The Black & White From NC State?
Wolfpack athletics teams have strayed from NC State's core color values for team uniforms. Get with the program; Wear Wolfpack Red & White only and always!
It was last Saturday, Football Saturday at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg VA. The Virginia Tech Hokies, facing the camera in this photo, were wearing uniform colors Chicago maroon and burnt orange and hosting an unidentifiable team dressed in the colors of game officials, black and white. In the photo above that team is trying the point after touchdown! Who is that team in black and white?
Scrolling through my Roku and YouTube TV Saturday for the NC State football game at Virginia Tech, I must have passed the game two or three times on the ACC Network before realizing the Wolfpack was the team wearing those God-Awful black britches and black helmets with white jerseys. Who was that team? Couldn’t have been NC State!
Just because the scoreboard across the bottom of the screen says one of the teams is NC State, figuring out which one is the Wolfpack dressed in black and white is less than desirable. The NC State wardrobe shouted: We’re on the same team that’s dressed in black and white stripes, the game officials!
Where were the all-white traveling uniforms—jerseys and pants—with red identifiers such as the helmet? Or white tops and solid red bottoms? The britches were black and deviated from dominate, official NC State University colors. Eventually I settled for the game on ACCN and was thrilled when, colors be damned, the “Black and White from NC State” (as the fight song doesn’t go) won 35-28. Congratulations to the team!
Now beat North Carolina this Saturday on ACCN—8:00 p.m. kickoff or there abouts—and claim third place in the Atlantic Coast Conference, one spot ahead of the Wolfpack’s predicted finish! Now back to the Black & White story.
The fight song isn’t (is it?) the Black & White Song. No way! Composed in 1961 with lyrics and music by J. Perry Watson, director of the NCSU Music Department, the song celebrates the uniform colors for all NC State athletics teams.
There is no color black among the official palettes. Someone in recent years slipped it in as an accent color leading to it as a dominate color, a team uniform color for football, basketball and all the other sports teams—because the players without tradition and historical perspective wanted black uniforms, we’ve been told—the Red & White Song be damned.
The Red & White Song
by J. Perry Watson (1961)We’re the Red and White from State
And we know we are the best.
A hand behind our back,
We can take on all the rest.
Come over the hill, Caroline.
Devils and Deacs stand in line.
The Red and White from N.C. State.
Go State!IMPORTANT NOTE: On their own, the students replaced the line ‘Come over the hill, Carolina” with the better exclamation, “Go to Hell, Carolina.”
So, how did we get here with “black” as an official dominant color? Probably coaches thinking the players had the school in their best interest without holding to traditions. Whatever the reasoning, it’s not an official color because two-thirds of the student body hasn’t voted for it, and its liberal use by Wolfpack athletics teams provokes plenty of discord among the tradition-loving alumni. Here’s a little history, from the NCSU website:
1892-1895
The earliest sports teams at NC State wore pink and blue, and these colors were chosen by the literary societies.
September 1895
The Athletic Association approved brown and white as colors for the sports teams, but use of these colors was short-lived.
November 1895
A majority of students chose red and white as colors for the sports teams.
The faculty agreed to the adoption of red and white and stated that they could not be changed again without a vote of two-thirds of the student body.
The colors have remained the same since (except for the addition of black and the use of gray and camo from time to time, against NC State University law. So stupid!).
Never should the exceptions be used, especially since no one can remember two-thirds of the entire student body voting for a color change or addition.
NC State has a national identity problem when it comes to athletics (academics among peers, not so much). The use of black uniforms or their parts as a dominant color such as those black pants worn at Virginia Tech or black jerseys at home with white britches or the use of all black tops, pants, and helmets increases the identity problem. Who is that team in black? Nothing special or instantly recognizable.
The official NCSU color is Wolfpack Red, not fire engine red as Woody Durham, longtime voice of the Tar Heels radio network, used to say. No more so than saying UNC’s color is sky blue and not Carolina Blue.
On the road, red helmets, white jerseys, and red pants are not only desirable but would keep athletics uniforms in line with the color branding of the University. Wolfpack Red is actually Pantone 186C, the shade we used when I was the athletics department publications editor, 1977-1987. When creating Wolfpack Red for CMYK color printing, it was a mixture of 0% of Cyan, 100% of Magenta, 81% of Yellow, and 4% of Black. Below is a summary explaining the use of Wolfpack Red; or, you can migrate to the NCSU color brand page. From the website:
NCSU’s Core Palette
NC State’s core palette consists of three colors: Wolfpack Red, Wolfpack White and Wolfpack Black. These colors should feature more prominently than any others in NC State communications. In all communications using color, Wolfpack Red should dominate. We are, always, the Red and White of NC State.
