College colors are older than almost everything else on a college football uniform. Most were picked in the 1880s and 1890s, usually by a handful of students who needed something to wave at a game or pin to a commencement program. Nobody hired a designer. One school took its colors from a flower on campus. One bought out a store's Carnival ribbon. One took them off a teammate's necktie, and another pulled them off a classmate's neck at a student meeting.
So we went back to the start for 78 programs: all 68 in the Power 4, plus Notre Dame and nine of the best-known schools outside it. We used each school's own archives, libraries, athletics traditions pages and alumni magazines first, then state encyclopedias and newspaper archives. Where the famous story is shaky, where accounts disagree, or where a school simply doesn't know, we say so.
This is the college follow-up to How Every NFL Team Got Its Colors, How Every NBA Team Got Its Colors and How Every MLB Team Got Its Colors. For the nicknames, see How Every College Football Team Got Its Name.
Quick Facts: College Football Team Colors
- Taken from nature: Tennessee (the American daisy), Miami (the orange tree) and Baylor (a field of dandelions seen from a train).
- Taken from a poem: Washington's purple and gold come from Lord Byron.
- Taken off someone's clothes: Kentucky's blue matched a player's necktie, and Virginia's orange and blue came from an Oxford boating scarf.
- Borrowed from another school: Auburn (Virginia's colors), Purdue (an adapted Princeton), Ole Miss and SMU (Harvard crimson and Yale blue), Cal (Yale blue), UCLA (Cal's blue and gold) and Oklahoma State (a nod to Princeton).
- Changed because someone else had them: Ohio State dropped orange and black when it learned Princeton used them. Nebraska dropped old gold because Iowa had it.
- Changed because the old ones looked bad: Penn State's pink (by one account it faded), Texas's orange (it washed out to yellow), Virginia Tech's black and gray (it looked like prison stripes) and Syracuse's pink and pea green (other students mocked it).
- Picked because nobody else had them: Ohio State's scarlet and gray, Syracuse's orange, Kansas State's royal purple and Virginia Tech's maroon and orange.
- Only one official color: Syracuse (orange), Northwestern (purple) and Rutgers (scarlet). Stanford was cardinal alone until the 1940s.
- Oldest: Notre Dame's original yellow and blue date to 1842, Michigan's maize and blue to 1867 and Rutgers' scarlet to 1869.
- Nobody knows: Wisconsin, Pitt and Vanderbilt have no documented origin, and Texas A&M, Missouri and South Carolina have no official one.
SEC
Alabama Crimson Tide
Alabama has no recorded moment when it picked crimson and white. What the university's library has is evidence of use. According to UA Libraries' Hoole Special Collections, the football team wore white uniforms with crimson stockings and crimson "U of A" sweaters from its first season in 1892, and by spring 1893 the student paper was called the Crimson-White. You will often read that students voted for the colors in 1895. We could not find that vote on any University of Alabama page, and the colors were clearly in use before it. Today the athletics palette is crimson, white and gray. Alabama uniform schedule 2026
Arkansas Razorbacks
The color came before the hog. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says students voted for cardinal red as the official school color in 1895, and the teams were called the Cardinals until the 1910 switch to Razorbacks. The nickname changed. The color never did. The year is a little loose: the encyclopedia says 1895, the university's own timeline says 1896 and at least one other source says 1894. No source we found says when white joined cardinal. Arkansas uniform schedule 2026
Auburn Tigers
Auburn wears Virginia's colors. George Petrie, the history professor who coached Auburn's first team, picked the colors of his alma mater for the first game, against Georgia in Atlanta's Piedmont Park in February 1892. Auburn Athletics quotes Petrie's biographer saying Petrie chose "the same burnt orange and navy blue" Virginia wore. How the moment happened is less settled. Auburn itself tells two versions: a student named "Miss Allie" sewing an orange A on a navy sweater to win Petrie over, or Petrie naming the colors on the spot when a reporter asked. Auburn doesn't pick one, and neither will we. Auburn uniform schedule 2026
Florida Gators
The University of Florida says orange and blue became its official colors in 1911, the same year the Gator caught on. Some outside accounts say 1910. The usual explanation is that the colors merge two of UF's predecessor schools, East Florida Seminary (orange and black) and Florida Agricultural College in Lake City (blue and white). It is a tidy story and probably the right one, but UF's own page names those schools without saying the colors came from them, and at least one UF-affiliated page flips which school had which color. Florida uniform schedule 2026
Georgia Bulldogs
Georgia's teams were known as "the Red and Black" before they were the Bulldogs, and a UGA Libraries history of early football also records "Crimson and Black" in 1892 and 1893. Beyond that the record gets thin. A popular story says Georgia's colors once included old gold, and that coach Charles Herty dropped it after losing to Georgia Tech, which wears gold, in 1893. Another account dates the gold's removal to 1888. We could not confirm either from a UGA source, so treat both as stories. The idea that the red stands for Georgia clay is a guess. Georgia uniform schedule 2026
Kentucky Wildcats
Kentucky blue is the color of a necktie. UK Athletics says students had settled on blue and light yellow before the game against Centre on Dec. 19, 1891, when someone asked the obvious question: which blue? Richard C. Stoll, a football letterman, took off his necktie and held it up, and that shade was adopted. About a year later students dropped the light yellow for white, and the university made blue and white official in 1892. One outside source dates the necktie to 1887; UK's own account says 1891. Kentucky uniform schedule 2026
LSU Tigers
