Oregon Ducks football uniforms vs Washington (Photos)

The Oregon Ducks are coming off an embarrassing loss to Washington State, and have lost three in a row. Can jerseys honoring the past help save their season?

The Oregon Ducks have lost three games in a row and are fading quickly from this season’s Pac-12 championship picture. As they look to slow down No. 5 Washington, the Ducks will honor the program’s past.

The “Webfoots” uniform is similar to a get-up the Ducks wore during their spring game, with a similar jersey. The helmet, pants, and cleats are brand new.

The jerseys feature lyrics to the school’s fight song, The Mighty Oregon March, on the shoulders, with “Webfoots” across the chest. The uniforms are not the typical green, white, gray, and yellow of Oregon, but rather pay homage to the colors of the state’s flag, navy blue and gold. The helmet features an image of the state’s flag, not the typical logo.

According to the university, Webfoots, the name the school’s football team played under during its first three decades of existence, is not slang for ducks.

"It was rather a term that had originated in Massachusetts during the 1700s to describe locals who lived in wet conditions. The term was proliferated by miners coming northward from California as a pejorative descriptor of the locals of the waterlogged Willamette Valley and had grown in popular usage by the 1860s. By the time the University of Oregon began forming sports teams for intercollegiate play in the last decade of the 19th century, the term Webfoot had become synonymous with Oregonians."

The Oregon football program, and other school athletic programs, were referred to loosely as Webfoots until the 1960s, before the Duck won out as the official mascot. It is also interesting to note that the school briefly adopted the beaver as its mascot in the early 1900s, before passing it along to Oregon State.

Next: Best Tailgating Venues On The Map

Regardless of the nickname — Webfoots or Ducks — the men of Oregon need to turn their season around this weekend against the Washington Huskies.