Bring back the bison: How an on-campus movement resurrected Indiana’s mascot after 50 years
What, exactly, is a hoosier?
It’s a riddle pondered by many. The simplest answer is the strongest: It’s a person from Indiana. The specifics, though, get more difficult.
There have been dozens of theories and explanations over the years. A bill filed to the Indiana House of Representatives in 2023 cited Harry Hoosier, a former slave-turned-Methodist preacher who passed away in 1806, as the origin of the nickname. The Indiana Historical Bureau notes a number of possible written origins for the word on its website, including references to a poem and a boat from the 19th century.
This uncertainty has long put Indiana University athletics, whose squads have been nicknamed the Hoosiers for well over a century, in a strange spot. There’s little doubt Indiana’s teams play under a fitting moniker. But what sort of image represents a hoosier? What type of mascot should cheer on the teams?
A number of proposed mascots, official and unofficial, vied for the hearts of the Hoosier faithful throughout the 20th century. A goat, collie and bulldog were among the options that made bids, as well as the infamous 1979 reign of “Mr. Hoosier Pride,” a bizarre cowboy-like figure described in one letter to the editor of the Indiana Daily Student as “the most asinine and ridiculous-looking character anyone could have ever dreamed up to be IU’s mascot.”
But none of Indiana’s assorted short-lived forays into mascot-ery caught the attention of students and alumni quite like the bison.
In October 1965, Indiana adopted the bison as the school’s new mascot, based on the animal’s former migration history in the region and representation on the state seal. A month later, a bison mascot was officially unveiled ahead of the school’s football game with rival Purdue.
And yet, within a decade, the bovine project had been scuttled.
Despite different iterations of the costume, the bison suit was consistently a comedy of frustrations. Most notably, the oversized bovine head limited the wearer’s range of motion. One version required a cheerleader to lead the mascot onto the field with a rope leash. And regardless of suit design or setup, there was also plain reality: Furry bovine suits are inherently uncomfortable on a hot day.
The mascot was also, truth be told, a tad terrifying. In 1969, around the time of the costume’s retirement, the Indiana Daily Student newspaper quoted assistant athletic director Bob Dro as saying “the main criticism seems to be, ‘It’s a beautiful head but it looks like the devil with a cheerleader in it.'”
Not helping matters was the fact that the bison’s brief run coincided with a general down period for Indiana football. There was the magical run to the 1967 Rose Bowl, but a backslide to losing seasons began shortly thereafter.
With results lagging, there wasn’t a ton of affection around campus for the bulky bison suit. As the Kokomo Tribune bluntly noted in 1969: “the bison has been relegated to a storeroom for lack of interest.”
And just like that, the mascot was lost to history.
Or at least it might have been.
But legends — and oversized furry mascots — never truly die. So, 50 years after Indiana officially retired the bison, it is ready to make a return to the sidelines of Memorial Stadium thanks to a tale that includes a college bar, determined professors, a bike race and more.
Phase I: “Dick was always a visionary”
The initial disappearance of the original bison suit wasn’t permanent.
Although 1969 is the consensus accepted retirement date for the mascot’s first stint, Indiana University’s archives show the oversized costume making at least two appearances in 1973 during Lee Corso’s first year as the Hoosiers coach. Archives of the Bloomington Herald-Times also show a photo of the mascot during a 1974 contest.
More importantly, though, the bison remained a campus fixture.
The animal appears on the school’s coat of arms, and the school’s ROTC unit has long been known as the Bison Battalion. Football players under coach Bill Mallory donned bison-themed helmet stickers in the 1980s and ’90s, and a pregame package shown on the Memorial Stadium video board in the 2010s featured a bison stampede.
Just a block away from campus is the most notable example of the bovine in Bloomington — the locally famous bar and restaurant Nick’s English Hut, where the bison has long served as the establishment’s own mascot.
Walk off East Kirkwood Avenue and into Nick’s and it’s impossible to miss the bison imagery. The logo on the front door. The shot glasses behind the bar. And, most glaringly, a bison head mounted on the wall just a few paces away from the entrance.
“I still to this day don’t know if it’s real or not,” said Julian Davila, a former graduate student at Indiana and security guard-turned-bartender at Nick’s since 2023. “But I like it because it’s very unique. You don’t see bisons just off the wall like that typically.”
According to Nick’s current owner, Gregg “Rags” Rago, the bison was adopted by his predecessor, Dick Barnes, around the same time the school made its original effort to institute the animal as the official mascot.
“Dick was always a visionary,” Rago told ESPN. “So when IU started using the bison then … He kind of accepted it as part of the mascot for Nick’s English Hut.”
Although Indiana’s bison petered out, the animal became nearly synonymous with Nick’s — Davila noted one of his friends even has a tattoo of Nick’s bison — which has long been considered one of Bloomington’s must-visit locales.
“Over the years we developed and put it on different parts of our T-shirts, hats, whatever,” Rago said of the bison. “So many people have our T-shirts, our hats … they’re all over the world. There’s IU alum[ni] all over the world. And most IU alums have been at Nick’s at one time or another.”
Schools don’t just restore failed mascots for no reason, though. Although the bison might have always had a presence, the movement to bring it back officially was far from organized.
But as the original bison’s retirement approached its 50-year anniversary five years ago, the threads of a more distinct movement began to form.
Phase II: “Bring back the bison”
Paul Gutjahr looked up at the IU coat of arms and saw an opportunity.
