In New Orleans, the Final Four Is All About the Blues

North Carolina vs. Duke. Kansas vs. Villanova.

Blue vs. Blue vs. Blue vs. Blue.

There’s going to be a whole lot of one primary color this weekend at the men’s basketball Final Four in New Orleans. But don’t you dare say those blues are all the same. Each university has its own shade, a color it reveres and often fiercely protects.

For U.N.C., it’s Carolina Blue, a sky blue color. The other three are darker, but each distinct: K.U. Blue, Duke Navy Blue and Villanova Signature Blue.

North Carolina can trace its link with light blue to the 18th century, when a debating society chose it as its color, said Fred Kiger, a historian of the university. By the 1880s, the football team had adopted the color. At that time, the blue was far lighter than today’s color, but it gradually became richer, in part because that looked better on early color TV sets.

The designer Alexander Julian, who revamped the team’s uniforms in the early 1990s, has his own definition: “the color of the sky in Chapel Hill over the Old Well around noon.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/sports/ncaabasketball/final-four-blue.html