With a smile and a gesture toward his cap, UC Davis head football coach Dan Hawkins gave a "CA" logo a wider level of public consciousness during a nationally televised FCS playoff game last fall. The two-letter symbol – now an official secondary mark for the Aggies – has surfaced as a key form of branding for intercollegiate athletics, appears on department facilities, promotional materials, social media and, of course, team apparel.

Those around the UC Davis baseball program are likely the most familiar with previous versions of that mark, which consists of the classic comet-tail C with a sans-serif A enclosed inside the counter. Perhaps inspired by the Cincinnati Reds cap, that particular CA logo first appeared on the baseball uniform in 1958, replacing a thematically similar logo of an interlocking CA. The comet-tail CA remained the baseball team's cap logo until 1999, when SME Design (now SME Branding) concluded a year-long, campus-wide image study that resulted in a family of marks, many of which still appear around campus.

Of course, the origin story of the actual "CA" letters predates the 1950s baseball cap by decades, as it represents the early history of the university itself. What began as the "University Farm" soon offered a four-year undergraduate education in 1922, and thus assumed the name the Branch of the College of Agriculture, or the College of Agriculture for short. The appellation "California Aggies," or "Cal Aggies" for short, surfaced around this same time, replacing the "Davis Farmers" nickname.

Also in 1922, the Block CA Society was formed. Besides organizing social events and issuing awards, this group's primary function was financing medical insurance for student-athletes. In time, there existed two separate student-athlete groups: the Block CA Society comprised "major" sport athletes (defined as baseball, basketball, boxing, football, and track & field), while the Circle CA Society consisted of athletes in "minor" sports such as tennis, wrestling, golf, swimming, soccer and water polo. In 1959-60, the demarcation between minor and major sports was dissolved, with all UC Davis student-athletes uniting as one single Block CA Society.

The physical symbol of a Block CA became a de facto logo for UC Davis athletics, although the shape and size varied in almost every usage. The varsity letter issued to student-athletes consisted of an octagonal block C enclosing a block letter A. The most common CA logo for athletics branding featured a block C enclosing a horse's head and three wheat stalks – a nod to the mustang symbol of the university and its agricultural roots. 

The baseball cap featured the aforementioned comet-tail CA logo from 1958 to 1998, although with a taller A than its current iteration. The football helmet carried a CA logo in the late 1960s and early 1970s, only with rounded letters and no tail extending from the C, before giving way to a script "Davis" that lasted for more than a quarter century.

In more recent years, several UC Davis teams brought back the comet-tail CA on an unofficial basis, while outlets like the UC Davis Stores and the Davis Sport Shop carried apparel with the logo. The baseball team reinstated the mark on its caps in 2018. That summer, the comet-tail CA became an official logo for the athletics department, to be licensed and branded on its uniforms and gear for all sports.

Today, the CA continues to emerge as perhaps the most familiar logo for UC Davis athletics, offering a tribute to the generations of student-athletes and alumni who built a foundation for the program's current and future success.