It was 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic was drastically altering the student experience at colleges all over the country. Gutjahr, an Indiana humanities professor who was also serving as an associate dean, was looking for messages that could inspire persistence and community in his students.
He remembered a saying from his time living in Colorado: “Be the buffalo.” As the story goes, when stormy weather arrives, while cattle will simply meander as the conditions persist, buffalo will charge into the storm to get through it faster.
Already a supporter of bringing back the former mascot, Gutjahr now saw a potential means of rallying his students behind the movement. As students prepared to come back to school, he connected the prospective return of the bison mascot with the ongoing return of the campus community.
“I thought, this is really good. Because what this allows me to do is leverage the bison stuff, the cohere community, the end of the storm story, with bringing something back. Getting students excited about bringing something back,” Gutjahr recalled.
Gutjahr’s message about bringing back the bison quickly took hold among students, so he leaned into the idea further. He had ordered a pair of bison mascot costumes, which began making impromptu appearances around the school. He had also been designing bison-themed shirts (often printed with glow-in-the-dark ink for an additional popularity boost), and added magnets and hats. His merchandise soon became in vogue on campus as he further expanded his portfolio of bisonwear.
“We never sold the shirts. We only gave them away,” Gutjahr said. “And when word got out that I was giving them away and I would have a new design out … I got mobbed.”
In fellow associate dean Galen Clavio, the director of Indiana’s sports media program, Gutjahr found both another distribution network for his merchandise (which also included pens, car magnets and more) and a partner in crime for grassroots bison revival messaging.
A fourth-generation Hoosiers alum, Clavio’s Indiana bison memory dates back to his childhood. His parents owned a crocheted crimson-and-cream rug that featured the bovine motif and the phrase “Hurryin’ Hoosiers,” a term used to describe legendary basketball coach Branch McCracken’s squads.
Clavio saw the mascot as an underused means of potentially expanding Indiana’s brand. He connected with Gutjahr and would hand shirts out to his own media school students, noticing similar enthusiasm around campus for the project.
He expanded the movement to a digital front as well. If Gutjahr’s shirts put the bison in front of students all over campus, Clavio ensured that it entered the airwaves as well. He began punctuating each episode he hosted on his podcast, “CrimsonCast,” with “Bring back the bison.”
Slowly but surely, the campaign picked up steam. “Bring back the bison” took hold as a popular rallying cry among students and alumni on social media. Bison merchandise no longer was an exclusive sign that you had taken a class with Professor Gutjahr or Professor Clavio, but simply an established part of the local fashion scene.
“I’ll drive around Bloomington, I’ll be on campus, I’ll be in my neighborhood — I live on the southeast side of town — and I’ll see people walking through the neighborhood with the shirts that Paul made,” Clavio said. “I didn’t hand them out to those people.”
But as charming as the idea of a student and professor T-shirt revolution single-handedly bringing back the bison might be, support from more established forces was needed. Thankfully, a local company was on hand to offer just that.
What started as a side project for 2016 IU graduate Connor Hitchcock is now Homefield Apparel, a company with a combined social media following of over 150,000 and licensing deals with 200 schools.
Homefield sells shirts, hats, sweaters, joggers and more. Yet, even as Homefield’s profile grew, it was one of Hitchcock’s first designs that continued to stand out above the rest in terms of sales.
“Myself and my co-founder Christa put the bison on a shirt. And it went nuts,” Hitchcock said. “And when the side project became Homefield and it became our full-time jobs in 2018, that was still our No. 1-selling IU design. And still to this day, across all pieces of merchandise, that is our No. 1-selling design.”
And then the bison movement got a boost from an unlikely source.
Phase III: “Haven’t got a cease and desist …”
Bearing the lofty nickname of “The World’s Greatest College Weekend,” the Little 500 carries no small weight when it comes to Indiana’s campus lore. Twenty-five thousand fans flock annually to Bloomington for the nearly 75-year-old bike race, which is put on by the Indiana University Student Foundation.
Aware of the bison and its history, then-director of the IUSF Trent McGee had an idea — since the Indiana University Student Foundation is a separate entity from the university itself, why couldn’t the 2024 edition of the Little 500 have its own bison mascot? Gutjahr had a bison costume available on campus and was more than happy to loan it out to advance the cause. The logic was sound.
What was not guaranteed, however, was positive reception from the school’s administration.
Planning for Little 500’s bovine mascot was done silently. There was a secret committee — nicknamed “the Herd” — of students who discussed what sort of role the bison would play. McGee quietly gave a heads-up to his bosses in a secret meeting and said he’d accept blame if the school was upset.
Eventually, the aptly named Ryder was born. Soon enough, the moment of truth came. It was April 19, 2024, the opening day of the 73rd Little 500. Would Ryder’s unveiling be celebrated like the return of a prodigal son? Would university officials immediately shut things down?
The most immediately recognizable emotion of Ryder’s debut was … confusion. The Little 500 organizers had tried their best to hint at the mascot’s comeback on social media, but it was hard to generate much awareness without being more overt about their plan.
“Even the winners” — who received miniature plush bisons as trophies for their team’s victory — “were like, ‘why am I receiving this?'” McGee recalled.
But once the air of mild bewilderment was lifted from Bill Armstrong Stadium, the kids in attendance loved Ryder, and so did their families.
