When I was a student at the University of Kansas, I lived in a residence hall for a couple of years. There was an extremely quirky guy named Mark who lived in our hall in 1989 – he’d walk into your room with no explanation, engage you in an intense and hilarious dialogue for about 20 minutes, and then suddenly get up and walk out without saying another word. He was strange, but he was a good writer and a funny guy (and had a hot sister, man did it bug him that we ogled her), so we put up with him.
Mark was always full of sports theories, and one of them has stuck in my craw for a while. Kansas had just won the NCAA tournament the year before, and Mark had a provable theory that said teams with either red or blue as a primary uniform color won most of the championships in college sports. Now, whether this was due to the undisputed popularity of those bold primary colors in general, or if the colors goaded players to higher effort, we could never suitably settle.
But I thought it might be nice to see what has become of that theory since Mark expounded it. I looked at college football and basketball starting in 1990 and compiled these stats:
College Football
Since 1990, College Football’s mythical winners overwhelmingly wear red. Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Alabama made variations of red/white the most popular overall choice. If you count FSU’s garnet, and USC’s cardinal as red (and I do), then throw in Ohio State, that makes 9 national champions wearing red as a dominant color.
As an accent color, white carries the day, and I can understand why. Football teams are run by men who wear athletic shorts and sweatshirts in various shades of gray – color matching is not their forte. Even I am smart enough to know that white is a pretty inoffensive color to match with just about any other hue. It even goes with Tennessee’s orange sherbet assault on the ol’ rods & cones.
A surprising challenger was gold. The 1990 championship was shared by Colorado and Georgia Tech, both of whom use gold. Colorado’s shirts are black, and Tech’s are gold, so I had to claim it as a primary color for the Ramblin’ Wreck. That provided the margin. To my eye, Washington, FSU, Colorado, and USC make a strong showing for gold, but white wins it 7 to 6.
Note to teams who wish to contend this year: why take chances? Order these gloves for your wideouts. They’ve even been marked down.
College Basketball
You can probably see this one coming. Blue and White absolutely kills in college basketball. Since 1990, Duke and UNC alone have given us five blue/white victory parades. Throw in two each from Kentucky and UConn, and the evidence is overwhelming: it pays to go classic on the hardwood. UCLA has a rather bold shade of blue, and have certainly historically made hay with azure unis. Florida seems to favor blue over orange, and even the wishy-washy Arizona team (who go red or blue with equal fervor) were wearing dark blue in 1997 when they went all the way.
Any other colors stick out like a sore thumb. UNLV ushered out their dominance of the late 80’s by winning the 1990 tourney in red and grey, Arkansas wore red in ‘94, and Michigan State wore that awesome green when the Flintstones did it in double-aught. After that, it’s pretty much Maryland in red and Syracuse in orange rounding out the field. White is by far the dominant accent color, though the Gators are obviously trying to put a dent in that stat.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, our most visible collegiate champions wear red, white, and blue most often. If I had to settle the chicken/egg debate, I’d bet that the popularity of those colors in the U.S. caused the preference. I cannot, however explain this nation’s desire to name every third team the wildcats. I’ve never even seen a “wildcat”, have you? If I had to name a team after something I see all the time, it would probably be “raccoons” or “squirrels”, both of which can be scary as hell if you get between them and food.
So, Mark’s theory is in good hands, though thanks to Florida, Syracuse, Tennessee, and Texas, orange is making a very strong showing in the new millennium.
Some of Mark’s other theories were a bit more difficult to stomach, such as the “Is it a law that every white guy in America has to own at least one Notre Dame sweatshirt?” query, which I felt came dangerously close to racial profiling. I mean, can’t a guy just celebrate Saint Patrick’s day with a lousy leprechaun or two without being branded as Lou Holtz’s ball boy?
Sheesh.