LSU's purple and gold came off a store shelf stocked for Carnival. In a 1937 letter, coach Charles Coates remembered taking players to a Baton Rouge store before LSU's first football game in 1893 to buy ribbon for the team. The store was stocked with Carnival colors, purple, gold and green, but the green hadn't arrived yet, so they bought out the purple and gold. That is Coates's own memory, written down 44 years later. Another account says the baseball team wore purple and gold first, in May 1893, with captain E.B. Young picking the colors. LSU acknowledges both, and also notes that blue and white came before either, under its first president, David F. Boyd. LSU's tradition of wearing white at home came much later. Why does LSU wear white at home? · LSU uniform schedule 2026
Ole Miss Rebels
Ole Miss combined Harvard and Yale. The university says its first football team, in 1893, "chose the Crimson of Harvard and the Navy Blue of Yale," because the players liked how the two looked together and wanted to borrow some of both schools' spirit. A.L. Bondurant, who organized and managed that team, later recalled the discussion and the proposal to combine the colors. They started as football colors and became the university's athletic colors. The exact shades have been adjusted since, but the pairing hasn't. Ole Miss uniform schedule 2026
Mississippi State Bulldogs
Mississippi State's colors were one player's call. Before the first Mississippi A&M team traveled to Jackson, Tenn., to play Southern Baptist University in November 1895, the team was asked to choose colors and handed the decision to its captain, W.M. Matthews. He picked maroon and white. The student paper, The Reflector, citing an old athletics history, puts it on Nov. 15, 1895. The colors have held ever since, apart from one detour: in 1938 a coach ordered cardinal and gold uniforms on his own, and he was gone after that season. Mississippi State uniform schedule 2026
Missouri Tigers
Missouri doesn't publish an origin story for black and gold, and we found no university archive page on it. A Columbia Missourian account, quoted decades later by Kansas' student paper, says players at Mizzou's first football game in 1890 wore crimson and old gold, and that the school took black and gold soon after. One source dates the switch to 1890 and another to 1892. Black and gold fit the Tiger name, which is the explanation most people give, but nobody wrote down that this was the reason. Missouri uniform schedule 2026
Oklahoma Sooners
Oklahoma's colors were chosen by a committee led by the only woman on the faculty. OU says that in the fall of 1895, May Overstreet was asked to chair a committee to select the university's colors, and it chose crimson and cream. Sooner Magazine accounts say President David Ross Boyd asked her and name the student members. OU itself says the colors have since "evolved to crimson and white," which is what the team actually wears. Her first name also shows up as Mary in some accounts. Oklahoma uniform schedule 2026
South Carolina Gamecocks
South Carolina has said plainly that there are no defined documents on how garnet and black came about. Hobby registries trace the colors to students wearing garnet-and-black caps to a game in 1892 and a professor giving the team a banner in those colors in 1895, but we could not confirm either from a university source. The match with a fighting gamecock's plumage is a nice coincidence that nobody has documented as the reason. South Carolina uniform schedule 2026
Tennessee Volunteers
Tennessee orange is the center of a daisy. UT Libraries says Charles Moore, president of the athletic association, chose orange and white for the school's first field day in 1889, after the American daisy that grew on campus, with its orange center and white petals. Students voted to adopt the colors in 1891, voted them out about two years later, couldn't find anything better and voted them back in. The famous story that a colorblind student picked them is, in the library's word, a myth with no evidence behind it. The original UT orange was more yellow than today's. Tennessee uniform schedule 2026
Texas Longhorns
Burnt orange was a fix for fading. UT historian Jim Nicar traces orange and white to the first baseball team in 1885, with stops along the way at old gold and white and at orange and maroon, until a 1900 vote settled on orange and white. The problem was the dye. Bright orange faded toward yellow, which earned Texas the nickname "yellow bellies," and Tennessee and others already wore orange and white. In 1925, The Daily Texan announced a new, darker orange, which Nicar ties to coach E.J. "Doc" Stewart. Most accounts date the darker shade to 1925; one dates it to 1928, when the perfected dye got the name Texas Orange. That dye was made in Germany, so World War II pushed Texas back to a lighter orange. Darrell Royal brought the dark shade back in the early 1960s, and the regents made burnt orange official in 1967. Texas uniform schedule 2026
Texas A&M Aggies
Texas A&M gives no origin story for maroon and white; its official FAQ only notes the colors appear in "The Spirit of Aggieland." The best account we found comes from the other side of the rivalry: Jim Nicar, UT's historian, writes that A&M cadets wore red and white at an 1898 game and that A&M replaced red with maroon in 1917. A popular story says a uniform maker sent maroon by mistake. We found nothing to back that up. Texas A&M uniform schedule 2026
Vanderbilt Commodores
Vanderbilt gives no origin story for black and gold. The colors were in use by the early 1890s, when the first football teams played, and the gold has brightened from a brownish old gold to a yellow gold since. The best-known explanation, that the Vanderbilt family picked black for coal and gold for its fortune, has no source we could find. Treat it as a legend. Vanderbilt uniform schedule 2026
Big Ten
Illinois Fighting Illini
Illinois went through two sets of colors before orange and blue. Students first adopted silver on cardinal in 1879, then used old gold and black through the 1880s, which half the colleges in America also used. In 1894, after the student paper pushed for a change, President Andrew Draper appointed a committee of faculty and students. It first suggested orange and white, then, working with the Athletic Association, settled on orange and navy blue. The student body approved it unanimously on Oct. 24, 1894, and the colors were official by Nov. 6. Draper called the blue a symbol of steadfastness. Illinois uniform schedule 2026
