Oregon Ducks Take Forever to Get Dressed

I’m going to slag off the University of Oregon football team. Not because they are going to the Rose Bowl and the team I support, Stanford, isn’t (I dislike such petty player-hatin’). I won’t even be mocking the fact that their mascot is the Ducks. …OK, maybe I will a little. But my real point is that U of O’s team should be called the Clothes Horses.

It’s not news that the athletic program in Eugene has assloads of money, very much of it flowing from alumnus Phil Knight, founder of athletic apparel behemoth Nike, Inc. As a result, this football team has a bigger wardrobe than a Lake Oswego debutante. I’ve been a football fan for a long time, and I’m used to your basic two uniforms per team: home and away. I’ll admit that the NFL’s mixing in nostalgic “throwback” uniforms appealed to my own history-nerdiness, save for the occasional ghastly misstep (of which I blogged not long ago). However, the Ducks have taken things to a new level, all but erasing the line between football season and fashion week. Check out this fancy shit:

According to GoDucks.com, this first re-design of the football uniforms since all the way back in… um, 2006, is all about sound science:

…The latest editions have improved ergonomics and ventilation characteristics, and feature laminate numbering that does not soak up any moisture and has an 85-percent weight differential compared to traditional tackle twill.

Laminate anti-abrasion shoulder reinforcement, in the form of wings, takes the place of “diamond plate” on the current jersey, a 200-percent savings in weight differential between materials. A lighter weight fabric has also been introduced for non-critical panels, trimming the weight from 7.46 ounces down to 5.5 as 75-percent of the panels from last year’s jersey have been replaced.

Yeah, those extra two ounces of jersey weight must have been quite a burden. High time, too, that someone started seeking to make football more ergonomic. We wouldn’t want these guys to abrade their shoulders or anything. They did finally get around to talking fashion:

Oregon will again have green, yellow, black and white as jersey options, but adds a second white top to the mix featuring different accent colors. For pants, the Ducks will choose from green, black, white or steel, which replaces yellow for this uniform cycle. And helmet options now come in green, black, white and carbon. The black and white paint schemes are new for 2009, while the carbon helmet replaces Oregon’s yellow helmet.

All told, Oregon will have 80 different combinations (jersey/pant/helmet) at their disposal.

Jesus. That’s enough to make a coach keep the playbook trimmed down. Helpfully (I guess), the Oregonian put up a feature on their web site which allows fans to dynamically try different uniform possibilities on a model drawing of a Ducks player. I’m sorry, but how gay is that? They might as well have a flash interface where you can hang all the uniforms in the Barbie Dream Locker Room.

So, you must be dying to know, what did this crew of gridiron dandies end up wearing this season? It’ll come as no surprise that they had the good sense to not be seen twice in the same outfit. To the gallery!

Season opener, September 3, at Boise State.
The Ducks glide into the season in classic road whites, but crash on the blue-painted field in a 19-8 defeat, in much the same manner as flocks of migratory geese often do when they mistake the blue expanse for a body of water. In a demonstration of avian solidarity, Ducks running back LeGarrette Blount punches a Boise State lineman.

Home opener, September 12, vs. Purdue.
Sticking with the monochromatic but shifting the hue to green, Oregon returns to the plush confines of Autzen Stadium and topples Purdue, 38-36. Outdressed and outscored, Purdue’s sole consolation is that the Boilermakers remains a far more badass mascot than the Ducks.

September 19, vs. Utah.
UO experiments with mixing and matching, with mixed results. Football-wise, they overmatch Utah by a score of 31-24; wardrobe-wise, they are not as successful. I guess those pants are the so-called “steel” color. Quite frankly, I’m not seeing it. That color looks to me like what happens when you forget to remove a cheap black sweatshirt from what was supposed to be a white-items wash. Accidental Gray.

September 26, vs. California.
What the duck, fucks? Despite all the hoopla around Oregon’s multitude of new uniform choices, they show up for their 42-3 thrashing of Cal in throwback, Dan Fouts vintage key-lime-and-meringue threads. I thought the idea was to banish the memory of those uniforms. The kids on the current Ducks team are too young to know who Dan Fouts is, anyway.

