To avoid assigning duplicate hood linings to colleges and universities that used the same school colors, the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) used different types of heraldic patterns to divide the two or more colors in an academic hood. In IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hood lining patterns were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]”, which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar. Unfortunately, today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the Bureau intended to describe.

The IBAC assigned Creighton University a hood lined “light blue above white” no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. The division of the colors was not defined, but hood lining lists compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) and Academic Dress and Insignia of the World (1970) described the university’s hood lining as light blue over white, divided per chevron, which was also how the hood lining was described in an IBAC list from 1969. A 1948 IBAC list imprecisely said that Creighton’s hood was “light blue and white”, which was usually how the Bureau described a hood lining divided vertically, per pale.