Indiana Hoosiers
Indiana's cream and crimson were a compromise. In 1887 the student paper listed the university's colors as crimson and black and the senior class colors as cream and gold. IU Athletics says the class of 1888 ended the confusion by combining them into cream and crimson. A 1903 student paper credited their popularity to the alliteration. One student guide says the colors weren't official until 1899; IU's athletics department and libraries say 1888. In practice IU uses crimson and white, and its brand guide says white has stood in for cream for decades. Indiana uniform schedule 2026
Iowa Hawkeyes
Iowa's colors started with a torn hair ribbon. At a senior class meeting in the spring of 1887, a student complained that the university had no colors and no song. A committee recommended gold, and at the mass meeting that approved it, a woman tore up her old-gold hair ribbon and passed the pieces around as samples. The exact shade was argued over until a June 1894 student election made it old gold. Black was never formally chosen. It became Iowa's accent over the following decades, and no source dates it. Iowa uniform schedule 2026
Maryland Terrapins
Maryland wears the state flag. Red, white, black and gold come from the Maryland banner, which combines the arms of the Calvert family (black and gold) and the Crossland family (red and white), the two sides of the first Lord Baltimore's family. The state adopted that flag in 1904. Maryland Athletics says early teams wore gray or maroon and gray, moved to black and gold in the early 1920s, and switched to red and white under football coach Clark Shaughnessy in 1942. We found no date for when the university formally adopted all four. Maryland uniform schedule 2026
Michigan Wolverines
Maize and blue go back to Feb. 12, 1867, when students met in the chapel and adopted "azure blue and maize" on the recommendation of a three-student committee. Nobody set a standard shade, so over the years the colors drifted toward a lighter "baby blue" and a pale yellow. In 1912 a university committee fixed that. It sided with the athletic clubs on a darker blue, defined maize as the color of corn, warned against pale lemon yellow and chose two ribbons, one maize and one blue, as the official standard. Those ribbons are kept at the Bentley Historical Library. Michigan uniform schedule 2026
Michigan State Spartans
Michigan State has no single day it picked green and white. MSU's archives record students and fans wearing green ribbons at a field event in 1887, the first recorded use of green as a school color. Athletics calls the details of the official adoption "sketchy." Athletic Association records show an April 1899 move toward a green monogram for athletes, and the colors came into wide use after Chester Brewer arrived as the first full-time athletic director in 1903. Michigan State uniform schedule 2026
Minnesota Golden Gophers
Minnesota's colors were picked for graduation ribbons. President William Watts Folwell asked English instructor Augusta Smith to choose colors for commencement, and she chose maroon and gold. Gopher Athletics places it at the 1880 graduation; the university's College of Liberal Arts says the exact date is lost but falls in her years on the faculty, 1876 to 1880. Athletics says the colors became official over time without any formal action. Nobody recorded why she picked them. Minnesota uniform schedule 2026
Nebraska Cornhuskers
Nebraska's first color was old gold. It switched because Iowa already had it. The university says scarlet and cream became official in 1892, and a 1903 student-paper history credits a committee formed after a mass meeting, with student Ralph E. Johnson a leading member. The November 1892 student paper called the choice hasty but said something bright was needed. One outlet dates the change to 1900, and another credits the chancellor instead of the committee. The university's own date is 1892. Nebraska uniform schedule 2026
Northwestern Wildcats
Northwestern has one official color. The university's timeline says purple and gold were adopted in 1879 and that in 1892 purple became the official and only school color, copying East Coast schools with single colors. Accounts differ on the start: the timeline says purple and gold in 1879, while a former university archivist wrote that students picked black and gold first and switched because other schools already had them. White is used alongside purple but was never made official. Northwestern uniform schedule 2026
Ohio State Buckeyes
Ohio State almost wore orange and black. In 1878, the senior class planning commencement picked three students, Curtis Howard, Harwood Poole and Alice Townshend, to choose colors. After sampling fabric at local dry goods stores, they settled on orange and black. Then they learned Princeton already used them. So they started over and chose scarlet and gray, because they liked the two together and, as far as they knew, no other college used them. That comes from Ohio State's own University Archives. Ohio State uniform schedule 2026
Oregon Ducks
The school with the most uniform combinations in the country has the thinnest paper trail on its colors. Oregon's archives confirm only that its first football team, in 1894, was known as the "lemon yellow," after its uniforms. One outside registry says students voted for lemon yellow in 1893 and that green became the second color through long use without ever being formally adopted. We found no University of Oregon source that says who chose either color or when. Oregon uniform schedule 2026
Penn State Nittany Lions
Penn State started out pink and black. In October 1887 the student paper reported that students had unanimously adopted "dark pink and black," proposed by a committee from three classes. On March 18, 1890, the Athletic Association threw out the colors committee and picked navy blue and white itself. Nobody recorded why, and two alumni remembered it differently. George R. Meek, class of 1890, said the pink faded to white in the sun. Francis J. Pond, class of 1892, said Dickinson's players mocked Penn State's yell during a game, and the team changed the yell and the colors soon after. A Penn State curator looked into it in 1947, leaned toward Meek and admitted nobody really knew. Penn State uniform schedule 2026
