Indiana in blue?

[Spearhead]

Awhile back I came across this photo. There was no information on it except that it was of an Indiana Hoosier football player:

Quite by chance, I later ran across these two photos which were in a collection of Big 10 color football photos but, again, unidentified:

So far, I haven't been able to find any Hoosier game pics with them wearing these blue uniforms.

[oddball]

Could it possibly be Indiana State?

[See Red]

Could it possibly be Indiana State?

On the piece of paper thing in the second picture appears to say "IU football"

[rams80]

No, I'm pretty sure that's Indiana; that looks an awful lot like the Archives' exhibit case in picture #2, and I definitely recall hearing that one IU coach in the 1950s experimented with blue. The stadium in picture #1 also looks a lot like Memorial Stadium. I'm not sure you're going to have much luck finding color game shots, though; they were pretty much all black and white until the 1980s.

[agentrygraphics]

...that's odd. Definitely the old Indiana State powder blue...but that red is a darker red than ISU ever used (ours was always bright red). If you look closely at the team pic provided, you can make out an "S" on the helmet. ISU had, for years, the state of Indiana with an S wrapped around it as a helmet decal.

[mania]

If you look closely at the team pic provided, you can make out an "S" on the helmet.

I think those are the jersey numbers on the helmets, actually.

[Spearhead]

Right, those are helmet numbers.

I did find this photo to confirm that it was Indiana and the coach was Phil Dickens:

[illwauk]

With Nebraska coming next year, now would be a good time for Indiana to think about bringing these back. The Big Ten has way too much red as it is.

[Sodboy13]

I think UniWatch actually explored this a while back. The light blue was supposed to represent the "cream" in "crimson and cream", as apparently the cream which rose to the top of a bottle of milk (in the pre-homogenization days) had a slight bluish tint.

Looks better than off-white would, that's for sure.

[raysox]

With Nebraska coming next year, now would be a good time for Indiana to think about bringing these back. The Big Ten has way too much red as it is.

Why would a new rival consider changing some 50 years of history? Nebraska is the newbies.

[rams80]

With Nebraska coming next year, now would be a good time for Indiana to think about bringing these back. The Big Ten has way too much red as it is.

Why would a new rival consider changing some 50 years of history? Nebraska is the newbies.

More importantly, we like having our colors be red. That way it's possible for the team to do panoramic/aerial shots of the stadium on gameday and have it look like the stadium is full of Indiana supporters.

[illwauk]

With Nebraska coming next year, now would be a good time for Indiana to think about bringing these back. The Big Ten has way too much red as it is.

Why would a new rival consider changing some 50 years of history? Nebraska is the newbies.

History? Most people probably couldn't tell you what Indiana's football uniforms looked like now... if they even remember that IU has football (which they probably only do because of their existence in a BCS conference).

Besides, experimenting with odd colors is probably the closest thing Hoosier football has to tradition.

[whitedawg22]

With Nebraska coming next year, now would be a good time for Indiana to think about bringing these back. The Big Ten has way too much red as it is.

Why would a new rival consider changing some 50 years of history? Nebraska is the newbies.

History? Most people probably couldn't tell you what Indiana's football uniforms looked like now... if they even remember that IU has football (which they probably only do because of their existence in a BCS conference).

Besides, experimenting with odd colors is probably the closest thing Hoosier football has to tradition.

Whoever thought of these should be taken out back and shot:

Seriously? They changed the traditional IU logo to the letters I and U side by side, in Times New Roman, in a red oval? You could design something with more character in MS Word.

[Sodboy13]

With Nebraska coming next year, now would be a good time for Indiana to think about bringing these back. The Big Ten has way too much red as it is.

Why would a new rival consider changing some 50 years of history? Nebraska is the newbies.

History? Most people probably couldn't tell you what Indiana's football uniforms looked like now... if they even remember that IU has football (which they probably only do because of their existence in a BCS conference).

Besides, experimenting with odd colors is probably the closest thing Hoosier football has to tradition.

Whoever thought of these should be taken out back and shot:

Seriously? They changed the traditional IU logo to the letters I and U side by side, in Times New Roman, in a red oval? You could design something with more character in MS Word.

I think the coach who brought that look in had previously been an assistant with the 49ers, so that explains a lot about that look. Doesn't excuse it, just explains it.

[PackerBadger]

With Nebraska coming next year, now would be a good time for Indiana to think about bringing these back. The Big Ten has way too much red as it is.

Why would a new rival consider changing some 50 years of history? Nebraska is the newbies.

History? Most people probably couldn't tell you what Indiana's football uniforms looked like now... if they even remember that IU has football (which they probably only do because of their existence in a BCS conference).

Besides, experimenting with odd colors is probably the closest thing Hoosier football has to tradition.

Whoever thought of these should be taken out back and shot:

Seriously? They changed the traditional IU logo to the letters I and U side by side, in Times New Roman, in a red oval? You could design something with more character in MS Word.

I think the coach who brought that look in had previously been an assistant with the 49ers, so that explains a lot about that look. Doesn't excuse it, just explains it.

That was actually Cam Cameron, who played at Indiana before he became head coach. He never coached for the 49ers but obviously he, uh, borrowed from the 49ers as Hayden Fry, uh, borrowed from the Steelers when he went to Iowa. (For that matter, George Perles, uh, borrowed from the Steelers by having an S on one side of the Michigan State helmets.)

[illwauk]

History? Most people probably couldn't tell you what Indiana's football uniforms looked like now... if they even remember that IU has football (which they probably only do because of their existence in a BCS conference).

Besides, experimenting with odd colors is probably the closest thing Hoosier football has to tradition.

Whoever thought of these should be taken out back and shot:

Seriously? They changed the traditional IU logo to the letters I and U side by side, in Times New Roman, in a red oval? You could design something with more character in MS Word.

That's a pretty typical look for D3 football teams in the Midwest... so what's the problem?

As far as the interlocking IU, this current era is the only time in their history that the football team used it in back to back years. For most of their history, the Hoosiers used a plain, bland, block-I on red shells.

[rams80]

With Nebraska coming next year, now would be a good time for Indiana to think about bringing these back. The Big Ten has way too much red as it is.

Why would a new rival consider changing some 50 years of history? Nebraska is the newbies.

History? Most people probably couldn't tell you what Indiana's football uniforms looked like now... if they even remember that IU has football (which they probably only do because of their existence in a BCS conference).

Besides, experimenting with odd colors is probably the closest thing Hoosier football has to tradition.

Whoever thought of these should be taken out back and shot:

Seriously? They changed the traditional IU logo to the letters I and U side by side, in Times New Roman, in a red oval? You could design something with more character in MS Word.

Agreed. We fired the most successful coach in school history for that clown, and had no bowl bids to show for it. And then they downgraded further for DiNardo.

[tBBP]

With Nebraska coming next year, now would be a good time for Indiana to think about bringing these back. The Big Ten has way too much red as it is.

Why would a new rival consider changing some 50 years of history? Nebraska is the newbies.

History? Most people probably couldn't tell you what Indiana's football uniforms looked like now... if they even remember that IU has football (which they probably only do because of their existence in a BCS conference).

Besides, experimenting with odd colors is probably the closest thing Hoosier football has to tradition.

Whoever thought of these should be taken out back and shot:

Seriously? They changed the traditional IU logo to the letters I and U side by side, in Times New Roman, in a red oval? You could design something with more character in MS Word.

Agreed. We fired the most successful coach in school history for that clown, and had no bowl bids to show for it. And then they downgraded further for DiNardo.

Well yeah but...Antwaan Randle El sure was fun to watch, wasn't he?