In April, 1885, as the first University of Texas Baseball team was departing on a train to play a group of students from Southwestern University. Students wanted to wear identical colored ribbons to show that they were all from the University of Texas.Two students ran to a store as the train was ready to depart. When the shopkeeper asked what colors they'd like, the students said "It doesn't matter." The shopkeeper gave them three spools of each White and Orange—two colors of which he had the most in stock (What was most popular and Orange was least popular colors for ribbons).
In 1893, the first football team wore White and Gold. The yellow-gold was thought of as unmanly, so the football team went back to orange. The white was then replaced because white was seen as a signal of surrender, and it was hard to clean.
In 1898, the new uniforms for the football team were ordered in Orange and Maroon.
In 1900, alumni, students and faculty voted on color options: Orange and White or . Our of 1,111 votes cast, Orange and White received 562 votes—7 votes ahead of Orange and Maroon.
The colors themselves have no original significance and any modern attempts to explain the color choices areapocryphal.
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