Anything but Uniform: Texas

DALLAS -- It's been a long time since Penn played a new opponent this season because of the return trips in the Ivy League. But today, the 15th-seeded Quakers get the 2nd-seeded Texas Longhorns.

Because Texas is the higher seed, it will be wearing its white uniforms, which look like this. Penn has already seen this Nike template of uniform with Yale earlier this year. And because of the bizarre Ivy League rule about uniforms on the weekend, Penn has seen the white version twice already, once at home and once on the road -- which incidentally was the game in which Penn clinched its NCAA Tournament berth.

I think the template is fine, and I also have to compliment Texas on wearing different shooting shirts than the Nike template, which is worn by lots of other teams. You'll notice that Texas has a shooting shirt of this style here but they weren't wearing it yesterday.

Now, for the Quakers, the word is that they will probably be wearing blue, which has been their main road color this year. Penn went is 7-2 in blue this year.

In its three previous trips to the NCAA Tournament before this one, Penn has gone with the blue, losing to Boston College last year, Oklahoma State in 2003 and Cal in 2002.

Before that, Penn was in red for three straight trips, losing to Illinois and Florida in 1999 and 2000 (photos before 2002 are hard to come by online).

After a little research, I went back to the 1979 season, when Penn went to the Final Four, to see what colors it has been wearing. One interesting note is that in the three years that Penn won a game, it wore the same color throughout the Tournament. Two of those years were red, 1979 and most recently, 1994, when Penn beat Nebraska.

In 1980 Penn wore blue and reached the second round. So including 1979, Penn is 5-5 in red and 1-9 in blue. I think it's obvious what they should wear today, but it doesn't look like it will happen.

Enjoy the game.