Who decided on our colors?!

[pulse]

When, who, and how were our colors decided on? There are different shades of cardinal and gold, and we've used different ones. How did these "pantones" become official?

This is from cyclones.com

This is from USC which is also cardinal and gold:

Why don't we use these shades?!!

 

[price26]

"Pantones" are just ways of distinguishing between different shades of colors.

And I believe the colors Cardinal and Gold were decided upon by the students when it was up for debate.

And if you don't like the colors and prefer USC's better, then I'd say go root for USC. I don't see anything wrong with our colors.

 

[pulse]

"Pantones" are just ways of distinguishing between different shades of colors.

And I believe the colors Cardinal and Gold were decided upon by the students when it was up for debate.

And if you don't like the colors and prefer USC's better, then I'd say go root for USC. I don't see anything wrong with our colors.

Okay I'll go root for USC now because I like their colors a little better... brilliant idea.

Over the years the shades of cardinal and gold on our uniforms have changed, so this topic is nothing new or blasphemous.

 

[JJ4ISU]

We went with the USC look during the Donnie Duncan era, which coincidentally coinsided with the Mack Brown assistant coach era. Gene Chizik made reference to Mack Brown when talking about gold pants.

 

[BigSkyCy2]

back in the day the Marketing offices weren't as involved as they are today. The way things work these days is it is set in stone and will be that way until we change our logo again.

 

[tejasclone]

We are not USC. Ergo, we should not use USC's colors. We really need stop defining ourselves by some other institution's standards--be it USC, Iowa, or whatever. I realize we are a program in search of an identity and there is no problem with making comparisons to other schools as a model of how to do it, but we can't keep living in other schools' shadows.

I am really hoping that Chizik brings the kind of distinction and success to this school that will really help us create our own identity so we can stop hanging on all the "We should look like USC" or "Notre Dame" or whomever comments.

Personally I love the Cardinal & Gold, but hate the Ketchup & Mustard.

Here's a question -- if you could have some DIFFERENT color combination, what would you have?

 

[Broodwich]

I say go with the USC Colors, or more of the colors from the "vintage" stuff from Tailgate Clothing. I love Iowa State with all of my heart, but the current colors are just too much, and this is one thing the Hawkeye fans have right. Every time I see footage from the Seneca Wallace era, with the navy blue outline on the numbers, I can't quit thinking about:

 

[Cloned4Life]

We are not USC. Ergo, we should not use USC's colors.

USC's colors look better than ours. Ergo, we should use them. Who cares if USC uses em, we've used that shade of cardinal before so it's not big deal. Just because people think the USC version of cardinal and gold is better doesn't mean we wanna be USC. I wanna be Iowa State, and have a sweet shade of cardinal to go with it. Our current just shade isn't all that great. Not bad, but not great.

 

[ISUFan22]

Fook Mi, so much to-do about our colors. I say we wipe USC off the map and use their colors.

We are ISU. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

 

[tec71]

Actually what I remember being "ISU Colors" a/k/a "Cardinal and Gold" were more similar to the "USC" colors, so I'd say those are our colors. What I remember is back when they decided to use Navy Blue as an "accent color" (which eventually morphed into a primary color) they switched from the more "classic" cardinal and gold (USC Colors) to what I would consider "Red and Yellow" (current colors). Maybe that was the same time they brought in the fighting cyclone cy and got rid of classic Chicken Cy.

 

[CyForPresident]

We are ISU. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! That is awesome. And now I'm sad because I just realized I'm a nerd.

 

[sdsmith4]

The whole deal is our athletic departments colors are different than the University's, the University uses more of an actual Cardinal as our color and more of a gold, where the athletic department has it a little different. I think we need to go to our university colors instead of the athletic department specific ones, we wore our colors much better in the 70's and 80'
s, it was late Walden era when we started looking McDonald's esque which is very tacky and doesn't say tradition at all. I think we need to fight to change the colors, not dramatically, just to the same as the University

 

[cyclonenum1]

Most of the complaining has been about our "gold" color. But if you look closely at the first post in this thread, the gold we use and the gold USC uses appear to be nearly identical to my eye. Only their "cardinal" is a little deeper tone than ours.

Having said that, I have been involved in ordering uniforms and if you order "cardinal" uniforms from 5 different vendors you will get uniforms of 5 different colors.

Only recently have universities been concerned with controlling their colors and images (in say the last 10-15 years) due to the added revenue potential of licensing your logos and colors. Back in the 80s our football team used a "brighter" cardinal color than our basketball team did (which more closely resembled the USC color above...and was maybe even a little darker)...I don't think the university really saw this as an "issue" at the time. However, today they are going to mandate continuity of all uniforms.

I am just glad we are getting rid of the blue...accent color or otherwise! It never belonged. Those uniforms of the late 90s with all of the blue on them were terrible. I almost thought we decided to change school colors like Colorado did in the 80s...do you remember what their "old" colors were before they went black and gold????

 

[pulse]

I am just glad we are getting rid of the blue...accent color or otherwise! It never belonged. Those uniforms of the late 90s with all of the blue on them were terrible. I almost thought we decided to change school colors like Colorado did in the 80s...do you remember what their "old" colors were before they went black and gold????

Wasn't it something like blue & white? I think I remember their away basketball uniforms... maybe not.

 

[flander1649]

It really seems that most people like ISU's current colors

 

[ISUonthemove]

cardinal pantone 200, does not look cardinal to me....it looks red. it doesn't have to be USC's red, but just something a little darker than that.

 

[cyclonenum1]

Wasn't it something like blue & white? I think I remember their away basketball uniforms... maybe not.

Pretty close, CU had blue (somewhat similar to North Carolina) and gold (similar to the gold they use today) back in the early 80s...they changed to black and gold somewhere in the mid 80s.

 

[benjay]

We are not USC. Ergo, we should not use USC's colors. We really need stop defining ourselves by some other institution's standards--be it USC, Iowa, or whatever. I realize we are a program in search of an identity and there is no problem with making comparisons to other schools as a model of how to do it, but we can't keep living in other schools' shadows.

I agree. I would never advocate a change in colors to be like USC or any other university. However, I'm in total favor of changing our colors to reflect what we want as a fanbase. Is that not what establishing an identity is all about? We define it, nobody else. I do not care what other people associate it with as long as we are making our own way.

 

[CyTom]

The ISU letterman jacket that you see on athletes across campus is the same color as the Tailgate line of merchandise. A darker cardinal and gold instead of yellow.

 

[CyBobby]

Wasn't it something like blue & white? I think I remember their away basketball uniforms... maybe not.

Colorado's actual colors are Silver and Gold. They have used both black and gold and a light blue and gold in the past 40 years or so.