A return to historic colors being weighed

Panthers football team will wear royal blue and yellow twice in 2017 season

Could old school become the new normal? For now, Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke wouldn’t rule it out.

In an interview Tuesday with Pittsburgh media, Lyke was asked about the possibility of the athletic department returning to its royal-blue-and-yellow color scheme. “I’m not going to say the conversation has not happened,” she said.

Lyke cautioned nothing was imminent, but the news of a potential return to the program’s historic colors is welcomed with open arms by many Pitt fans.

The chorus of voices calling for Pitt to scrap its current palette of navy blue and gold has intensified since August, when the athletic department first released images of the retro uniforms the football team wore Oct. 8 against Georgia Tech and Nov. 19 against Duke.

Lyke said Tuesday the football team again will wear them twice in the fall.

In February, the men’s basketball team drew additional praise — including some from coach Kevin Stallings — for the oldschool colored uniforms it wore in its upset of Florida State.

“You know, as crazy as it sounds: A, we had a really good crowd. B, they were excited about the uniforms,” Stallings said at the time, adding: “I think they got excited to play because there was a really good crowd, the students were awesome, and they had the retro unis going.”

A return to royal blue and yellow would complete the athletic department’s recent turn-back-the-clock approach, which began in 2014 when former athletic director Steve Pederson restored the script Pitt on the football helmets.

Pederson’s successor, Scott Barnes, completed the abandonment of the muchmaligned block Pitt logo in August 2015, announcing a total revival of the script logo on all sports uniforms for the 2016-17 season.

It appears Lyke, who was hired from Eastern Michigan in March, could be the one to return the athletic department to the look football coach Johnny Majors developed in the early 1970s.

Pitt adopted the block logo in 2005, eight years after it ushered in the new era of navy blue and gold.

“There’s no question that the Pitt script is incredibly strong and distinguishable,” Lyke said. “I think our colors right now are not as distinguishable as they potentially could be if that’s the direction that we all want to go, but that’s not been decided and it’s something we continue to evaluate.”

Lyke said Nike currently is doing a study of Pitt’s brand recognition, so a decision about the color scheme before the results of the study would be “unwise.” Lyke said its findings would be evaluated along with internal feedback the athletic department receives.

As a part of that study, Lyke also said a potential secondary Panthers logo is being developed.