“Honestly, I thought that the kids would be scared. I mean, I’m like 5-9, so it’s like a 5-foot-9 bison standing over you,” Mehar Parmar — who with Herd leader Conrad FitzSimmons was one of the committee members to don the bison suit — told ESPN. “These little children were so excited, and their parents were equally excited. There were generations of grandparents that had gone to IU … they were telling us ‘we went to school when this was a thing, we’re so excited to see you again.'”
More notable for the cause, though, was the fact that school officials weren’t upset. In fact, to McGee’s surprise, they were willing to chat and take photos with the bison mascot.
Seeing university administrators actively engage with the mascot was the sign to McGee that the movement to bring back the bison was on firmer ground than had been perceived.
“Haven’t got a cease and desist from General Counsel yet,” McGee perhaps-not-entirely-jokingly texted Clavio after the bison mascot rode in the parade that precedes the women’s race. “So good sign?”
Phase IV: “We could have done something bigger”
Six months after the 73rd Little 500, and 51 years after a bison was last seen sharing a sideline with Corso, a packed crowd was at a fever pitch minutes before kickoff on a picturesque fall Saturday in Bloomington.
It had been a party all morning in Monroe County, with the undefeated Hoosiers football team as the guests of honor. “College GameDay” was in town for just its second trip to Memorial Stadium, bringing Corso back to the school where he spent the majority of his head coaching career.
“It’s obvious who I’m picking,” Corso admitted as he set up what was destined to be a particularly meaningful edition of his iconic weekly mascot headgear pick.
Corso reached down and grabbed … an Indiana baseball cap. There was no mascot head for him to don.
It didn’t take away from the hype, as Memorial Stadium still let out a hearty cheer (and the Hoosiers went on to win 31-17), but senior associate athletic director Jeremy Gray saw a missed opportunity.
“We saw it as kind of a moment where maybe we could have done something bigger and better,” Gray recalled.
Corso’s headgear pick that wasn’t was one of a number of key points in a memorable Indiana football season where the real possibility of bringing back the bison emerged. As the Hoosiers steamrolled their way to an 11-win season — the first double-digit-win campaign in program history — and a College Football Playoff appearance, fan enthusiasm skyrocketed.
Indiana had been looking into ways to revamp the Memorial Stadium experience. What better way to build on the momentum generated in coach first-year football coach Curt Cignetti’s debut campaign than to actually, finally, bring back the bison?
By December, the bison return movement was unstoppable.
Then-student government president Cooper Tinsley, looking for something to unify the student body, had proposed action. Eventually, the Bring Back the Bison Act of 2024 was born.
Debate within student government over whether the resolution should be passed was intense. Skeptics questioned whether there was actually as much of a pro-bison student groundswell as had been suggested. But the bill’s supporters had evidence at the ready: a poll that ran on the student government Instagram account.
Seventy-two percent of votes on the poll were in support of the bison’s return. The act passed.
“[It] might seem funny, but these were, like, genuine debates that were going on for over an hour,” Tinsley recalled.
With overwhelming student support both clear and now legislatively codified, the school’s athletic department got to work on logistics. Only one element about the bison’s return was certain: It wasn’t going to be quiet.
Phase V: “The thing’s got to be fun”
The mascot’s unveiling offered Gray, an Indiana alumnus and longtime advocate for the bison’s return, a chance to blend several of his passions into one project.
“I’m a huge, huge movie fan” Gray told ESPN. “And so I really just took tropes from some of my favorite movies from 1975 to about 2005.”
In total, Indiana athletics rolled out five videos over a stretch of nearly two weeks to hint at, and later reveal, Hoosier the bison. Guest stars and cameos included a who’s who of Indiana athletics figures (Cignetti, basketball coach Darian DeVries), athletic administrators (Gray), and figures in the movement to bring back the bison (Clavio, Gutjahr).
The videos include nods to “Pulp Fiction,” “Jurassic Park,” “E.T.” and “more.
The fifth and final video uses a “Star Wars”-style introduction text to set up a reenactment of the Bring Back the Bison Act’s ratification. The video then segues to a nod to, in the words of Gray, “the best non-religious comeback story in the history of the world”: Michael Jordan’s return to the NBA. Hoosier’s costume then finally comes into view.
“The thing’s got to be fun,” Gray remarked. “Successful mascots are fun mascots.”
Finally unleashed. 🦬
Welcome back home, @HoosiertheBison. pic.twitter.com/hMotSXeF0A
— Indiana Hoosiers (@IUHoosiers) May 27, 2025
What’s the actual plan for the role Hoosier will play in its debut campaign this fall? Indiana is keeping those details a closely guarded secret. But if Gray’s logic is any indication, the unveiling’s reception might make the usual mascot antics a little more bold.
“At first, it’s like, you know, let’s make sure that it’s successful,” Gray said. “It’s like a rookie quarter[back]. Put it in a position where it can succeed, run the plays that it can remember, you know, all that kind of stuff.
But after years of hard work to bring the bison back from the abyss, why not go big?
“Now, it’s like, ‘You know what? People are pretty fired up about this. What if we get this thing a car?'”
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Neil Paine
The NHL, especially in the salary cap era, is usually defined by change and upheaval — familiar contenders turning their rosters over, while new powers emerge in their place.
That’s why it was so striking to see the same two Stanley Cup finalists — the Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers — in back-to-back seasons, the league’s first Cup rematch since 2008-09, and only the second since 1983-84. Add in Florida’s appearance in the 2023 Final as well, and the NHL hasn’t had fewer unique finalists over a three-year span (just three different teams) since 1954-56, when only the Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Canadiens reached the Final in those three years.
