University of Minnesota system
Each institution in the system uses different athletic colors but the same academic hood lining pattern from the original University of Minnesota:
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
Minnesota
1851
The University of Minnesota’s old gold and maroon were chosen by a female instructor of English who had been appointed to select the college colors by the university’s president. The selection of old gold and maroon occurred at some point between 1876 and 1880, and were first used as the colors of the ribbons that secured the rolled-up diplomas of the students. However, official recognition of these colors by the Board of Regents didn’t occur until 1940. Before that, the shade of old gold was sometimes described as gold in the World Almanac and other sources.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): old gold/maroon (1895-1902); gold/maroon (1904); old gold/maroon (1906-1911); gold/maroon (1912-1914); old gold/maroon (1915-1918); gold/maroon (1923-1931); maroon/gold (1934-1935)
The Cotrell & Leonard academic costume firm was the depository for the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC), and the names of both are mentioned in the same advertisements from the late 1890s and early 1900s. Gardner Cotrell Leonard, one of the partners of Cotrell & Leonard, was also the Director of the IBAC, so when a school ordered academic caps, gowns, and hoods from Cotrell & Leonard, the hood lining colors and heraldic pattern used for the order would be registered with the Intercollegiate Bureau. Hood registration dates for schools, therefore, can be estimated as roughly contemporaneous with the first appearance of that school in a Cotrell & Leonard/Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume advertisement.
An official hood assignment by the Intercollegiate Bureau for the University of Minnesota probably occurred as early as 1895 or 1896, because a reporter covering commencement ceremonies at the University of Chicago for the Indianapolis News (9 July 1896) mentioned the University of Minnesota as one of a number of colleges and universities that used academic costume. The university also appeared in a Cotrell & Leonard advertisement in the 1896 The Comet yearbook of Vanderbilt University, and then in the 1897 “Ole Miss” of The University of Mississippi yearbook. None of these sources described the hood pattern assigned by the IBAC.
The Intercollegiate Bureau published a lithograph that illustrated Minnesota’s hood in 1902, but the first IBAC list with a written description of the university’s hood wasn’t published until 1918, where Minnesota’s hood lining was described as old gold with a maroon chevron. This hood assignment was never modified or changed in later IBAC lists.