helmet, simplified shoulder stripes and "Ax" logo instead of Cal logo. This is my favorite look for Cal so far this season and I'd suggest they go with this look for all their home games, instead the of the too-heavy use of navy blue. Stanford, without fanfare, pulled out their 1970s retro helmets and pants from last season. My only quibble is that if Stanford was trying to replicate the 1982 game they almost got there but needed a larger S logo...and Cal wore blue helmts in 1982.
Utah pulled out its all white throwbacks against Oregon, who wore a rare green and white combo.
ASU went about as mono-yellow as they have in a longtime with an extra sunny combo.
Even with the rather drab Ducks going black(ish)-and-white with the Buffalos being gold/black, the rest of the Pac had a good mix of color and contrast: Cal in their Joe Roth throwbacks against USC was a nice red/blue/yellow matchup; Stanford did its almost-annual blackout game against WSU. OSU/UW could have been prettier with more orange for Beavers. ASU went mono-maroon with the Pat Tillman shield camo stickers.
It's Halloween weekend in the Pac-12, but most teams kept their "costumes" at home, but the matchups were prettier than normal with good complementary colors and contrast between dark and light. Nothing wildly dramatic except a few "mono-dark" getups from Colorado, Cal and Arizona. And the only real new element was the WSU "Wazzu" script on their helmet. It seems to be a faux-back since I cannot find reference to it on historic helmet sites—while they have worn a "Cougars" script many times, this appears to be new. Utah wore their handpainted helmets from 2 weeks ago again.
A third of the Pac was on bye this week, but several teams brought out new uniforms: Washington trotted out their "Husky Royalty" set that was announced as a road-only uniform and is an all-white look with shiny gold numbers and stripes paired with the chrome gold helmets. They debuted these at Cal, which seems a bit down-market for such "Royalty"since they play away games at Oregon and WSU which seem like more natural spotlights and bigger games. Speaking of Oregon, the Ducks wore their Stomp Out Cancer blackout with pink details. OSU/CU was a rather bland black-fest wince the Buffs opted to wear their black hats and pants against mono-black Beavers. Cal wore its best IMHO set with the yellow jersey for the first time this season.
Three Pac teams are on bye this week, but some more interesting helmets did pop up this weekend. The Utah Utes honored late players Aaron Lowe and Ty Jordan with custom hand-painted helmets showing one of the players on each side. The Beavers pulled out retro Bucky Beaver on their helmets to go with mono-orange.
We are at the midpoint of the season and no unique or alternate sets have been worn by the Pac-12 this season. (Utah's annual throwbacks not counted)
ASU started the one-off train with their "Sunrise" uniform vs. UW. It's a sandy tan base uniform—much like a military-inspired set from several years back—paired with retro-inspired Sun Devils script. IMHO the look might have sounded good but kinda falls flat with its too lemony yellow numbers and hard-to-read script paired with gradient. Funny thing is it forced UW to wear its home purple jerseys (with rare white pants) in the afternoon Arizona heat!
Oregon also went outside the box with a repeat of their "eggshell" AKA "Cookies-n-Cream" or "bird poop" uniform that debuted in this exact combo last season at UCLA. I'm not fan of this look either.
Utah wore an oddly-rare combo with a "standard" black helmet with the "normal" feather-drum logo. In the years that I have been tracking the Pac they typically wear black helmets with non-standard logos with chrome or native patterns. This is a good look for the Utes who tend to lean heavier on red than black.
Week two of conference play brings a pretty normal slate of uniforms. Utah brings back its annual throwback, for the second time this year already. The Utes wore the road version in week 1. Oregon trots out a rare combination that they have surprisingly only worn a few times in history. 7 of the 12 went with same color jersey and pants.
This week was an interesting study in contrasts. Oregon-WSU was mono gray vs. mono-white, while Cal-Arizona was similar all-blue vs. all-white. UCLA-Colorado was a battle of gold teams, with both wearing gold helmets and pants but black and white jerseys. The only special uniform was ASU in its "Dark Mode" dark gray heathered set.
Being that color is major part of the theme of this blog (see my 2021 analysis of school color shades), I got to thinking of the cool, funny and ridiculous names that the Pac-12 teams use for their colors. This weekend both WSU and ASU wore dark gray uniforms.
