The Red and Blue. That is what Penn is -- not only its colors, but also one of its nicknames.
But for many years the actual shade and origin of red and blue were inconsistent and unclear.
In their May 17, 1910, meeting, according to the University Archives' Web site, the Trustees adopted the following resolution:
"The colors [of the University] shall be red and blue, ... The colors shall conform to the present standards used by the United States Government in its flags."
However, that resolution seems to have been forgotten over time -- the same Web site says that Penn athletic teams started using a darker shade of the two colors.
Finally, in 1986, the University adopted specific shades of red and blue according to the Pantone Matching System -- the official color standards used by the federal government.
These shades, though, were not the exact ones used for the flag -- which did not have an official Pantone color at that point.
The flag's current Pantone colors are very close to the University's colors.
As far as athletics go, the teams' uniforms were often darker than the official colors.
One particular myth, listed in all Penn media guides, probably either led to the darker colors or vice versa.
It concerns a Harvard-Yale-Penn track meet at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where the Penn captain said that the Quakers would wear the colors of the teams they beat. Presumably Penn triumphed over the Crimson and Elis and thus adopted those teams' colors -- darker than the American flag's.
The logo change
About four years ago, under the direction of former President Judith Rodin, Penn underwent a process to update its logo and colors and make them consistent across the University's 12 schools.
Penn had an "identity problem -- our graphic identity and visual identity was kind of a mess," said Lori Doyle, Penn's Vice President of Communications.
The resulting work culminated in the current Penn logo -- the University shield with the word "PENN" next to it -- as well as an effort to standardize the school's colors to conform to their original guidelines. The new athletic logo has the "Split P" and the word Penn atop in in the shield.
It also changed the school's name from "Pennsylvania" to "Penn" in all athletic competitions.
Finally, in the media guides, a new paragraph was added to reflect the change in the colors.
Team uniforms
Every varsity team on Penn's campus has its own unique uniform supplier and contract.
Each one of these companies -- And 1 for men's basketball and Nike for women's basketball, to name two -- has various preset shades of colors that it uses. Therefore, the school had to choose the closest shade to the PMS colors, and it decided to use the darker shade when there was a choice. This was a slight nod, according to Penn's Director of Marketing and Product Development Sharlene Sones, "to the tradition we've been in."
And with the new logo and colors come new, updated uniforms for the various Penn teams.
Every two to three years, each team gets new uniforms. Players do not keep their uniforms -- they are reused each year. And thus with the wear and tear and multiple washings, they need to be replaced.
So when the current cycle is over, each team's uniforms will be consistent with each other and the University's standards.
"I'd be surprised if ... by the end of 2006 ... almost all the teams would [not] have the same logo and branding" on their uniforms, Director of Athletic Communications Carla Zighelboim said.
Jerseys for sale
Many professional and college teams are criticized for tweaking or changing their uniforms, as well as adding third color uniforms in an attempt to have more styles in stores.
Penn, however, does not sell its jerseys to the student body.
Part of the reason is that the custom-made team uniforms are too expensive to be sold individually. But, according to Sones, they are also "something special" for the athletes who wear them.
As for why the men's basketball team has two colors for road jerseys, the answer is relatively simple. The Quakers use two sets of uniforms to avoid doing laundry on the back-to-back nights of Ivy League road weekends, and as long as there are two sets of uniforms, they might as well have two colors.
This year, the Penn Bookstore is handling athletics merchandising for the first time, and has already sold practice jerseys at the Palestra.
In the future, though, the new-look Red and Blue may be seen more throughout campus.
Associate Director of Athletics for External Affairs Andy Bilello phrased Penn's marketing mission concisely.
"We are trying to do more."