Purdue Boilermakers
Purdue copied Princeton and changed one color. In 1887, the members of Purdue's first football team wanted colors of their own and looked to Princeton, the best team in the country at the time. Princeton's orange and black were widely known as yellow and black, so Purdue chose old gold in place of the yellow and kept the black. Purdue sources differ on who made the call: the players, a self-appointed committee of students and faculty, or captain John Burris. All of them agree on Princeton and 1887. Purdue uniform schedule 2026
Rutgers Scarlet Knights
Rutgers wanted orange, for its Dutch roots. In May 1869 the student paper, The Targum, proposed scarlet, and Rutgers Athletics says the reason was practical: scarlet was striking and a good scarlet ribbon was easy to get, while nobody in New Brunswick had an orange flag. That November, at the first intercollegiate football game, Rutgers players wore turbans and kerchiefs as close to scarlet as they could find. The trustees made scarlet official in 1900, making Rutgers one of the first American colleges with an official color. Rutgers uniform schedule 2026
UCLA Bruins
UCLA started in 1919 as the Southern Branch of the University of California, and its blue and gold came with the family. UCLA Athletics says the colors are blue and gold "like those of the University of California," and no source we found gives a date for when UCLA took them. Over time UCLA made the blue its own. Coach Red Sanders moved football to a lighter powder blue starting in 1949, and the school later formalized a brighter "True Blue." Sources disagree on why Sanders went lighter (to make numbers easier or harder to read on game film) and on when True Blue became official, with 2002, 2003 and 2004 all cited. UCLA uniform schedule 2026
USC Trojans
USC's official timeline says the university adopted cardinal and gold in 1895, the year George W. White became president. Some sources say 1896. That is as far as the record goes. USC doesn't say who chose cardinal and gold or why, and the stories you will find online about who did are not backed by any USC source we could find. USC uniform schedule 2026
Washington Huskies
Washington's colors came out of an English class. During a student debate over school colors, a teacher read the opening of Lord Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib," in which the Assyrian's cohorts gleam in purple and gold. That settled it, and the students voted for purple and gold. UW Athletics dates the vote to 1892, on the original downtown Seattle campus; UW Libraries dates the colors to 1891. The teacher's name is spelled Frazier by UW Athletics and Frazyer by HistoryLink. The Minnesota Vikings' purple and gold later came from here too, by way of a general manager who went to UW. Washington uniform schedule 2026
Wisconsin Badgers
Wisconsin admits it doesn't know. The Wisconsin Alumni Association says nobody is certain when the university chose cardinal as its main color, or why. A UW historian concluded that cardinal and white were generally accepted by the 1880s, and the student newspaper founded in 1892 was named The Daily Cardinal after the color. Beyond that, there is no origin story. Wisconsin uniform schedule 2026
Big 12
Arizona Wildcats
Arizona's first colors were sage green and silver, for the desert sage and the state's mines. Then came a deal on sweaters. Before Arizona's first football game in 1899, student manager Quintus J. Anderson got solid blue sweaters with red trim from a Tucson merchant. In late 1900 a student editorial said sage and silver had outgrown their usefulness, a committee was named, and students almost unanimously adopted cardinal red and navy blue. The 1904 student body constitution made it formal. Depending on the source, the switch dates to 1899, 1900 or 1904; all three are steps in the same change. Arizona uniform schedule 2026
Arizona State Sun Devils
ASU's alumni association says gold has been the school's main color since 1896, when it was still Tempe Normal, standing for the "golden promise" of the Arizona Territory. Maroon and white were added in 1898 as part of the football uniform. No person or committee is named in either case. Copper and black joined as athletic accents in the 2011 rebrand. Arizona State uniform schedule 2026
Baylor Bears
Baylor's green and gold came from dandelions. In spring 1897, Baylor asked a student committee to choose colors. On a train trip to Bryan for a debate, student Sara Rose Kendall looked out at a field of dandelions and decided green and yellow made a lovely combination, and committee members on the train agreed. The colors made their debut at a Baylor Glee Club concert on March 25, 1897. Accounts differ only on whether Kendall sat on the committee or brought the idea to it. Baylor uniform schedule 2026
BYU Cougars
BYU's official timeline says white and blue were chosen as the school colors in 1892, when it was still Brigham Young Academy. An 1891 commencement program already used them, saying white stood for purity and blue for truth. The blue has moved around more than the colors have: navy in the 1950s and '60s, royal blue through the LaVell Edwards years, a darker blue with tan trim after a 1999 redesign, navy again in the mid-2000s, and royal back on the helmets in 2021. BYU uniform schedule 2026
Cincinnati Bearcats
Cincinnati's colors were pushed through by Joseph Strauss, the student who later engineered the Golden Gate Bridge. UC Libraries says blue and brown were used informally in the 1880s. In 1891 Strauss suggested red and white in a poem, then formally asked for black and white. Student government sent it to a five-student committee, and in April 1892 black and scarlet were adopted as the colors of the University of Cincinnati. A UC alumni publication gives 1891; the library's account, which is better documented, says 1892. Cincinnati uniform schedule 2026
Colorado Buffaloes
