DEL.ICIO.USThe impact of the Bulldogs wearing black
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, September 26, 2008
Last year when the Georgia Bulldogs faced Auburn clad in black jerseys instead of their traditional red, Dogs fan Kenny Holzer was among the decked-out-in-black mass in Sanford Stadium, sporting a solid black North Face pullover sweater.
“All the Georgia fans in the stands were wearing black jerseys,” recalls Holzer, 31, of Brookhaven. “It just created a buzz. It helped the atmosphere. If you can motivate 80,000 people to be incredibly loud while the other team has the ball … it definitely makes a difference.”
ELISSA EUBANKS / eeubanks@ajc.com
Fans wore all black and even painted themselves black during the UGA vs. Auburn game at Sanford Stadium in Athens last year.
PAUL SAKUMA / AP
Oakland Raiders’ fans are known for their strong devotion to the Silver and Black team.
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Saturday when Georgia meets Alabama in Athens, Holzer and other diehard Dog boosters will welcome a “blackout” encore. For players and fans, wearing black may be all about the hype, but any color, and particularly black, comes with a host of subconscious connotations.
“Because we have a psychological response to color, it impacts how we feel,” says Peggy M. Parks, an Atlanta-based image consultant. And it doesn’t matter if you can actually see the color or not, she says citing a 20-year-old study from Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in which color-blind subjects had the same reaction to color as subjects with color sight. “We react to color through the nerve endings in our skin,” she says. “You can feel it.”
Bulldogs in red may look good on the field, but Bulldogs in black feel convincingly invincible.
“Black is the color that everyone regards as the most powerful of the power colors,” says Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of Pantone Color Institute, the global authority on color. Five years ago, she says, studies began to reveal a different kind of power associated with the color black: power that is em-power-ing.
“For a sports team, that has a huge amount of influence. It’s not just what the fans are feeling, but what the person who is wearing that color is feeling,” Eiseman says.
The Bulldogs aren’t the first football team to leverage the power of black. During their 1970s heyday, the Oakland Raiders were the original bad boys in black jerseys, sword-emblazoned helmets and designated sections for rowdies known as the “Black Hole.” The Raiders may have lost a bit of swagger, but fans still show up at Oakland Coliseum dressed in black.
Aaron Marino of Alpha M. Image Consulting in Marietta says black is just the color to shake things up in the old college football arena.
It is a color, or more precisely, the absence of a color, with multiple faces.
Black is elegant and sophisticated, like a Steinway piano.
Mysterious and seductive, like a little black dress.
It is good bad, like Johnny Cash.
And bad bad, like the black plague, black Friday and the baddest bad of all — death.
“[The Bulldogs] want to get that emotional connection with power, aggression and authority,” Marino says. “Black is the perfect choice and it is such the opposite of red.”
Will the Bulldogs be the Angels of Death on Saturday?
Can they seduce Alabama into submission?
Might all that black make those hulking linemen look just a little bit slimmer and feel slightly more suave?
“I don’t think [Georgia Coach] Mark Richt has any concerns about fashion,” Marino says.
But as game day approached, Holzer, a commercial real-estate developer, faced a classic fashion dilemma.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to wear the North Face,” he said, predicting the weather would be too warm, “and believe it or not, I don’t have a single black T-shirt. “
BLACK HISTORY
In Western culture, the color black has commonly been associated with power and death, but it has also been linked to various cultural movements over the years.
“Every decade since the 1920s, there has been some blip where black has gotten attention primarily … because of its austerity,” says Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of Pantone Color Institute.
In recent decades, she says, the color has moved beyond those cultural associations to become ultimately aligned with high tech and high style.
Here’s a black timeline, according to Eiseman:
1920s-1940s: Black colors the bohemian culture in America.
Late 1950s-1960s: Black is co-opted by the Beat Generation.
1960s-1970s: Black is Beautiful movement attempts to take back black.
1980s: Black and Goth become common bedfellows.
1980s-present: Black enters new era of sophistication, elegance, and association with all things high tech.
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