This run of Panthers-Oilers dominance won’t last forever, and it almost certainly won’t survive past 2025-26 if Connor McDavid doesn’t re-sign with Edmonton after his current contract ends at the end of the year. But for now, ESPN BET’s preseason odds again list Florida (+300) as the East favorite and Edmonton (+400) as the West’s top pick, suggesting that another rematch is the likeliest outcome.
Of course, that’s only true until it’s not. So the question becomes: If it’s not Florida and Edmonton yet again, who’s next in line to face off for the Cup?
Let’s dive into the most plausible challengers from each conference, just waiting to skate through if the Panthers and/or Oilers slip up, plus a couple of up-and-coming teams who could crash the party as well.
Note: All odds below courtesy of ESPN BET
.
EASTERN CONFERENCE
Odds to make Final: +360 | Win Cup: +800
Why they haven’t broken through yet: It’s an excellent question that the Canes are still trying to answer. Despite making the postseason seven straight years, Carolina’s 44 playoff wins have never led to a Stanley Cup Final appearance — giving them the most victories amassed in such a stretch without getting there at least once, topping Toronto’s old record of 41 from 1998 to 2004.
Along the way, the team has made the Eastern Conference finals in two of the past three seasons, but couldn’t score enough to avoid a Florida sweep in 2023. And their goaltending, always a huge concern, couldn’t stop enough Panthers (most notably Sam Bennett) in 2025.
Why 2025-26 could be different: Carolina will once again ride with Pyotr Kochetkov and Frederik Andersen in net, which is reason enough to wonder if things will be different from last year (when they combined for a .823 SV% in the Eastern Conference finals loss to Florida). But new forward Nikolaj Ehlers ought to provide an offensive charge, while trade addition K’Andre Miller and prospect Alexander Nikishin give this blue line — usually a big strength anyway — more youth and upside, especially if Miller can recapture his 2022-23 form after a downturn in recent years.
Otherwise, the Hurricanes are counting on their familiar puck-possession system to finally add up to victory against a Florida core that returns mostly intact from last year. We’ll see.
Odds to make Final: +650 | Win Cup: +1400
Why they haven’t broken through (recently): Tampa Bay certainly has broken through before, winning two Cups — in 2020 and 2021 — and reaching another Final in 2022. And just when it seemed like that dynastic run was winding down, the Lightning rebounded in 2024-25, with their best goals per game differential since 2018-19 (+0.91).
But, as in the 2019 postseason, that regular-season success didn’t translate. The Lightning were bounced in the first round by Florida in five games for the second straight year, a huge reversal from the old days of Bolts domination in the cross-state rivalry.
Why 2025-26 could be different: First and foremost, the Lightning continue to boast one of the league’s most talented cores, which offers reason to think they can get back to seriously contending for the Cup again. They lost little of consequence over the offseason — defenseman Nick Perbix was the only real departure — though they also added little, and a team that was the NHL’s fifth oldest in 2024-25 isn’t getting any younger.
Someday Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Victor Hedman and Jake Guentzel will slow down. But until then, this team still carries the potential to go toe-to-toe with Florida, even if the past two playoff results aren’t what Tampa Bay has experienced previously in that rivalry.
Odds to make Final: +850 | Win Cup: +1600
Why they haven’t broken through yet: So much depends on the availability of Jack Hughes. When Hughes last played more than 62 games in a season in 2022-23, the Devils ranked No. 4 leaguewide in goals per game; with him missing 20 games in each of the past two seasons, New Jersey’s ranking in that metric fell to 12th in 2023-24 and then 20th last season.
Along with that offensive slide, the team fell out of the playoffs in 2023-24 — costing coach Lindy Ruff his job — and lost in Round 1 to Carolina in five games a year ago, a disappointing end for a team that was third best in goal differential and third youngest (a promising combo!) back in 2022-23.
Why 2025-26 could be different: Hughes’ return to health at the start of 2025-26 camp has New Jersey eyeing a return to the potential of a few years earlier. The Devils have scored 3.13 GPG over the past two seasons with Hughes in the lineup, versus 2.93 without him, which would be the difference between 12th and 21st in the league in 2024-25.
To help them score even more, the Devils added Evgenii Dadonov this summer. Russian right wing Arseny Gritsyuk might be an interesting pickup as well. If they can resolve their contract impasse with Hughes’ brother Luke, the Devils could challenge for the East — but they’ll need to figure out how to solve a Carolina team that bounced them in 2023 and 2025.
Worth a flier?
Odds to make Final: +1200 | Win Cup: +3500
Ottawa finally broke its seven-year playoff drought in 2024-25 with a young core starring Brady Tkachuk, Tim Stützle, Jake Sanderson and Shane Pinto, who were all 25 or younger a year ago.
The Senators are still learning how to win, but they’ll return that same young core — plus good young defenseman Jordan Spence — to see if they can improve further after last season’s 19-point upgrade in the standings.
Odds to make Final: +2800 | Win Cup: +5000
The Habs have made real progress in recent seasons — three straight campaigns of an improved goals differential — culminating in their first playoff berth since 2021. Nick Suzuki‘s 89 points were the most by a Canadien in nearly three decades, and Cole Caufield‘s 37 goals were the most by a Montreal player his age since 1989-90.
