MISSOULA – The University of Montana is bringing back its classic colors of copper, silver and gold this year to celebrate its legacy, history and the 30th anniversary of the Grizzly football team’s first national championship.
The design for the limited-edition Montana Vintage Program is derived from archival graphics, historic athletic wear and past artwork. It includes vintage typography and iconic imagery displayed on apparel, accessories and a new UM Alumni License Plate featuring the vintage bear, Otto. Items from the vintage line can be purchased through the Go Griz Store on campus, Scheels and Dillard’s in the Southgate Mall, or the M Store and Wear Your Roots store in downtown Missoula. Due to high demand, inventory is currently low but will be replenished in the coming weeks.
“Our alumni have been vocal about bringing this back for a long time, saying things like ‘We need to bring that back, those are our colors, we grew up with that, we lived that,’” said Denise “Goat” Lamb, chief licensing officer at UM. “This is really about celebrating our legacy.”
“It’s a great deal for not only the players, but the fans and the community,” said Rob Stack, director of the Hackney Athletic Equipment Center at UM. “It’s our heritage and tradition. It’s just so unique when we can reproduce it and use it again. And it’s fun for student athletes. Some of the stuff we can do in this day and age with the fabrics and products we have is pretty cool, for sure.”
Throughout its history, the University has been represented by two distinctive color palettes: copper, silver and gold, as well as maroon and silver. When the University was first founded in the late 1800s, the copper, silver and gold colors were chosen to officially represent UM due to the state’s prominent mining industry. However, it was difficult to get fabric in metallic colors at that time, so in 1905 the Associated Students of UM voted to adopt “spirit colors” of maroon, gray and yellow. Archival photos of Griz football uniforms typically show players donning maroon sweaters with gray and yellow accents into the 1960s.
Then in 1967, UM alumnus and Griz football standout Jack Swarthout returned to campus and took command of the football team. After noticing the University used varied shades of the spirit colors, Swarthout called for the branding to be consistent and more recognizable. As such, UM dove headfirst into its founding colors of copper, gold and silver, which remained in place for nearly 30 years.
“The reason they went to Texas orange was because coach Jack Swarthout thought the color resembled the color of the ball if they ran a triple-option,” Stack said. “So that’s one of the reasons why we went to copper, to hide the ball.”
Watch previous coverage: Grizzlies go retro: Copper and Gold return for 30th anniversary
During the copper era, Griz athletics celebrated successes, including 10 appearances in the NCAA tournament by the Lady Griz basketball team, led by legendary coach Robin Selvig, and the men’s basketball team made it to the NCAA tournament three times. That chapter concluded in 1995 with the football team’s first NCAA Division I-AA championship win over Marshall University in West Virginia.
In 1996 the University transitioned away from the copper, gold and silver color scheme in favor of the now-familiar maroon and silver for the same reasons ASUM voted 91 years prior to adopt maroon as a spirit color.
“It was just really difficult to get uniforms and apparel made in copper, silver and gold,” Lamb said.
Lamb said the University of Texas at Austin is the only other program that uses the color Pantone Matching System 160, more commonly known as Texas orange. At the time, the UM administration led by then-president George Dennison also wanted to return to the history and tradition of the University using maroon in its branding, she added.
Stack said he initially was not a fan of the change and remembers that many of the student-athletes he worked with were displeased as well. But not everyone was opposed. In 1995, the Montana Kaimin reported that more than half of the 700 students surveyed by UM Communications would support a color change to the sports teams’ uniforms. Lamb remembers the transition as being both exciting and challenging.
“We introduced it in 1996, and it all started with the Great Griz Encounter event at Washington-Grizzly Stadium,” Lamb said. “We had about 5,000 people show up, and the team came out to the fans in their new maroon and silver uniforms. The fans were super excited.”
Stack said the student-athletes he works with are energized by the apparel line. He is responsible for dressing all 320 Griz athletes in both practice and game apparel, in addition to creating the layout and design of uniforms.
“We put it out, we get it back in, we take care of all of the apparel for every single student athlete,” he said. “It’s quite the production with all of the laundry and the setup and take down and all of the other things we do. I’d say from August until at least the late part of November, somebody is here working four to six hours a day. I’ve got two full-time assistants and about 15 students working for me, but I’m looking to hire a few more.”
Stack has deep roots with UM. Not only did he play for the Griz football team in the 1980s, so did his dad. He also had an uncle who coached and a great-great uncle who played football at UM in 1915.
“So I have quite a bit of history here at UM,” Stack said.
Stack worked for Steve Hackney in the athletic equipment center as a student employee the winter after his first football season. After graduating from UM, Stack joined Hackney full-time as an assistant.
While the maroon and silver has grown on him over the years, he’s happy to bring the vintage colors back to fans.
“We have athletes on some of these teams whose parents wore the retro colors, and they’re always asking me when they’ll get to wear copper themselves,” Stack said. “So it’s really cool to see that come full circle in a sense.”
