Nebraska State Colors | Scarlet Cream

Nebraska has not enacted a separate legislative statute designating official state colors. Scarlet and cream function as Nebraska's de facto state colors through the cultural dominance of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, founded in 1869 as the state's land-grant university and flagship public institution, whose athletic teams have made the Cornhusker scarlet-and-cream palette one of the most recognized color combinations in the Midwest. The UNL Brand Guide designates Scarlet as Pantone PMS 186 C (HEX #E41C38) and Cream as Pantone 7401 C at 35 percent (HEX #FDF2D9), providing the most authoritative color specifications available for Nebraska's traditional state colors and reinforcing The Cornhusker State nickname.

The colors were chosen by University of Nebraska students in 1892 and are described in the UNL Brand Guide as the official colors of the university, mentioned in three school songs dating to the early 20th century. The selection of scarlet and cream involved a notable reversal of an earlier color choice. Nebraska's original school color, established informally around 1882, was old gold, selected by Clem Chase, former editor of The Hesperian (predecessor to the Daily Nebraskan), and Roscoe Pound, who later became dean of UNL's law school and a distinguished jurisprudential scholar. Old gold was abandoned in 1892 or 1893 when Nebraska played Iowa and discovered that Iowa had already claimed old gold as its school color. Chancellor James Hulme Canfield led a committee that replaced old gold with scarlet and cream — a palette that has remained unchanged for more than 130 years and now appears across the Nebraska state flag page.

Scarlet and cream carry a cultural weight in Nebraska that exceeds what any formal state color statute could generate. The University of Nebraska's Cornhuskers football program, playing in Memorial Stadium in Lincoln since 1923, has won five national championships and produced more than 50 All-Americans, making Nebraska football one of the premier programs in the history of the sport. The scarlet-and-cream identity is embedded in Nebraska's civic culture at a level that is difficult to overstate in a state where the Cornhuskers are effectively the state's professional sports team — Nebraska is one of the few states with no major professional sports franchise, making the university's athletic program the primary focus of statewide sporting allegiance and complementing the Nebraska state motto.

Scarlet and cream dominate Nebraska's institutional and civic landscape in ways that reflect the state's unusual demographic relationship with its flagship university. Nebraska is among the states most thoroughly identified with a single university's athletic program; the Cornhuskers' five national football championships — in 1970, 1971, 1994, 1995, and 1997 — created generations of statewide identification with scarlet and cream that extends into every county of the state regardless of any other institutional affiliation. Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, with a capacity exceeding 87,000, has sold out every home game since 1994, producing on every game day one of the largest gatherings of people in Nebraska — the stadium's filled capacity exceeds the population of the state's second-largest city, Grand Island. Nebraska state government, business, and civic organizations across the state incorporate scarlet and cream into unofficial branding and promotional materials, even without a formal state color statute requiring them to do so. The Nebraska Department of Economic Development and the Nebraska Tourism Commission frequently use the scarlet-and-cream palette in materials associating state identity with the Cornhusker tradition. The Husker Sports Network, Nebraska's radio broadcast network, carries game broadcasts to nearly every county in the state, reinforcing the color tradition in the audio brand of Nebraska's most widely shared cultural experience and a statewide scale visible in states by population.