Duke Colors and Other Miami Game Musings

[InaudibleWords]

Inaudible, would you say the shoes were the color of the font that a lot of us use for Duke Blue??? (see Rich's signature)

Sidenote: Both the men & women's fencing teams beat UNC this weekend to give Duke another point in the Carlyle Cup!

Fencer, Rich's signature seems to be darker... they really were electric. From the chart, Rich is more Bright Blue and the shoes seemed to be a slight shade darker than Azure Blue.

[The Gordog]

After 20 years (I graduated in 1988), I finally got back to Cameron last week to see the Miami game. It definitely lived up to my memories and expectations. The crowd was as boisterous as I remember and a buddy of mine, who I invited but didn't go to Duke, was totally impressed by the crowd, how loud it got, and, most significantly, how the crowd kept cheering and pushing the team even when we were down by 16 in the second half. I was proud and he was so happy to be a part of it he bought a CAMERON CRAZIE t-shirt after the game.

While walking the campus before the game, he also couldn't believe how many people wore Duke hats, t-shirts, sweatshirts and other apparel. He joked, "Do you have a uniform code here?" I remember from my days as an undergrad how students wore their Duke garb proudly and was happy to see that was still the case. Maybe it's like that at other schools, but I don't think to the same extent.

Now to my question which, to some degree, is supported by the photo on the DBR website today. In the 1980's I seem to recall that the primary color for apparel and other merchandise was in the navy family. The photo on the website shows a uniform in Duke blue that is darker than what the players where today. I recall the color of the uniforms being not quite navy in the 80's, but definitely darker than the royal blue color it is today. Looking at the shirts worn by the students, as well as a trip to the school store, the school's color now seems to be more of a royal blue. I never really noticed this from watching on tv, but it was quite apparent when I was there in person.

Was the school's color always royal blue, but the store just sold more navy because it was more popular at the time? Or was the school's color a darker blue than the royal it is today and migrated to royal blue? Was this a gradual shift? And what about the uniforms? Was there a particular year when the color became lighter or was that a gradual migration?

I would be interested if anyone has any thoughts or insights about this.

According to the archives: "In a computer color palette Duke Blue is hex 00,00,9C; RGB 0,0,156; Hue=160 Saturation =240 Brightness=73."

It looks like this:Duke Blue.JPG

The numbers on our uniforms look more like pantone 285 or 300 these days. Not Duke Blue for sure, but hey if it looks good on Tee Vee