New home uniforms unveiled
Cal released images of its new home football uniforms designed by Under Armour on Wednesday morning.
Road and alternate uniforms will be released in the coming months, but the primary home look sets the tone for the school’s wide-ranging rebranding effort.
With gold lettering on blue tops and blue lettering on gold bottoms, the uniforms feature the Cal script on the sides of the helmet, on the sternum of the jersey and on the left hip of the pants. There is a small Bear logo on the forehead of the helmet, and both the jerseys and pants feature the new “Sather Stripe.”
“We did a deep dive into the history of Cal football, looking into the annals of time,” Under Armour senior creative director Adam Clement said. “As we sought to do something that is both historical and contemporary, we were encouraged by the use of stripes for more than 70 years of football. The uniform is going to feel, in a sense traditional, but because of how unique the stripe is, it’ll have a twist.”
Clement has been working on the design project to comprehensively overhaul the Cal brand since January 2016, when the school and apparel company started a courtship that led a 10-year agreement that launched this month.
Having lost about $22 million last year and facing the debt of at least $400 million promised in the retrofit of Memorial Stadium, the Cal athletics program is in extreme distress. But the deal with Under Armour and two contracts with the marketing and licensing company, Learfield, are projected to provide about $8 million more annually than the school’s previous contracts.
The agreement with Under Armour is a campus-wide push aimed at unifying the school’s academics and athletics and will include the university’s recreational clubs and the band. Under Armour will also outfit the sports teams from school’s entire athletics department.
More uniform designs are on the horizon, but several new logos have already debuted, including the Sather Stripe, which will be featured on the uniforms of every sports team. The four-lined stripe is an ode to Sather Tower, more commonly referred to as the Campanile.
The Cal script remains the university’s primary logo, and mirrored script versions of California and Golden Bears — both with the full-length tail featured in the primary logo — were designed. Under Armour also brought back the “Block C,” combining it with a new Golden Bear mascot logo.