Colorado's silver and gold date to 1888 and are tied to the state's mineral wealth, with the class of 1888 credited for the choice. Before they were the Buffaloes, CU's teams were often called the Silver and Gold, and so was the student paper, from 1892 to 1952. One heraldry registry says the colors started as the class's white and yellow and were redefined as silver and gold; we found no CU source for that. Colorado uniform schedule 2026
Houston Cougars
Houston's colors are scarlet red and albino white, and the university says "it is said" they were the colors of Sir Hugh, an ancestor of Sam Houston, adopted at the same time as the university seal. That seal, drawn from Sam Houston's coat of arms, was adopted in 1938. UH frames the Sir Hugh link as tradition, and it doesn't name who made the choice. Houston uniform schedule 2026
Iowa State Cyclones
Iowa State switched to cardinal because red sweaters were easier to buy. The ISU Library says the original colors were black, silver and gold, and the 1895 team that earned the Cyclones name played in them. In the 1890s the school moved to cardinal and gold "because it was simpler to obtain sweaters in red." The library says only "the 1890s"; other accounts date the switch to October 1899. Iowa State uniform schedule 2026
Kansas Jayhawks
Kansas used sky blue and corn yellow from the late 1870s. In 1891 the athletic board switched to crimson, partly hoping KU could be the "Harvard of the West." John J. McCook, a Harvard man who paid for KU's first athletic field, suggested pairing crimson with blue, and the board adopted crimson and blue in May 1896. You will often hear that KU mixed Harvard crimson and Yale blue to keep both camps on the faculty happy. KU's own history site calls that a myth. Kansas uniform schedule 2026
Kansas State Wildcats
Kansas State picked purple because nobody else had it. In the fall of 1896 a four-student committee recommended royal purple, partly because they couldn't find any other school using it. Then nothing happened for 25 years. The faculty finally made it official in 1921, and the campus paper called the gap an oversight, grumbling that white had been impersonating a college color. In 1978 the shade was standardized, a touch bluer than before. Kansas State uniform schedule 2026
Oklahoma State Cowboys
Oklahoma State's orange and black are a tribute to Princeton by way of a professor. OSU says the colors were chosen in the late 1890s to honor a popular faculty member, Harry Thompson, whose father had a Princeton degree. Students decided the teams would be Tigers in orange and black, and from the fall of 1899 those were the only colors shown at games. The school picked up a nickname for it: the Princeton of the Prairie. The Tigers became Cowboys; the colors stayed. Oklahoma State uniform schedule 2026
TCU Horned Frogs
TCU says its students chose the colors with a one-line explanation: "Purple for royalty, white for a clean game." TCU Magazine says the committee was made up of women from the school's two literary societies, when it was still AddRan College in Waco. The year usually given is 1896, though TCU's own pages don't state one. The football team didn't fully follow along at first; it wore blue until 1912. TCU uniform schedule 2026
Texas Tech Red Raiders
Texas Tech dressed like a bullfighter. In 1925, the school's first year, coach Ewing Freeland favored the name Matadors and the colors scarlet and black, and in January 1926 he handed out the first letter sweaters in scarlet with black-outlined T's. On March 15, 1926, students adopted scarlet and black as the official colors and Matadors as the name. Tech ties the colors to a matador's red cape and black costume. The Matadors became the Red Raiders a decade later, and the colors stayed. Texas Tech uniform schedule 2026
UCF Knights
UCF's black and gold were chosen by founding president Charles Millican, along with the seal and the Pegasus, before the school opened as Florida Technological University. The seal debuted on April 5, 1968. UCF has never published a reason for black and gold. UCF uniform schedule 2026
Utah Utes
Utah's original colors were crimson and silver, approved by the university in 1892, according to the university's own research on the Utes name. Into the mid-1920s, the teams were known simply as "the Crimson." At some point silver gave way to white, and we couldn't find when. Nobody is named as choosing the colors. Utah uniform schedule 2026
West Virginia Mountaineers
West Virginia Public Broadcasting says WVU upperclassmen chose old gold and blue in 1890 because those colors were so prominent on the state seal. Some flag historians treat the seal link as legend. Either way, the state followed the school: West Virginia made blue and gold its official state colors in 1963. West Virginia uniform schedule 2026
ACC
Boston College Eagles
Boston College's colors are papal colors. In the mid-1880s, BC students had nothing to wear to games. A student committee led by T.J. Hurley of the class of 1885 looked at what the other Jesuit schools used, Holy Cross purple, Fordham maroon and Georgetown blue and gray, and chose two papal colors: maroon and gold. The student body approved them unanimously. The first banner was sewn by women from the New England Conservatory of Music, which sat near BC's original campus, and it has since been lost. Boston College uniform schedule 2026
Cal Golden Bears
Cal's blue is Yale's. Most of the university's founders were Yale graduates, so the blue came from Yale, and the gold stands for the Golden State. Cal Athletics says the colors were set by the founders in 1868. The university's own Berkeleyan newspaper tells it differently: in 1873, a student committee couldn't choose between blue and gold, and a student named Rebekah Bragg suggested using both. Cal teams have worn blue and gold since intercollegiate play began in 1882, and California made blue and gold its state colors in 1951. Cal uniform schedule 2026
Clemson Tigers