With that young duo leading the way, and an upgraded roster that added defenseman Noah Dobson and forward Zack Bolduc, Montreal may finally be on the verge of something big.
The rest of the East
Toronto Maple Leafs (+1000 to make Stanley Cup Final)
Washington Capitals (+1400)
New York Rangers (+1600)
Boston Bruins (+3300)
Columbus Blue Jackets (+3300)
Detroit Red Wings (+3300)
Philadelphia Flyers (+3300)
New York Islanders (+4000)
Buffalo Sabres (+6000)
Pittsburgh Penguins (+6000)
WESTERN CONFERENCE
Odds to make Final: +450 | Win Cup: +800
Why they haven’t broken through (recently): The Avs had one of the best teams in hockey history when they won the Cup in 2022, seemingly portending a run of future success in the same style the team enjoyed during the ’90s and 2000s.
Instead, they fell victim to the familiar attrition that champions face during the salary cap era, between injuries (Gabriel Landeskog) and departures (Darcy Kuemper, Mikko Rantanen, Nazem Kadri, Andre Burakovsky). Colorado has remained among the league’s better teams, but its goal differential has declined for four seasons running now.
Why 2025-26 could be different: Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar aren’t slowing down. They’ve collectively posted 438 points over the past two seasons, the most in consecutive years by any forward/defenseman duo in more than three decades.
With that kind of talent at the core — bolstered with the return of trade deadline acquisition Brock Nelson and the veteran additions of Brent Burns and Victor Olofsson — the Avs may have another run in them despite losing to the Dallas Stars in consecutive postseasons.
Odds to make Final: +450 | Win Cup: +850
Why they haven’t broken through (recently): The Golden Knights were better on paper last regular season (+0.68 goal differential per game) than they were when they won the Cup — still the only team to beat Florida in its past 12 postseason series — in 2023 (+0.52).
But the playoff offense that once carried them has vanished, dropping from 4.00 goals per game in that Cup run to just 2.44 since, capped by back-to-back shutout losses to Edmonton in the second round last spring. The talent and depth have still been there, but the results have not quite followed.
Why 2025-26 could be different: The main reason for optimism in Vegas is that the Knights reeled in the biggest fish of the 2025 offseason, acquiring star winger Mitch Marner in a sign-and-trade from Toronto in late June. Marner has averaged 29 adjusted goals, 65 adjusted assists and 94 adjusted points per season since 2020-21, making him one of the most dangerous offensive threats (particularly among setup men) in the league.
While we’ve seen players take time to adjust to new systems and teammates, Marner will ease into his new situation alongside talents like Jack Eichel, which is a scary pairing to think about in the playoffs (where Marner’s struggles have tended to be overstated).
Odds to make Final: +475 | Win Cup: +1000
Why they haven’t broken through yet: Why, indeed? Much like Carolina, the Stars keep slamming into a wall just shy of the Cup Final: Dallas has piled up 29 playoff wins over the past three seasons — the most by a team in a three-year span without reaching the Final — and all it has yielded is back-to-back losses to Edmonton in the conference finals.
Some historic franchises with similar near misses eventually broke through, but the lingering question for the Stars is whether their current group can ever take the final step.
Why 2025-26 could be different: Mikko Rantanen will be with the team for an entire season, which can only help after the Finnish winger became the best player in NHL history to skate for three different teams in the same campaign (Avalanche, Hurricanes, Stars) a year ago.
Otherwise, the Stars also shuffled the deck a fair amount over the offseason, firing coach Pete DeBoer — bringing back former bench boss Glen Gulutzan — and undergoing the biggest net loss in goals above replacement of any team. That may not seem like cause for optimism at all, but the Panthers could tell you that sometimes a drastic shakeup in identity is exactly what a team needs to finally get over the hump.
Worth a flier?
Odds to make Final: +1000 | Win Cup: +2000
It might seem wild to think the Kings, of all teams, could dethrone the Oilers in the West — seeing as L.A. has now lost to Edmonton in four straight postseasons, becoming just the fourth team in any of the big four men’s leagues to drop four consecutive playoff matchups to the same opponent (without a head-to-head win preceding the streak).
However, the Kings remain intriguing for their mix of youth and experience. And not for nothing, their offseason additions included Corey Perry, whose team has made the Cup Final in five of the past six seasons.
Odds to make Final: +2000 | Win Cup: +4000
It isn’t very hard to get excited about the Mammoth as the next potential West contender. This was the league’s seventh-youngest roster a year ago — led by Clayton Keller, Mikhail Sergachev, Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther, all 26 or younger — and the team improved its goal differential for the third consecutive season.
Adding to that foundation, Utah traded for talented forward JJ Peterka and signed veteran defenseman Nate Schmidt and forward Brandon Tanev during an offseason that was a net positive on talent added. Dating back to its Arizona days, this franchise has made the playoffs just once (2020) since 2012, but brighter days are on the horizon in Utah.
The rest of the West
Winnipeg Jets (+1200 to make Stanley Cup Final)
Minnesota Wild (+1700)
St. Louis Blues (+2200)
Vancouver Canucks (+3000)
Nashville Predators (+3300)
Calgary Flames (+4000)
Anaheim Ducks (+5000)
Seattle Kraken (+10000)
Chicago Blackhawks (+15000)
San Jose Sharks (+30000)
EUGENE, Or. — Inside the Marcus Mariota Performance Center, history dangles from wire hangers.