Washington State has a nice official palette of red and gray...or should I say "Crimson" and "Gray" But the shade of dark gray that WSU (and ASU) wore this weekend is alternately referred to as "Anthracite." The official University Brandbook does not actually mention "Anthracite," and this currently-trendy moniker appears to be a Nike thing, which makes sense since the teams that flaunt it are Nike teams. A quick Google image search shows Purdue, Arkansas, TCU, Air Force and Kentucky being the most common teams to join WSU in this name:
But calling dark gray by this name has been all the rage in this decade of ALL consumer products being gray! Its certainly sounds cool, but who actually knows what anthracite is? Well I'll tell you...it's basically coal, and the name is just a cooler way of saying charcoal gray.
Nothing dramatic this week, except new yellow/black helmet for Ducks, Sparky head helmet for ASU and rare use of silver helmet for Colorado, and uncommon use of white pants for Cal. Utah was the only mono team this week.
The Pac-12 had a quiet offseason from a uniform standpoint, despite the USC/UCLA announcement of the LA school moving to the Big 10 in a couple seasons. Oregon, Washington and USC all have new coaches but not seemingly new uniform philosophies. WSU's coach was interim last season but gets to put his stamp on the program this season.
Week one had a relatively normal slate of uniforms and nice mix of color since 9 of the 12 were home and the Ducks went color-on-color vs Georgia. The only unique element was Colorado going with a retro looking helmet with stripe and CU monogram instead of buffalo.
I've been covering the Pac-12 and Ducks for many years now and typically shy away from really biased remarks about a member school's uniforms, but I usually do give a bit of opinion. Being the Dog Days of Summer and the midst of a pretty important shift in the Pac-12 in coming years, I figured it might be time to think about the Pac-12 for the first time since January. Now, don't get me wrong, there are no really bad sets in the Pac-12. Even my last place one would probably rank in the middle of other conferences.
So here is my completely subjective/biased top 12 list of Pac-12 uniforms in 2022 (really based on 2021 since there have been no major uni-news yet)
12. Arizona State: While I applaud their attempts, the combinations that have come out lately have been a bit garish. Maroon and gold are a good combo but not my personal favorite. And the sweatshirt heather gray just feels odd. I do like how they integrate the flag starburst into the look though.
11. Stanford: While I appreciate the simplicity of the traditional set, that is about all it has going for it. This is a visual ranking so the kinda simple red/white just sorta sits there. The away, all-white, is especially bland. And the black versions are just not all that exiting either. Maybe some pant or sleeve stripes might help. Utah is much higher in this ranking and they have similar color scheme but more details.
10. Cal: Oddly enough my critique of Stanford might be also applied here, but my main complaint with Cal is that they under-use of their blue/gold combo and tend to err on the side of too dark a navy blue and not enough yellow mixed with the navy. Their throwback set with brighter blue and gold is great.And I'm not a script logo lover, so would love a bear paw helmet or anything else besides the Cal.
9. Oregon State: Being an Oregon fan I love/hate OSU. But their uniforms of late have been real hit and miss. Too many mono-sets. At least they no longer use the "sports bra" color swatch on jersey, but I'm not a fan of the cream white. Nice wood texture on the numbers though.
8. USC: The main points they get are for tradition and being consistent. I like the brighter red/gold way better than ASU's similar combo.
7. Utah: I want to like Utah more, but they are in the trap that Oregon was in a few years ago. They want to have fancy mix-match uniforms but make a few oddball choices just to show off. Black, white and red are a strong combo though.
6. Colorado: they quietly have had quite the nice rotation of colors but in a very restrained way. My only knock is that their versions of black/gold/gray can be a bit dull.
5. Washington: Purple is one of my favorite colors after green. But UW's purple can sometimes shift too far into navy blue.
4 Arizona: Last year they ditched the gradients and oddball fonts and went back to simple and elegant with reasonable mix-match of red, white, blue. This is what Stanford should try to do.
3. UCLA: Great bright colors and tradition. If they had a better alternate logo I'd say ditch the script logo, but it is iconic (more so than Cal)
2. Washington State: they have a great helmet logo and you might say their colors are like Stanford, but having two shades of gray as official colors just makes that combo really elegant.
1. Oregon: I'm Duck fan for good reason. While I didn't like the "eggshell" look and too much "nightmare green," the classic bright green and apple yellow is one of the best combos in all of CFB. And their helmet rotation has matured to point of having several iconic designs that give the other bluebloods a run for the money.