October 3, vs. Washington State.
HO-ly SHIT, turn that down, will you?!? …Look, I know it’s only Washington State, the doormat of the Pac-10—but that doesn’t mean you can show up looking like a bunch of highlighter pens. Sure, fine, you blew them out 52-6, what a shocker. You guys are supposed to be ducks, and that color has never occurred in nature, except perhaps during a brief stretch of the ’80s. This is the very definition of a fashion “don’t.”

October 10, at UCLA.
Although the Ducks flapped out of Pasadena with a 24-10 win over the Bruins, this game marked the first time that UO was clearly outdressed. UCLA has had those shiny gold helmets and powder-blue home jerseys as long as I can remember, and they’re still pretty damn spiffy. The photo shows the one moment of true panic for UO during the game, when the Bruins threatened to tear a few more ounces off those high-tech Nike jerseys. If it had worked, wow—talk about a game-changer.

October 24, at Washington.
Oregon’s 43-19 rout of the Huskies saw the Ducks sporting the other white jerseys, and maintaining the fascination with shiny gold helmets (see quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, at left) they picked up during the previous week’s UCLA game. This UO getup almost works, with the key word being “almost.” The silver and black combo would look pretty slick, like an Oakland Raiders homage, but the bright yellow “O” logo on the helmet undoes the whole thing. It’s as if they remembered at the last moment that their school’s colors are yellow and green, and thought they had to include a splash of at least one of the two. Moral of the story: either blow off your school colors, or don’t.

October 31, vs. USC.
Black pants with green jerseys and green helmets were as much of a Halloween costume as UO bothered with; if there was an appropriate date for throwback uniforms, you’d think this would have been it. The Ducks instead spoke with action, defeating the then-fourth-ranked Trojans 47-20. Southern Cal perpetuated the failure of their crosstown rivals, UCLA, to demoralize Oregon by rending their precious jerseys.

November 7, at Stanford.
The Oregon team donned their original road whites with green helmets for a splash of color for the occasion of their 51-42 upending at my childhood stomping grounds, Stanford Stadium. Speaking of stomping, the Cardinal’s all-everything running back Toby Gerhart left footprints all over the Ducks defense, rushing for three touchdowns and a school-record 223 yards. It’s OK, ducklings—just think of how many decals he got to add to his helmet because of you.

November 14, vs. Arizona State.
In mourning for their dashed BCS aspirations, the Ducks went all basic black for their return home, beating Arizona State 44-21. Check out the group hug going on here—or maybe it’s more of a duck cluster, or from the perspective of the ASU ball-carrier, a-… well, anyway. Whatever you’d call it, he doesn’t look too comfy. And why would he? The last time I saw that many birds on one guy it was in a Hitchcock movie.

November 21, at Arizona.
In Tucson the Oregon flock come dangerously close to sartorial repetition, departing from their Washington game outfits only by returning to those trusty green helmets. That’s the great thing about accessories, isn’t it? Buoyed by their own resplendence, UO prevails 44-41 in double overtime.

December 3, vs. Oregon State
Who knows what got into the Oregon fashionistas before the game billed (ha ha) as the Civil War. In the showdown with archrival Oregon State, the winner would advance to the Rose Bowl, and the loser would… be the loser. With all this at stake, the Ducks took the field in a bizarre hodgepodge of an outfit—green-and-yellow throwback jerseys from the Cal game, and yellow helmets with the present-day logo. Hurh? Those helmets weren’t even in the catalog! Sure enough, as pictured at left, this novel headgear proved at least somewhat unreliable. Despite it all, Oregon beat the Beavers 37-33.

This coming New Year’s Day, Oregon will face Ohio State in the Rose Bowl. The questions abound in the minds of the Ducks faithful: will our team win? How early will we have to get up to see the parade? If a duck ate a buckeye, would it spawn a six-point buck with feathers? Will the “steel”-colored pants appear in Pasadena, or will it be one-and-done for the gray trousers? What if they combined those with the day-glo chartreuse jerseys and the yellow helmets, for a perfect storm of mismatching? Would it affect the TV ratings? And what will Joan Rivers say?

These are crucial questions, people. Your input matters, so don’t stay put—put your input into the comments!