The glitz and glamour surrounding Oregon football is not immediately apparent. This is a practical place — a dimly lit, long hallway inside the second floor of the equipment room furnished with gray built-in closets — created not as a way to showcase, but rather to store the very thing that has become synonymous with the Ducks: their vast array of fabrics, colors and prints.
Among a sea of roughly 800 jerseys, there’s nearly every shade of green — from neon to emerald to forest to army. Here, black or white never look boring, and the yellow used over the years ranges from a Gatorade-colored hue to Cal gold. Splashes of pink, gray, brown, orange, chrome and blue complete the synthetic rainbow.
On this Saturday afternoon following Oregon’s win over Oklahoma State, football equipment administrator Kenny Farr thumbs through pages of dri-fit material and mesh as if flipping through a scrapbook. Every jersey has a story, every color and design a reason for existing at the time as well as an inevitable association that depends on something the style cannot control.
“Some of our best uniforms we’ve ever worn, we lost the games,” Farr said. “It’s hard to mention those, because they looked good, but we didn’t win the game. So it kind of goes down as a jersey I’ll try to forget about and move on to the next.”
Farr isn’t the man behind the jerseys, the designs or even the final decisions of what combinations make it out onto the field. But over the past 15 years, Farr has become a key cog in the enterprise that is Oregon’s uniforms. His role is part manager, part craftsman, part custodian and collector, as well.
“Kenny is the Godfather of Oregon football uniforms,” said Quinn Van Horne, one of the senior designers of Oregon’s latest generation of uniforms.
Throughout the past two and a half decades, as Oregon has cycled through nine different versions of its uniforms, nearly 50 iterations and countless more combinations, the fascination over its attire and the ripple effects it has caused inside and outside the program continue. While some teams have rarely wavered from their classic designs and colors over the years, the Ducks have pushed the envelope, creating a unique energy around their ensembles that attracts players and prompts other schools to try and emulate them.
“We don’t have the tradition that Ohio State or USC or Notre Dame or some of those blue bloods have,” Farr said. “So how do you counteract that? Well, you just go full steam ahead the other direction. Our tradition is to be untraditional; we’re going to always push the edge.”
BEFORE THERE WERE so many permutations of Oregon jerseys, before the well-oiled system that produces at least one new uniform every season and a brand-new set of designs every three years was set in place, the concept began with a simple question.
“How do you make a duck look cool?”
Rick Bakas was working for Nike in the mid-to-late ’90s under a subdivision called Team Sports, dedicated to apparel for professional and college teams.
Bakas, alongside a team of fellow designers who were overseen by Nike creative director — and father of Quinn — Todd Van Horne, had just redesigned the Denver Broncos’ uniforms. The success of that redesign, as well as the momentum Oregon created after its appearances in the 1995 Rose Bowl and the 1996 Cotton Bowl (the first game in which Oregon wore all Nike) led to founder Phil Knight and a cadre of Oregon alumni, including longtime Nike designer Tinker Hatfield, tasking Van Horne and his team with a mission: remake the Oregon Ducks.
As he did nearly every year, Bakas attended the Detroit Auto Show in search of inspiration. There, painted across the chassis of a concept car, Bakas found the key that unlocked everything: a type of paint called ChromaFlair, which gave off a sheen that changed colors.
“I was eating a sandwich out there by the lake, and I was feeding some bread to a mallard out there,” Bakas said. “I was looking at its head, and I was like, ‘That paint looks like this mallard’s head.'”
Bakas brought some of those green swatches of the ChromaFlair paint back to Oregon, took them into a studio and pulled out the darkest and the lightest possible versions; those became the core colors of the concept he and the team presented to Knight.
“It’s amazing how much that helped keep that futuristic feel as we got into the ‘O’ design,” Bakas said. “The project really gave us a chance to marry the two together where we could think about the entire head to toe, how everything was going to look.”
Van Horne believes that even though the color-changing helmets were one of the most important elements of the redesign, they wouldn’t have been complete without the iconic “O” — its inner outline shaped to replicate Hayward Field, Oregon’s track and field stadium, and the outer one mimicking the outline of Autzen Stadium.
The creator of that “O” logo remains in dispute — Van Horne credits Hatfield with the idea, while Bakas says it was his own — but there is no debate about its impact. When the Ducks walked out onto the field to open the 1999 season sporting new colors, with the brand-new “O” on their green ChromaFlair helmets, the paradigm of uniforms shifted.
“The players loved it,” Bakas said. “They were coming from yellow and green with a duck on loose-fitting jerseys. What we gave them was super futuristic, and they absolutely ate it up.”
FARR’S OFFICE PHONE had been ringing. Oregon had just lost 42-20 to Ohio State in the 2014 national championship while wearing a uniform combination that had not yet been featured that season — white jersey, black numbers and lettering, gray pants and a white helmet with silver wings.
“It looked great, but we didn’t win the game,” Farr said. “I had about 15 voicemails on my line the next morning, the next couple of days, of people blaming me, ‘We should have worn green! Why didn’t we wear green?’ And in my mind, I’m thinking, ‘We could have worn any color. I don’t know if we were going to tackle Ezekiel Elliot any better.'”
While it was head coach Mike Bellotti who welcomed the original redesign, it was not until the arrival of Chip Kelly in the late 2000s and through 2012 that Oregon’s sartorial flair truly matched its fast and furious style of play. More uniform combos and a 46-7 record under Kelly supercharged a frenzy, not just around the team’s on-field success, but also around its next iterations of uniforms.
