School's Official Colors vs Actually Used Colors

[MiK]

Noticed today that the Illinois orange and blue seemed brighter than I remembered. I saw on the main site that the logos and word marks had been updated in 2022 with brighter colors. Curiousity on what rub/hex changes made were, I ventured over to @TruColor's site to find out. Here, the colors remain from the 2014 update. Curious I thought. So I then went straight to the source at fightingillini.com and found something confounding. Their own website conflicts:

 

Clearly the Orange and Blue on the banner of the website are much brighter from the Orange & Blue Colors depicted below. What gives? Has there not been an "official" color change or are they just unsure themselves of what the true colors are. The majority of the website is in the brighter orange and blue but then there's this page, talking specifically about Orange & Blue showing the darker colors from 2014. There were also no RGB, HEX, anything to be found on the website. Irritating!

[udubfan19]

washington has almost always had mismatched purple between the logos and jerseys. most recently 2016-2018 with old jerseys but a brighter logo

VS:

[tBBP]

I wouldn't put too much stock into it, especially when it comes to web colors...those are beast unto themselves. I don't know whether this is the case for Illinois, but it's possible they're using web safe navy and orange values, for versatility's sake. (Browser-testing can be a PITA, especially when it comes to web colors.) Sometimes, those web safe colors can be off by a good bit from the true intention.

 

As for fabrics: too many factors for that. For one, the lighting outside--daytime, sunlight, overcast, nighttime, the type of lights used in the stadium, whether the fabric gets wet (rain), etc. I'll tell you what all this does, though: give me an appreciation for all those who executing the color-testing processes.

 

Now, as for the thread title, when I saw it, I immediately thought of IU (Indiana University), as I was thinking it'd be more along the lines of teams whose schools call their colors one thing but then team teams wear another, like Indiana's crimson and "cream"...except they (like Oklahoma) wear white. (And if I really wanted to be pedantic, I could extend this to every school that wears yellow and calls it "gold"...but I won't go there today. )

[The_Admiral]

Mizzou: yeah, uh huh, you know what it is, black and yellow, black and gold yellow, black and dark yellow, black and beige yellow

[GrayJ12]

Technically, the high school that I graduated from's colors are supposed to be Kelly green and white. However, it feels like we use any shade of green under the sun and call it a day. I've seen our school use pine green to lime green.

[Dynasty]

I think a lot of the black and gold schools, particularly Colorado and Idaho, list gold and silver as their main colors, but use black and gold for the athletic programs.

 

There is also the case of UCLA, mainly with their shades of gold. According to TruColor, the athletic color (#FSA900) is slightly different from the institution color (#FFD100). However, there is the fact that the football team wears a completely different gold from the rest of the program.

 

 

 

 

[Krudler]

For the longest time UConn's football team seemed to be strictly blue, silver and white as opposed to the blue, white and red of the other sports. Always bothered me.

Example:

 

vs.

 

[MDGP]

Penn State had a weird period where the basketball programs added light blue to the color scheme, making them look like Villanova and UNC.

 

 

[Ben5]

On 4/29/2024 at 11:30 PM, Krudler said:

For the longest time UConn's football team seemed to be strictly blue, silver and white as opposed to the blue, white and red of the other sports. Always bothered me.

Example:

[2 pics]

 

vs.

 

 

 

It's because Randy Edsall didn't like red. 

 

In his first run at the university, he eliminated red from all their uniforms and gear. And all the sports were pretty much on their own islands (men's and women basketball each had their own logos, baseball had the hook C), so it didn't matter.  Right before he left, they started the push to standardize their logos. That's when they got the current husky logo they have now. Randy left before he had to use it.

 

By the time he returned, it looks like they loosened the reigns a bit, because he went back to the block C logo he used that they previously retired. Again, he got rid of red from the uniforms (but they still had red on some gear).  Then he got sacked. LOL

[Krudler]

On 5/1/2024 at 2:48 PM, Ben5 said:

 

It's because Randy Edsall didn't like red. 

 

In his first run at the university, he eliminated red from all their uniforms and gear. And all the sports were pretty much on their own islands (men's and women basketball each had their own logos, baseball had the hook C), so it didn't matter.  Right before he left, they started the push to standardize their logos. That's when they got the current husky logo they have now. Randy left before he had to use it.

 

By the time he returned, it looks like they loosened the reigns a bit, because he went back to the block C logo he used that they previously retired. Again, he got rid of red from the uniforms (but they still had red on some gear).  Then he got sacked. LOL

Thanks for the history lesson! It's kind of funny Edsall was so anti-red, but it didn't stop him from going to Maryland.

[Ben5]

18 hours ago, Krudler said:

Thanks for the history lesson! It's kind of funny Edsall was so anti-red, but it didn't stop him from going to Maryland.

 

He probably did poorly there because he hated the colors so much