Clemson's orange and purple trace to Auburn, but the details are a mess. Walter Riggs, an Auburn graduate, organized and coached Clemson's first team in 1896. Clemson's family handbook says Riggs brought old Auburn jerseys whose navy had faded to purple. Clemson Athletics says, "according to one account," the first-game colors were purple and gold, Auburn's colors when Riggs played there. Other accounts have Clemson in garnet and navy or red and blue in 1896. What is clear is that coach Jess Neely worked with the school's textile department in the 1930s to make the shades colorfast. Clemson uniform schedule 2026
Duke Blue Devils
Duke Blue is technically Prussian blue. Duke's archives say students at Trinity College, Duke's predecessor, chose dark blue in the late 1880s, and by 1910 blue and white were treated as the school's colors in songs and cheers. In 1965, after a committee started out designing a doctoral robe, the trustees made Prussian blue the official "University blue." Many accounts say Trinity copied Yale's blue because its president was a Yale man. Duke's archives don't make that claim. Duke uniform schedule 2026
Florida State Seminoles
Florida State's garnet is a blend. FSU says Florida State College won football titles in 1904 and 1905 wearing purple and gold. In 1905 the school became Florida Female College, football went to Gainesville, and students chose crimson as the school color. The administration combined that crimson with the championship teams' purple to get garnet, and garnet and gold carried on through the women's college years. When men returned and football came back, garnet and gold first appeared on an FSU uniform on Oct. 18, 1947, in a 14-6 loss to Stetson. Florida State uniform schedule 2026
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
Georgia Tech says white and gold were chosen by the class of 1891 and officially adopted in 1893. Blue was part of the original set, and the 1891 newspaper listing was white, blue and gold, but blue slid to a secondary role. Other accounts credit a faculty committee in 1890. Tech's brand team says the gold has never been one single shade, which anyone who has watched Tech over the years already knows. Georgia Tech uniform schedule 2026
Louisville Cardinals
Louisville's own archives say it is not clear when or how red and black were adopted. The common story is that Ellen Patterson, a dean's wife, suggested the colors and the cardinal mascot in 1913. But the Courier-Journal was already calling the football team "the Red and Black" in October 1912. The archives conclude that she either suggested it earlier or made official something already in use. Louisville uniform schedule 2026
Miami Hurricanes
Miami's colors are an orange tree. The University of Miami says orange, green and white were chosen in 1926, the year the first students arrived: orange for the fruit, green for the leaves and white for the blossoms. It is the most literal color scheme in college football, and it has never changed. Miami uniform schedule 2026
North Carolina Tar Heels
Carolina blue belongs to a debate club. UNC's two student literary societies, the Dialectic and the Philanthropic, were founded in 1795, and each had a color: light blue for the Di, white for the Phi. Members wore the ribbons at university events, and they went on certificates and diplomas. When UNC started playing other schools in the late 1880s, the athletes adopted both. The name "Carolina blue" was in use by the 1920s according to the UNC museum, though the Daily Tar Heel found it in records only from the 1930s and '40s. UNC made Pantone 542 the official shade in 2015. North Carolina uniform schedule 2026
NC State Wolfpack
NC State's first teams wore pink and blue, chosen by the school's literary societies. In September 1895 the Athletic Association approved brown and white, which didn't last two months. In November 1895 a majority of students voted for red and white, and the faculty ruled the colors couldn't change again without a two-thirds student vote. NC State Libraries dates it to November 1895; the university's brand site says red and white have been official since 1896. NC State uniform schedule 2026
Pitt Panthers
Pitt gives no origin story for blue and gold. Pins in the university's archives show the colors in use by the early 1900s, when the school was still the Western University of Pennsylvania. The shades are where Pitt's history gets interesting: navy and old gold early, a brighter royal blue and gold under Johnny Majors in 1973, navy and "Vegas" gold in 1997, and back to royal and gold in 2019. Pitt uniform schedule 2026
SMU Mustangs
SMU's founding president, Robert S. Hyer, chose Harvard red and Yale blue, according to the university's own history, which adds "as the story goes." SMU Athletics has put it simply: Harvard red and Yale blue are our school colors. The reason is where accounts split. The usual answer is Ivy League prestige for a new school that opened in 1915. A curator at SMU's Heritage Hall told the student paper that Hyer actually admired early French military uniforms in those colors. SMU uniform schedule 2026
Stanford Cardinal
Stanford's students first voted for gold. Stanford Athletics says that when the university opened in 1891, students chose gold, then a later student assembly picked cardinal instead. No reason is recorded. Cardinal was Stanford's only color until the 1940s, when home-and-away jersey rules led the Board of Athletic Control to add white. In 1981 the color itself, Cardinal, became the official name of Stanford's teams. Stanford uniform schedule 2026
Syracuse Orange
Syracuse started in rose pink and pea green. Syracuse Athletics says those were adopted in June 1872 and became pink and blue the next year. After Syracuse students won a field meet at Hamilton College in 1889 and got mocked for their colors, a student-faculty committee went looking for something new and found that no college used orange by itself. The Alumni Association adopted it unanimously in 1890. One caution: Syracuse's own library has said it holds no 1890 proclamation and has found no pink-and-pea-green items. Syracuse uniform schedule 2026
Virginia Cavaliers
Virginia's colors came off a classmate's neck. UVA's first colors were silver gray and cardinal red, which didn't stand out on a muddy field and were hard to keep from running. At a mass student meeting in the fall of 1888, Allen Potts, a star of the first football team, showed up wearing a navy-and-orange silk boating scarf he had picked up at Oxford. A classmate pulled it off, waved it at the crowd and asked how those colors would do. The meeting adopted orange and blue. The framed scarf later burned, but UVA Magazine says a fragment survives at the Virginia Historical Society. Four years later, Auburn's coach borrowed these same colors. Virginia uniform schedule 2026