“Winning on a national stage helped so much,” Van Horne said. “That’s when we really dialed up the notion of looking different every game and different combinations and working with the athletes on scripting [uniforms] and even scripting the fans.” It all led to the notion of a uniform release as an event that both Oregon fans and even college football enthusiasts speculated about. The result was an insatiable desire for a wow factor to go with every drop.
“Fans’ expectations are so high for something new and cool, like you’re going to have some groundbreaking uniform that’s never been done before every single game,” Farr said. “But that’s not reality. I would say the last probably six or seven years is really where I got the sense of there’s some weeks where some fans are disappointed because they’re expecting us to have a helmet or a jersey with LED lights in it, and we didn’t do that.”
Farr has found that sometimes, more is less, and most Ducks fans will notice small splashes just as much as they will fixate on what they think of a certain jersey-pant combination.
Sometimes, the splash can be a custom cleat, like the Ducks did last season for the Rose Bowl, or what they’re doing against Penn State this week with exclusive glow-in-the-dark cleats, gloves and accessories. Often, Farr looks to the helmet — the only piece of the outfit he can customize on a weekly basis — as a way to add something new, even if it means an inordinate amount of work for his staff of one assistant and roughly 16 students.
Game 5 uniform for @oregonfootball: 𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕄𝕦𝕞𝕞𝕪’𝕤 ℝ𝕚𝕟𝕘𓂀💍
– ⚫️⚪️⚫️ for the 3rd year in a row, 6th time ever
– 2nd yr in a row that the black lids make their szn debut in week 5
– 1st 🦆 uni to 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 feature glow in the dark cleats, gloves, accessories#GoDucks pic.twitter.com/DbENrpW1Cv
— Jonah Henderson (@JonahNHenderson) September 25, 2025
When Oregon faced Wisconsin in the 2020 Rose Bowl, and Farr had to reuse a uniform combination, he opted to tweak the chrome helmets with green tonal wings that he painted on to match the face mask. As the famous San Gabriel mountain sunset struck its pose during the game, the helmets reflected it perfectly.
“It ended up being one of the best things I’ve ever done,” Farr said. “Then we won the game. So, it’s iconic right around here. But if we would’ve lost the game, people would be like, ‘Ah, we didn’t have a new uniform.'”
Farr is now used to that pressure, in large part, because he knows it’s not his vision that ultimately matters. In fact, Farr has, in the past, been overruled on a design he didn’t love only to see it shine.
“We wore one at Washington, I want to say four or five years ago, where it was a yellow helmet, yellow gloves and yellow cleats, but it was all white,” Farr said. And I was like, ‘This is looking stupid, and this is going to look terrible.’ We got on the field and people thought it looked great. So they like to give me a hard time about that.”
In the end, the final fit comes down to those who actually wear the jerseys.
TEZ JOHNSON WAS playing the part of lobbyist to no avail. The Oregon wide receiver, four of his teammates and Farr all gathered early last year to make the all-important decision: What were the Ducks going to wear for 2024, and when?
Farr had already received samples of every one of the five base uniforms that made up the “Generation O” class of kits from Van Horne Brands — helmets, jerseys, base layers, socks, cleats and gloves — and had them ready for players to see.
With five to pick from, players have to get creative. Farr does, too. When EA Sports’ college football game made its return last year, Farr was able to get EA to preload all of Oregon’s uniform combinations from its latest set onto the game so current players could try different blends they might be able to replicate in real life.
Johnson was adamant: Oregon should wear an all-black combination against Washington in the season finale. His teammates disagreed. The black getup was their best look of the year, and it should be worn earlier, specifically against Ohio State.
“It was very hotly debated for way too long,” Farr said. “The rest of the guys kind of overrode his vote. He was upset about it — I was like, ‘That’s all part of why you’re on the committee, but you’re only 20% of the vote, man.’ I totally leave it up to them.”
Farr has conducted this meeting for several years now, as a way to democratize the process. Every year, Farr selects a group of players, typically upperclassmen who have shown interest, to form a committee made up of an odd number so there’s never a tie. Over the course of two to three hours, players debate their choices, weighing things like opponent, where the game falls in their schedule and even weather.
“It’s got to be guys that are opinionated and not afraid to voice their opinions, because that’s what you want, you want a healthy dialogue,” Farr said. “For the players that are part of it, it’s kind of a badge of honor.”
Once players have finalized their choices with Farr’s assistance, he will lay out the scripting in a look book and show head coach Dan Lanning before the spring game for approval. Finalizing the looks well in advance of the season helps Farr organize the high volume of inventory he has to line up. Going off-script is rare, but not impossible. Two years ago, with undefeated Colorado visiting for a highly anticipated matchup, the Ducks changed to a different uniform combination.
Now, with the postseason potentially adding four extra games on top of the conference championship, Farr & Co. have to think beyond the regular season and a single bowl appearance. In the first season of the 12-team College Football Playoff last year, once Oregon knew whether it would be the away or home team, Farr texted committee members to get them thinking about their options for a quarterfinal look so Farr could get a combination set and organize the inventory in time
When you have one set of uniforms for three seasons of games, a repeat, especially in the playoffs, is almost inevitable. Even if players love a particular combination and want to run it back, Farr will always try to find a way to add a special twist.
