Friday, Sept. 4 is College Colors Day, on the eve of the start of the season for the Clemson Tigers, facing LSU in Baton Rouge, and the Carolina Gamecocks, hosting Towson in Columbia. Furman kicked off early and travels to Knoxville to battle the University of Tennessee this week.

It's also Flashback Friday, so we're headed back to the 1890s to find out how these local schools got the regalia we proudly wear today.

Furman University

Colors: Royal purple + white

In the early 1890s, alumni gathered at a York County Furman Alumni event and created a committee to select the school colors. "After investigating many combinations of colors, this committee decided that royal purple and pure white would serve as school colors, and the student body agreed," the university shares. In 1891, the colors were spotted at the Furman-Wofford football game, with fans carrying banners and wearing badges and ribbons in the colors, and players wearing purple-and-white caps.

Clemson University

Clemson football — It's hard to imagine these stands any other color. | Photo by @wharker843

Colors: Clemson Orange + Regalia Purple

Would you believe us if we told you Clemson's original colors were red and blue? Records show those were the colors worn by the inaugural football team in 1896 and "confused spectators" when playing USC, because they were similar to garnet and black. It's theorized that the "Tigers" nickname and the change to orange and blue were in honor of that first coach, Walter Merritt Riggs, who came from Auburn. It's suggested the jerseys faded into a light purple. When Jess Neely — the founder of IPTAY — took over the program in the 1930s, the school of textiles helped develop deeper colorfast uniforms that wouldn't fade, but even then — yearbooks highlight the team wearing purple and gold. f

University of South Carolina

Pro tip — buy tickets to a night game to enjoy Williams-Brice's stadium lights. | Photo by COLAtoday team

Colors: Garnet + black

In a very anticlimactic way, according to a historian, there are no records as to why USC chose these colors. "The different classes at the school, freshmen through seniors, tended to have class colors, so this idea of having colors was very familiar and very common," said university archivist Elizabeth West. "So the garnet and black appeared... and just continued as our colors." The Garnet and Black yearbook was first published in 1899, so wherever it came from, it stuck.