Virginia Tech Hokies
Virginia Tech's first colors were black and cadet gray, and its striped jerseys looked like prison uniforms. In 1896, the year the school became VPI, a committee reviewed other colleges' colors and chose Chicago maroon and burnt orange because no one else used that combination. "Chicago maroon" is just the name of the shade. The new colors debuted at the second game of 1896, at home against Roanoke College; Tech's archives say Oct. 20, while the university's traditions page says Oct. 26. Virginia Tech uniform schedule 2026
Wake Forest Demon Deacons
Wake Forest Athletics calls the origin of old gold and black "somewhat debated." What is documented: by 1895 the college was using the colors in athletics, and the campus magazine described a new badge by student John M. Heck, a tiger's head over "WFC" in old gold and black. Most historians tie the colors to that tiger, the school's mascot before the Demon Deacon. Before the 1920s, Wake's teams were often called the Old Gold and Black. Wake Forest uniform schedule 2026
Independent
Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Notre Dame's colors are the oldest on this list. Notre Dame Athletics says the original colors, from the school's founding in 1842, were yellow and blue, yellow for light and blue for truth. Gold replaced yellow sometime after the Golden Dome was gilded, and nobody recorded exactly when. Green, the color everyone associates with the Irish, isn't an official color at all. Knute Rockne's freshmen wore it, and popular belief says the varsity first wore green on Oct. 16, 1926, against Penn State, which also wore blue. Notre Dame's own answer is that there isn't an official one. Notre Dame uniform schedule 2026
Pac-12, Group Of Five And The Service Academies
Washington State Cougars
Washington State was pink and blue before it was crimson and gray. WSU's official timeline cites a Nov. 14, 1900, headline in the student paper announcing that the colors had been changed from pink and blue to crimson and gray. The timeline says a committee approved the change; the student paper's own retelling says it was a majority student vote. Washington State uniform schedule 2026
Oregon State Beavers
Oregon State's first color was blue. Its archives say orange was selected as the school color on May 2, 1893, and students immediately added black as a background. That started a fight, because nearby Albany College had used orange and black since 1887. The archives add a detail most fans don't know: black has been used by tradition but was never officially adopted. Officially, Oregon State has one color. Oregon State uniform schedule 2026
Boise State Broncos
Boise State's archives say students chose blue and orange in the school's first year as Boise Junior College, 1932-33, the same year they picked the Bronco name. No students are named. Half a century later that blue went down on the field itself. Boise State uniform schedule 2026
Army Black Knights
West Point says black, gold and gray were officially adopted in 1899 because the Academy needed distinctive colors for its athletic teams. The gray is far older: cadet gray goes back to the 1816 cadet uniform. You may hear that the three colors stand for the ingredients of gunpowder. That explanation turns up in Army athletics material but not on West Point's official history page, so treat it as legend. Army uniform schedule 2026
Navy Midshipmen
Navy's colors started with one class. The class of 1890 used navy blue and gold first, and in 1892 the Naval Academy adopted them for the whole school after the athletic association reported midshipmen were in favor. Before that, each class picked its own colors. Navy uniform schedule 2026
Memphis Tigers
The University of Memphis says its first students, at West Tennessee State Normal School, which opened in 1912, chose blue and gray along with the tiger mascot. The university says "tradition holds" that the colors of the two Civil War armies were picked to mark a reunited country. That is a tradition. No recorded decision, year or names are attached to it. Memphis uniform schedule 2026
Marshall Thundering Herd
Marshall's official football history says green and white were used for the first time in 1903, the season of George Ford, the school's first football coach. Area newspapers were calling the team the Big Green within a few years. The colors were made official in a 1965 vote, the same one that picked Thundering Herd over Big Green and Rams. Marshall's sources describe that vote as a faculty-student vote in one place and a student vote in another. Marshall uniform schedule 2026
James Madison Dukes
JMU's purple and gold are a merger of two literary societies. In the school's first year, 1909-10, the Lanier Society chose violet and white and the Lee Society chose gray and gold. The school combined Lanier's violet with Lee's gold. Within a few years violet became purple, because purple was easier to find for pennants and decorations. James Madison uniform schedule 2026
Toledo Rockets
Toledo's colors have an exact date. The university says the Varsity T Club selected midnight blue and gold at its organizational meeting on Dec. 1, 1919, four years before the teams became the Rockets. Toledo uniform schedule 2026
Liberty Flames
Liberty's colors were green and gold for its first few years as Lynchburg Baptist College. When the school was renamed Liberty Baptist College to honor the nation's bicentennial, the colors became red, white and navy. Liberty's branding page dates the change to 1975; its history page says 1976. Liberty uniform schedule 2026
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are Tennessee's colors orange and white?
Charles Moore, president of the athletic association, chose them in 1889 after the American daisy that grew on campus, which has an orange center and white petals. Students voted to adopt them in 1891.
Is it true a colorblind student picked Tennessee's colors?
