Colleges Using Different Colors For Athletics and Academics.

[cshookemHORNS]

What's oregons differences?

[Gothamite]

UW-Madison (or just Wisconsin) uses a darker shade of red for Academics I do believe.

That shade would look so much better on the Badgers.

[TruColor]

What's oregons differences?

Again, from my site (you guys know I have a site, right?):

With Oregon's athletic colors, these are the only ones that they designate as "official"...of course, the football team incorporates about 425 other colors as well...

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UW-Madison (or just Wisconsin) uses a darker shade of red for Academics I do believe.

That shade would look so much better on the Badgers.

Technically, the institution Cardinal and the athletics Cardinal are supposed to be the same color.

[TruColor]

ND is probably the most interesting -- with two different color sets.

They made changes in 2011...the colors used to be more disparate:

Old institutional set - for comparison:

[burgundy]

Old institutional set - for comparison:

Actually, their original institutional colors were more like this:

And the coat of arms was designed in 1931, so the institutional colors of yellow and Madonna blue were used, albeit interchangeably with blue and gold, for quite some time. This is what eventually led to Gerry Faust changing the uniforms to royal blue during his tenure, in an attempt to use more traditional colors. Although, much like everything else he did at ND, he didn't quite get it right.

[TruColor]

Old institutional set - for comparison:

Actually, their original institutional colors were more like this:

And the coat of arms was designed in 1931, so the institutional colors of yellow and Madonna blue were used, albeit interchangeably with blue and gold, for quite some time. This is what eventually led to Gerry Faust changing the uniforms to royal blue during his tenure, in an attempt to use more traditional colors. Although, much like everything else he did at ND, he didn't quite get it right.

Yeah - I need to adjust some of the beginning years for some of those color sets; obviously, Notre Dame hasn't been using those colors since 1842.

[dgthree]

That is my fault for being an FCS fan. I meant North Dakota. In any event, I didnt know Notre Dame had those different colors.

[RoughRiders99]

My alma mater, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), uses orange and brown for their academics, orange and black for their athletics.

[TruColor]

My alma mater, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), uses orange and brown for their academics, orange and black for their athletics.

[Discrim]

Colorado used to use silver and gold academically, black and gold athletically

Seems there was a recent alteration...

A better example of the used-to-be-different crew, Montana's academic colors were copper, silver and gold.

As of this year, seems gold's no longer a Montana color, and they finally admitted maroon aint copper.

[MDGP]

At Penn State, the academic colors are two shades of blue that are different from the athletic shade.

[doctorpeligro]

UW-Madison (or just Wisconsin) uses a darker shade of red for Academics I do believe.

Wisconsin's athletic website (uwbadgers.com) is a mish mash of different shades of red:

If they just used the cardinal shade of that Motion W at the top-center of the website, all would be good.

Pardon the bump.

[TruColor]

This is the official shade of Cardinal for BOTH institutional and athletics programs:

If it doesn't match that, it's not accurate.

[suplauren]

NAU uses blue and sage for academics, and blue and gold for athletics:

[TruColor]

NAU uses blue and sage for academics, and blue and gold for athletics:

You're referencing the wrong color set for NAU's athletics...those are the College Vault graphics colors.

Here's the actual set:

[doctorpeligro]

This is the official shade of Cardinal for BOTH institutional and athletics programs:

If it doesn't match that, it's not accurate.

Too often, the teams are using lighter shades of red. Look at this photo from the Badgers locker room:

The shade of red of the jerseys and helmet decals is noticeably lighter than the shade of cardinal on the right side of the mural (the official color?)

[GuitarPunk2512]

ill use my school Farmingdale State College (D-III) Farmingdale, NY on Long Island.

Academic colors are green and white.

Athletics uses green, white, gold, and a lot of black.

Stony Brook university also does this.

Academics (new) is red and white

Athletics are red, white, blue.

[TruColor]

Stony Brook (displaying Pantone values for colleges now; most of these can be found online):

Stony Brook University, State University of New York - Institutional Colors:

Stony Brook University, State University of New York - Athletics Colors:

[cajunaggie08]

This is the official shade of Cardinal for BOTH institutional and athletics programs:

If it doesn't match that, it's not accurate.

Too often, the teams are using lighter shades of red. Look at this photo from the Badgers locker room:

The shade of red of the jerseys and helmet decals is noticeably lighter than the shade of cardinal on the right side of the mural (the official color?)

It was only this year that the helmet decal started matching the jersey color. The decal color used to be the shade of cardinal on the mural.

[guest23]

This is the official shade of Cardinal for BOTH institutional and athletics programs:

If it doesn't match that, it's not accurate.

Too often, the teams are using lighter shades of red. Look at this photo from the Badgers locker room:

The shade of red of the jerseys and helmet decals is noticeably lighter than the shade of cardinal on the right side of the mural (the official color?)

I would say these deviations are fairly common simply due to the fact that for decades schools were forced to select from a manufacturer's available color palette, individual coaches/equipment managers had final approval and may not have cared or settled for close enough, and lack of an efficient and standardized color matching process was not available.

I'm pretty sure the Badgers have a few reasons why they continue to wear light red. At some point a few decades they purchased bright red jerseys/scarlet and the athletic administration had no issue with the team wearing that shade of red in addition to fans and alumni accepting them in that shade and buying a ton of merch. Also that shade looks to be the stock red which makes life easy for adidas procurning uniforms and acessories compared to a school like ucla which shades of blue and gold are much harder to produce.