A historic °”TV logo gained renewed attention last year when ESPN showed football coach Dan Hawkins on the sideline of the Aggiesâ first-ever Division I playoff game, proudly pointing to the âCAâ on his cap.
°”TV Intercollegiate Athletics, which has totally embraced the logo since then, enters the fall season with a promotional campaign in which âCAâ stands for âChampion Aggiesâ (the campaignâs title), âCut Above,â âCollectively Amazing,â âCourage Alwaysâ and âChallenge Accepted.â
FOOTBALL: #GOAGS!
- WHAT: Aggies vs. Montana Grizzlies (and the Running of the First-Years right before kickoff)
- WHEN: 1 p.m. Saturday (Sept. 28)
- WHERE: °”TV Health Stadium
Look for the terms with action photos of our student-athletes in advertising and on banners and even wrapped on a Unitrans bus. And check out the , complete with a tagboard of the latest Aggie Athletics-related posts from social media.
The logo â in which the âAâ is inside the âCâ â represents the early history of the university itself, said Mark Honbo, assistant director of communications in Intercollegiate Athletics, in an article posted to the departmentâs website in March.
In 1922, the University Farm began offering four-year degrees and as such became known officially as a Branch of UC Berkeleyâs College of Agriculture. âThe appellation âCalifornia Aggies,â or âCal Aggiesâ for short, surfaced around this same time, replacing the âDavis Farmersâ nickname,â Honbo wrote.
The Block CA Society also came into existence in 1922 and its symbol became a de facto logo for °”TV Athletics, although the shape and size varied in almost every use, according to Honbo.
For varsity letters given to student-athletes, the university used an octagonal âC,â while the most common âCAâ athletics logo featured a block C enclosing a horseâs head and three wheat stalks â a nod to the mustang symbol of the university and its agricultural roots.
Other iterations, according to Honbo:
- The baseball teamâs âCAâ with a comet-tail âCâ (the letterâs backside has a point), perhaps inspired by the Cincinnati Reds), used on Aggie playersâ caps from 1958 to 1998.
- The football teamâs âCAâ with no tail on the âC,â used on helmets in the late 1960s and early â70s before the team switched to a script âDavisâ that lasted for more than a quarter century.
C-horse logo survives
In 1999, the university rolled out a new family of campus logos and marks, including the C-horse: a mustangâs head inside a horseshoe-shaped âC.â This logo remains a °”TV Athletics mark.
Honbo takes it from there: âIn more recent years, several °”TV teams brought back the comet-tail âCAâ on an unofficial basis, while outlets like °”TV Stores and the Davis Sport Shop carried apparel with the logo.
âThe baseball team reinstated the mark on its caps in 2018. That summer, the comet-tail âCAâ became an official logo for the athletics department, to be licensed and branded on its uniforms and gear for all sports.â