No. UT Libraries calls the colorblind-student story a myth with no evidence behind it.
Why is LSU purple and gold?
By coach Charles Coates's 1937 account, he bought out a Baton Rouge store's Carnival ribbon in 1893, and green hadn't arrived yet, so the team got purple and gold. Another account says the baseball team wore the colors first, in May 1893.
What were Penn State's original colors?
Pink and black, adopted in 1887. The Athletic Association switched to navy blue and white in 1890. One alumnus said the pink faded in the sun; another said a rival's mockery prompted the change.
Why is Ohio State scarlet and gray?
A three-student committee picked orange and black in 1878, then learned Princeton already used them. They chose scarlet and gray because they liked the pair and knew of no other college using it.
Why does Texas wear burnt orange?
The old bright orange faded to yellow and was shared with other schools. Texas introduced a darker orange in 1925 (one account says 1928), lost it during World War II and brought it back under Darrell Royal. The regents made burnt orange official in 1967.
What do the Miami Hurricanes' colors mean?
They represent the Florida orange tree: orange for the fruit, green for the leaves and white for the blossoms. They were chosen in 1926.
Why are Washington's colors purple and gold?
A teacher read Lord Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib," which describes cohorts gleaming in purple and gold, during a student debate over colors. UW Athletics dates the vote to 1892; UW Libraries says 1891.
Why is Michigan maize and blue?
A student committee proposed "azure blue and maize" on Feb. 12, 1867. A 1912 committee locked in the shades with two official ribbons, defining maize as the color of corn.
Why is Syracuse orange?
After students were mocked for their pink and blue in 1889, a committee found that no college used orange alone. The Alumni Association adopted it in 1890.
Why are Auburn's colors orange and blue?
Coach George Petrie gave Auburn the colors of his alma mater, Virginia, for the first game in 1892.
Why are Virginia's colors orange and blue?
At a student meeting in 1888, a classmate pulled Allen Potts's navy-and-orange Oxford boating scarf off his neck and offered it as the new colors. The students adopted them on the spot.
Why is Kentucky's blue that shade?
Before the 1891 Centre game, Richard C. Stoll held up his necktie when someone asked which blue the school meant. That shade was adopted.
Why is Florida orange and blue?
UF says the colors became official in 1911. The usual explanation is that they combine two predecessor schools, East Florida Seminary and Florida Agricultural College, though UF doesn't say so outright.
Why is Clemson orange and purple?
The colors trace to coach Walter Riggs, an Auburn graduate, in 1896. The famous version says Riggs's old Auburn jerseys had faded to purple, but Clemson's own accounts disagree on the details.
What is Carolina blue?
The light blue of UNC's Dialectic Society, one of two student debate societies founded in 1795. The Philanthropic Society's white is the other half. The official shade has been Pantone 542 since 2015.
Why is Virginia Tech maroon and orange?
The old black and gray stripes looked like prison uniforms. In 1896 a committee picked Chicago maroon and burnt orange because no other school used that combination.
Why does Notre Dame wear green if its colors are gold and blue?
Green was never an official color. Knute Rockne's freshmen wore it, and by popular account the varsity first wore green against Penn State in 1926. The official colors began as yellow and blue in 1842.
Why is Purdue old gold and black?
The 1887 football team borrowed Princeton's colors, which were commonly called yellow and black, and swapped the yellow for old gold.
Which college football teams have the oldest colors?
Notre Dame's original yellow and blue date to 1842, Michigan's maize and blue to 1867, Cal's blue and gold to 1868 or 1873, and Rutgers' scarlet to 1869.
Which college teams copied another school's colors?
Auburn took Virginia's, Purdue adapted Princeton's, Ole Miss and SMU combined Harvard and Yale, Cal took Yale's blue, UCLA took Cal's blue and gold and Oklahoma State honored Princeton.
Which college football teams have only one official color?
Syracuse (orange), Northwestern (purple) and Rutgers (scarlet). Oregon State's archives also say black was never officially adopted alongside its orange.
Which schools don't know where their colors came from?
Wisconsin says nobody is certain. Pitt, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M publish no origin story, South Carolina says there are no defined documents, and Louisville's archives say it is not clear.
The Bottom Line
The pros picked colors in a front office. College kids picked them at mass meetings, on train rides and at commencement planning sessions, usually with whatever ribbon the local store had in stock. That is why so many college colors are tied to something small and specific: a daisy, a necktie, a scarf, a poem, a dandelion field, a faded jersey. And it is why so many schools can't fully explain their own colors, because nobody at the time thought they were making a decision that would last 130 years.
More College Football Coverage
- How every college football team got its name
- Why does LSU wear white at home?
- How every NFL team got its colors
- How every NBA team got its colors
- How every MLB team got its colors
- College football Week 11 uniforms 2026
School color histories via each school's archives, libraries, athletics traditions pages and alumni publications (including Ohio State University Archives, UT Libraries' Volopedia, Penn State News, LSU, the U-M Record and Bentley Historical Library, UW Athletics, UW Libraries and HistoryLink, the University of Miami, The Alcalde and UT historian Jim Nicar, KU History, UVA Magazine, the Duke University Archives, NC State Libraries, UNC's Carolina Story, the University of Louisville Archives, Oregon State's Special Collections, West Point and the Naval Academy) plus the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, student newspapers and newspaper archives. Full source list kept with this story.
