The most obvious contrast in colors was between the dark shades worn by university athletic clubs and the lighter colors used to adorn campus events.
The sports teams preferred darker colors because, as the Michigan Alumnus put it in 1912, the paler versions of maize and blue were “inadequate and ineffective as decoration.”
This division continued until 1912, when the Regents formed a new committee to reconcile the disparate colors in time for U-M’s 75th anniversary.