When it comes to UW-Madison’s official school colors, there is no gray area. They are cardinal and white. According to Arthur Hove, a historian of UW-Madison, cardinal and white have generally been accepted as the school’s colors since the 1880s. In fact, The Daily Cardinal, the university’s first student newspaper, was established in 1892. That’s not to say red is wrong, however. Cardinal is obviously a shade of red. So that’s why you’ll hear cheers of “Go Big Red!” during Badger football games, see the Grateful Red in the student section at the Kohl Center and alumni and students wearing The Red Shirt™. Badgers like to rally around red.
Has UW-Madison officially changed its colors from cardinal and white to red and white? I spent four years in the band (back in the Dvorak days) marching through campus singing, among other things, ‘Wisconsin Forward Forever.’ In that song, we sang these words: ‘We’ll march on victorious for Varsity, Varsity fair. Your name forever glorious will hearken us to do and dare. We’ll march on victorious, the CARDINAL waving in air; and Badgers all, we’ll answer to the call, and we’ll fight for Wisconsin forever.’ I have always thought our colors were cardinal and white. Were the colors always officially red and white, and was the word cardinal an inadvertent descriptive term that never was the official color? Or do we now say red and white because that’s what seems to show up on TV screens?
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