March Madness is beginning to amp up as the NCAA men’s hoops regular season winds down. While you’re sharpening your pencil to fill out your bracket after Selection Sunday, we here at Fanatics have taken a look at past champs and the runners-up. Specifically, we’re taking a gander at the color combos of their uniforms, and if there may be some prediction power behind them.
The Champs
First, let’s look at every champion in NCAA tourney history since players first took the court and battled it out in 1939. At first glance, a few colorways stand out – namely blues, reds, and a little yellow and gold.
Top Ten Colors for NCAA March Madness Championships Winners
- White & Blue
- Gold & Blue
- Red & Black
- White & Red
- Red & Cream
- Red & Blue
- Orange & Blue
- Gold & Green
- Range & Black
- Red & Grey
The color blue, for example, is very well-represented among college hoops champs – with Kentucky hoisting the trophy eight times, Duke and North Carolina five times, and Connecticut four times. The most recent champion, Villanova, has won twice.
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There are plenty of reds, also, in various combos (including alongside blue at KU and Arizona). Blue hooking up with gold is another highly popular championship colorway (especially considering UCLA‘s gigantic winning streak in the mid’-60s through early ’70s).
Winning Color Combos
Looking at both the champs and the runners-up, blue is definitely where it’s at. The blue and white color combo steals the show on both accounts. On the winning side, blue and white has won it all a whopping 24 times, followed by blue and gold, which comes in at 14.
Dropping off a bit further, the different combos with red start to make an appearance. For example, red and black teams brought the NCAA trophy home six times, as did teams wearing white and red. Red and cream-clad teams have won five times, and squads with red and blue threads have won four times.
Colorways like gold and brown, gray and blue, orange, purple and black, purple, red and gold, yellow and blue, and yellow and green have all won the tournament one time.
On the runners-up side, the uniform colors are similar to (but not exact duplicates of) the color combos of the champs. Blue and white, again, comes out on top, with 20 second place finishing teams wearing those colors.
The numbers drop off steeply after that, with red and blue grabbing the title of runner-up seven times, as did white and red. Gold and blue came in second six times, followed by three colorways that came in second for a total of five times: gray and blue, red and gray, and yellow and blue.
Breaking it Down
Popping the championship teams into tidy slots based on their uniform color combos shows that, while blue colorways are the usual suspects when it comes to winning, and red combos aren’t far behind, they’re not the only colors that bring the trophy home.
Some of the outlier colorways include the gold and green of the San Francisco Dons, the gold and brown of the Wyoming Cowboys, the purple and black of the CCNY Beavers, the white and green of the Michigan State Spartans, and the orange and blue of both Florida and UTEP.
Some teams, like Syracuse and Holy Cross, are even more unique, as they don’t have an official second color.
Dressing Like a Champ
Do red or blue uniform color combos guarantee that a team will win the NCAA tournament? Not necessarily. While there is certainly plenty of variety in college team colors, blues and reds just seem to win more.
However, that doesn’t mean blue and red colorways are definitely going to bring the trophy home. Whether your favorite college hoops team dons red, blue, or another completely different color combo, you can head over to Fanatics.com to get your gear before Selection Sunday and root your team on during March Madness.
