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. One of the heraldic divisions the Bureau employed was a “reversed chevron”. Here the standard chevron of between three and four inches in width was inverted so that the chevron pointed upwards.

Chadron State College does not appear in early IBAC lists from 1927 or 1948, so the IBAC might not have assigned the college a hood lining until the late 1940s or 1950s. A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Chadron’s hood lining as dark cardinal with a white reversed chevron. Sheard accurately described the shade of Chadron’s red; an IBAC list from 1972 used the college’s official definition of its red and therefore less accurately stated that the college’s hood was cardinal with a reversed white chevron. The Intercollegiate Bureau may have inverted Chadron’s chevron to avoid the potential for confusion with the hood linings already assigned to Radcliffe College (crimson with a white chevron) or Lafayette College (maroon with a white chevron) in the late 1890s.