“My whole argument is let’s not be different, just to be different,” Farr said. “We don’t have 12 helmets, 12 jerseys or 12 pairs of pants. It’s the different combinations and tweaks you can make that keep the looks unique.”
THE DUCKS MAY not have a different uniform for every game, but the fact that it feels like they do, or that it feels like they could if they wanted to, is a unique feature of Nike’s influence.
According to Farr, while Nike sponsors many programs across the country, it tiers schools, and that determines access to perks such as special releases and custom apparel, with Tier 1 being the highest — that is, unless you’re Oregon.
“[Nike] always told us,” Farr said, “we were Tier 0.”
“When I got to Oregon, I thought the practice jersey was the game jersey,” said wide receiver Evan Stewart, who transferred from Texas A&M. “It’s just different here. You look good, feel good, you play good.”
While players get to test upcoming fabrics and jersey materials that may not come out until 2028 (Oregon has been in the current Nike Fuse chassis that just came to the NFL since 2019), Nike gets to use Oregon athletes as wear test subjects (often it’s the uniform selection committee who gets first dibs) who provide feedback on the products. And while the Van Hornes and Nike are technically behind the designs, part of their process is getting input from players.
“Sometimes we don’t talk to players about what you want to look like,” Quinn Van Horne said. “It’s, ‘Hey if Oregon was a car, what kind of car would it be? What’s your favorite superhero movie? What kind of music are you listening to? When you walk out on the field, what do you see and what do you want to picture? What do you want to feel like?'”
It’s this system that will constantly evolve as players with different perspectives cycle in and out of the program that Todd Van Horne believes will keep Oregon’s well of uniform ideas stocked for years to come.
Perhaps nothing embodies that mindset more than the fact that Oregon commits to having at least one entirely new, never-before-seen uniform design each season.
Dubbed the “energy moment,” this sixth uniform combination has, over the years, run the gamut and largely been led by players. From a bright pink helmet with black jerseys in 2013, to a pan-Polynesian heritage-themed “Ohana” uniform in 2020, to a “Stomp Out Cancer” jersey in 2017 designed by cancer survivors as well as working on a “Heroes” bright yellow fit with Lanning’s wife Sauphia (who is eight years cancer-free after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma) last season, the energy moment jersey is where Oregon and Nike often flex their muscles. A Stormtrooper look? Yes. A Lewis-and-Clark-inspired combo? Why not?
“While we want to do some throwbacks and some throwbacks need to be done, it’s like, what’s the next thing?” Farr said. “How are we going to evolve?”
There’s another committee that Farr oversees of younger Oregon players who are part of the idea process for what the energy moment jersey will be in 2026 and 2027. This year’s edition had to be approved by Nike 18 months before it saw the field against Oregon State; it featured a charcoal black and gold look with white helmets dubbed “Shoe Duck” that honors Knight.
“We talk so much about when Oregon comes out with a really big uniform, we’re extra stressed,” Quinn Van Horne said. “We really want to make sure they win, because we know what a win does to cement a uniform and its foundation.”
For Farr, the Van Hornes and Bakas, being part of establishing or furthering Oregon’s aesthetic identity is important and an inextricable part of Nike’s history over the past 25 years. But the goal, from the beginning, has always gone beyond that.
“We intentionally said it, we’re doing all this to win a national title and the uniform [redesign] was part of that too,” Bakas said. “That’s the Nike mentality — you want to be the best. The goal was to win a national championship, and the wheels were set in motion back then. The intent was there, but I didn’t think it would take 30 years or 25 years to get to this point. I thought we would’ve won one by now.”
THE BUILDING THAT houses them may be named after him, but inside the hallway of hanging jerseys, you won’t find any sporting Mariota’s name.
Players who finish their senior season at the school are given a framed jersey before their last home game. Because the jerseys are technically state property, should a player want any of his other Oregon jerseys back, the price is $50 — plus shipping and handling.
Mariota bought all of his once he made it to the NFL. Not everyone else has, though. It’s why even though that closet holds close to 1,000 jerseys, there are still 600 to 800 more sitting in storage on the floor below.
“There’s guys that have left after their five years, and maybe your freshman year was the full reset, and then three years in you got another full reset,” Farr said. “So we’ve had guys that have, at the end of their career, had 40 or 50 jerseys.”
After years of simply taking old jerseys and selling them at a school surplus sale, Farr decided on a different approach. When the performance center was built in 2016, he took the jerseys from storage in rail cars to this room, where he organized them in alphabetical order. You never know who is going to swing through Eugene one of these days wanting to reunite with their polyester past.
“For every Marcus, there’s 119 other guys on that team that maybe weren’t the star player, or maybe when they graduated they couldn’t afford to buy all their jerseys,” Farr said. “So maybe they forgot about it or whatever the situation is, and they’ll come back and they’ll just ask me, and I get to tell them ‘Yeah, here they are.'”
Farr got to do just that as recently as the game against the Cowboys this season.
Cornerback Jaylin Davies was a freshman at Oregon in 2021 before transferring to UCLA for three seasons, eventually landing with Oklahoma State. Davies and Farr greeted each other after the game on the field. Though Davies had only recorded a few snaps as a freshman, he wanted his piece of Oregon history.
“You still have my jersey?” Davies asked Farr.
“I do,” Farr told him. “Call me after the season is over.”
Farr was happy to oblige. After all, that’s one more jersey he can take off a hanger and send on its way, just in time for another to take its place.
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