University of Toledo
Ohio
1872
At a 1 December 1919 meeting of the Varsity “T” Club, the University of Toledo football team chose midnight blue and gold as the school colors for the university. “Midnight blue” is a very dark blue that is almost black.
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): blue/gold (1918-1935)
Academic hood lists published by the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) in 1927, 1948, and 1972 described the University of Toledo as having a hood lined Wellesley blue with a gold chevron. The IBAC used “Wellesley blue” as a synonym for a medium to dark blue, which was one way the Bureau disguised the fact that some of their hood assignments for common combinations of hood colors (like dark blue and gold) were being duplicated.
For instance, the Intercollegiate Bureau hood lining for the University of Toledo (Wellesley blue with a gold chevron) was indistinguishable from the IBAC hood linings for Goucher College (also Wellesley blue with a gold chevron), Emory University (navy blue with a gold chevron), the University of Pittsburgh (also navy blue with a gold chevron), Marquette University (Yale blue with a gold chevron), and Simmons College (dark blue with a gold chevron). A list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) did not hide behind this linguistic façade: Sheard described Toledo’s hood lining as dark blue with a gold chevron.
Oddly, an Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume list from 1969 said the university used a midnight blue hood with an old gold (dark gold) chevron.
None of these linguistic gymnastics attacked the root of the problem, which was that Toledo’s hood lining duplicated the hood linings of schools that had been assigned earlier. So here Toledo has been reassigned a dark blue hood lining with two gold chevrons.