The least favorite color at UConn is almost certainly orange. But the Huskies once almost matched their former Big East (and hopefully future conference) rivals from Syracuse.
UConn’s orange era
According to UConn Today, the Connecticut Agricultural College football team wore orange from 1921 to 1928. Sportswriters called them the Orangemen, even though Syracuse teams had already had that nickname since the 1890s. A vote was held to make the school colors orange and black, which would have been perfect for this time of year and Halloween. The vote did not pass, and the school colors stayed blue and white.
The design
For this design, we made a brown helmet inspired by the leather football helmets of that era, with CAC (Connecticut Agricultural College) in the UConn baseball hook C font. We added navy blue trim for today’s school colors. The jersey is orange with Aggies across the chest, the school’s nickname in the 1920s. UConn would not be known as the Huskies until the 1930s.
The Colorado State connection
If Duck on a Rock designing a UConn uniform in Syracuse colors wasn’t bad enough for you, there’s another inspiration for this design: former UConn football coach Jim Mora’s current team, Colorado State. The Rams wear Aggies across the chest on orange jerseys once a year to honor their roots as Colorado Agricultural College.
Too much orange?
If you disagree with this design, that’s OK. Maybe there’s too much Syracuse and Mora baggage. But if you hate it, hopefully you didn’t buy one of UConn football’s red jerseys. The red jerseys the Huskies wore in the loss to Syracuse looked orange enough in the sun that day.
