University of Florida
Florida
1853
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/orange (1915-1918), orange/dark blue (1923-1931), orange/blue (1934-1935)
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) may have assigned a hood lining to the University of Florida as early as 1912, but this is not certain. Academic hood lists published by the IBAC in 1927, 1948, 1969, and 1972, described the university as having a hood lined orange with a navy blue chevron.
Unfortunately, the IBAC had also assigned the same hood lining to Lincoln University, Gettysburg College, and Bucknell University. To resolve this problem the IBAC modified the hood linings of Lincoln and Gettysburg in the late 1940s or 1950s and described the hood lining of Bucknell as orange with a Yale blue chevron, which in actual fact was a distinction without a difference.
When the Buckman Act of 1905 consolidated the state’s six colleges and universities into three, the Florida legislature merged Florida Agricultural College in Lake City (which had been renamed the University of Florida in 1903) and East Florida Seminary in Gainsville to form the University of the State of Florida. Blue and gold had been the colors of Florida Agricultural College and orange and black had been the colors of East Florida Seminary, so for a few years blue and either gold or orange were used by students of the new state university. In 1909 its name was changed to the University of Florida and in 1910, orange and blue were officially adopted as the colors of the university, symbolizing the blue sky and orange fruit of Florida. The shade of blue was a navy blue.
