University of Arizona
Arizona
1885
The original school colors of the University of Arizona were sage green and silver because of the sagebrush native to the area. In 1900 one of the athletic managers was offered a special deal on jerseys that were blue trimmed with red. These were very popular with the team and students, so they voted to change the university’s colors to red and blue, with the official shades being cardinal and navy blue.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/red (1908-1931); red/blue (1934-1935)
The history of the official hood lining pattern of the University of Arizona is convoluted.
The Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) assigned the university a cardinal hood lining with a Yale blue chevron no later than 1927. “Yale blue” was the term the IBAC used to describe a dark blue shade like the official navy blue of Arizona.
The IBAC seems to have deliberately used a synonym to describe the dark blue color of Arizona’s chevron in order to obscure the fact that the Bureau had duplicated the hood lining it had assigned in 1895 to the University of Pennsylvania. Arizona’s hood lining description did not change in subsequent IBAC lists, except for a 1969 description that simplified the shades to “red” with a “blue” chevron.
However, a photograph of Arizona’s hood in the 16 October 1950 edition of Life magazine depicted a lining with interchanged colors – that is, blue with a red chevron – as did a photograph of Arizona’s hood in a 1966 catalogue published by the academic costume company E.R. Moore entitled Caps, Gowns and Commencements. Unfortunately, this arrangement closely resembled the hood lining the IBAC had assigned before 1918 to the University of Kansas.
To resolve both of these duplication problems, here the University of Arizona has been reassigned a hood lined cardinal with a navy blue bar. The bar – what the IBAC called a “zone” – was a heraldic device the Bureau used as early as 1902 to avoid hood lining duplications of this sort. The bar is also a heraldic division found in the official seal of the University of Arizona, which was approved by the Board of Regents in 1915.
