Connecticut Aggies (Huskies; 1926)

I've been meaning to do this one for a while, ever since I came across this amazing article detailing UConn use of orange in football games in the 1920s. While UConn's official colors were (and are) blue and white, those colors were shared by many of the its football rivals, including Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Trinity. To avoid confusion in the marketplace in an era when few teams wore contrasting white jerseys on the road, the Aggies (UConn didn't become the Huskies until the 1930s) wore orange uniforms for football only from 1921-28.

The Sept. 21, 1922 issue of the Connecticut Campus
explains why the Blue and White have gone orange.

Thus, the orange-clad Connecticut Aggies instead of the blue-and-white UConn Huskies. 

A collection of headlines and articles notes
UConn's use of orange on the gridiron.

What makes it even stranger is that some articles continued to refer to their blue hues, such as in this Oct. 19, 1922 Connecticut Campus article, which used blue and white in the headline, but referred to the orange at the end:

By the mid-1920s, the Aggies had added friction stripes to the jersey front and sleeves, resulting in a uniform that might resemble the graphic above. I'm less certain about this uniform than anything else I've done on this little ol' blog; when the only evidence is some scratchy black-and-white photos, you sometimes have to rely on guesswork. Besides, check out the pictures below: You just can't help but imagine those jerseys being blue, especially since they appear to be darker than orange. 

Members of the 1927 Connecticut Aggies line up for a photo
(from the Connecticut Digital Archive).
Trying, trying, trying to imagine those jerseys as orange ...

UConn in action against an unidentified opponent
(perhaps Maine, which wore white helmets) in 1928.
No. 6, in the darker helmet, is likely a Husky Aggie.

According to the UConn Today article, there was a campus debate as to whether the school should switch colors, but a proposal never came to pass. By 1929, the Aggies were again wearing blue jerseys -- augmented with a series of white stripes -- on the gridiron.

On the field, Connecticut had a pretty good run, going 25-11-6 from 1924-28. The 1926 bunch took the New England Conference title, with its only setback coming at Maine. (The 1924 team went undefeated, but I couldn't find enough good pictures for a graphic.)

The Sept. 28, 1929 issue of the Campus makes note
of UConn's return to blue. "The boys looker pretty"?

UConn's black in blue and white 
and all is right with the world again.