You Can Color My World; Annual What Not to Wear Guide

Each season creates a variety of opportunities and challenges for fans who wish to color coordinate their football watching garb, tailgating supplies and accessories (to both or either).

Of course we do our best to utilize as much blue and white as possible (every day of our lives...) on football saturdays - but there's always a cooler, a chair, a pair of sunglasses, a cherry tomato, that isn't going to exactly conform to the code.

So it's always best to know which colors are to be 100% avoided (at least in our hearts and minds) on any given Saturday.

Generally, there are trends - this year is what I would usually call a "no red" year, as a majority of our in conference home games are played against teams that don some variety of the color.

However, this season is also trending to a "wear all your favorite gold jewelry this summer, because you're not going to see it all fall" situation as we play a lot of yellow/gold/orangey teams.

Here's a brief overview:


akron zips (kangaroos) - blue and old gold. You always need to be wary when the Lions play another "blue" team - a simple wristwatch, or the grommets on your bluejeans could result in a fan fashion "don't";

syracuse orange(men) - blue and orange. (see above);

temple owls - cherry and white. you must fight fight fight the urge to dress like a candy cane;

iowa hawkeyes - gold and black. It's the white out - so there's not much of an issue here;

eastern illinois panthers - blue and gray. Just keep what you're doing - you'll be fine;

minnesota golden gophers - maroon and gold. Beginning, finally, the in-conference "no red" bit I mentioned;

ohio state buckeyes - scarlet and gray;

indiana hoosiers - cream and crimson.

So there you have it - the (opening number of an Andrew Lloyd Webber Musical) colors that we should avoid this season when we are making our tailgating and game watching plans. It's nothing we can't achieve with just a little determination and OCD and be ever thankful that we don't play tennessee during the cold weather games...