Not the Red, White and Black from NC State!
Wolfpack Red Is Dominant
Wherever you are, you can spot NC State supporters by the Wolfpack Red they wear. The same is true of communications from the university. When Wolfpack Red is your dominant color — in print, online or on promotional items — your audience will know you speak for NC State.
Ever approached someone wearing black and immediately think that person is an NC State alumnus or a Wolfpack fan? Probably not.
NC State Red, for Starters (and Finishers)
As the dominant color in our core palette, Wolfpack Red should be the entry and exit point of your communications. That means generous splashes of red on front and back covers of printed documents, red title and closing slides on videos, red in the header and footer on websites.
The Wolfpack starts with red and ends with red and with a lot of red and white in between. While the color branding page doesn’t explicitly mention athletics uniforms, it is implied.
The Bell Tower is a nice structure (it’s never lighted in black and always in RED after NC State victories and/or special moments) as a symbol of NCSU, but not so much nationally;
Centennial Campus strikes a chord of innovation and modernization among academia but does bring to the University fans as athletics does;
Chancellor Randy Woodson is a swell guy (called “Big Guy” by Wolfpack football coach Dave Doeren) and is known throughout academics worldwide for his achievements while at the helm of NCSU. But,
Great academics, distinguished faculty, and honored staff may be a terrific attraction to NC State but Wolfpack athletics is the front porch of the University across the masses of the USA and beyond.
It was 50 years ago this coming April that NC State won its first NCAA basketball championship, and it was 40 years ago last April when the Wolfpack won its second national basketball title. Those two events enticed more people to NC State than does current innovation in textiles, architecture, engineering, agriculture, and the many other well-known academia of NCSU.
More applications for admission to NC State University are submitted when the Wolfpack is successful in athletics—specifically football and basketball—than when national rankings of areas of academics rise. Rah, rah for the Poole College of Management, but success on the football field and basketball court results in more interest of NC State University.
The Red & White is the common identifier for the entire University, and that front porch needs to remain decorated in solid Red & White (with a little black trim when appropriate) to make sure the identity problem isn’t made greater by substituting that boring color black for dazzling Wolfpack Red.
Wolfpack athletics must make a statement with the use of Wolfpack Red. Last Saturday’s game at Virginia Tech would have served Wolfpack faithful better with white jersey’s, red helmets, and red pants. We are the Red & White!
This week, in the season completing game at home against UNC, the Wolfpack must be dressed in red helmets, red jersey’s and white or red pants. The visitors will probably be wearing as much “Carolina Blue,” its well-recognized national identifier, as possible. Hopefully, red will dominate on the field as it will throughout a jammed PACKed Carter-Finley Stadium. Wolfpack fans will be decked in lots of red, many times over those in black.
NC State University’s motto is: Think and Do. For wearing red-dominate uniform colors of all athletics teams, there’s no reason to think; just do! Just wear red as the dominate color and kick black to the curb.
Make a Difference
If you want to make a difference with Wolfpack uniform colors and the dominate use of Red, send an email to any or all of these fine people and let them know how you feel!
Randy Woodson, Chancellor: chancellor@ncsu.edu
Boo Corrigan, Athletics Director: wolfpackad@ncsu.edu
Dave Doeren, Head Football Coach: ntbrince@ncsu.edu
Kevin Keatts, Head Men’s Basketball Coach: ddwinter@ncsu.edu
Other NCSU Athletics staff and coaches can be found on the gopack.com website.
Please share this story with other Wolfpack fans who are tired of seeing our teams dressed in black. Encourage emails to the list above; tell them and others the Wolfpack is the Red & White from NC State! Go State!
Good lord. It's 2023. The younger generation — including recruits — love the varied looks. It's not an every game occurrence. ... If you're going to be such a stickler, why not go back to the original pink and blue? Because they changed over the years. I would suspect every program has adapted and adopted an alternative uniform color at some point. Why make the exception for red helmets, jerseys and pants? That was never the way it used to be. ... It's also about money. And what university or athletic department can't use more of that these days?
As for the national identity issue, maybe win an ACC title in football or basketball and that will start to change the narrative. Certainly not the colors on the uniforms. Not sure the Olympic sports have an identity crisis. Didn't the women's cross country team just win a natty?
But, yes, let's create a campaign to wear only red and white. C'mon.