Syracuse was a school without a defined identity 10 years ago.

It had upward of 20 different logos, one for each team. Its color schemes were inconsistent from jersey to jersey. The Carrier Dome, its primary home venue, though filled with a sea of people, lacked a color for its fans to distinguish it from the rest.

“We wanted to have a single, systematic branding process that was simplistic in nature, yet represented our sports program across the board,” said Michael Veley, SU’s former associate athletic director for marketing.

So in June of 2004, Syracuse announced its change from the Orangemen and Orangewomen to just simply, the Orange. Every team’s logo would be the S and U interlocking. Every team’s primary color would be orange — the only team in Division I with that distinction at the time.

The change was a culmination of a 24-month project by SU Athletics and Nike to give Syracuse a stronger brand name. After SU renewed its contract with Nike, the company did a study of what the public’s perception of Syracuse was. They conducted focus groups and interviewed students, coaches, fans at the games and even shoppers at the Carousel Center — now known as Destiny USA.

Director of Athletics Daryl Gross pushed the rebranding process along even more when he changed the interlocking SU to the block S logo in 2005, just months after his hire.

Ten years later, it’s evident just how important an orange identity was.

“The change was rooted in some history,” said Patrick Walsh, a David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics professor with a specialty in rebranding. “It wasn’t drastic where they changed the colors. It wasn’t drastic where they really changed the name … This was more of an evolutionary change as opposed to a revolutionary change.”

Veley said there was some resistance to it though, which was to be expected. He added that the school didn’t try to keep the rebranding efforts a secret, but that not everyone was immediately thrilled.

Former SU tennis player Katie Bramante told The Daily Orange in 2004, as a female athlete, she liked being represented as an Orangewoman, adding that the SU fans will probably always keep old-name sentiment despite the change.

But others embraced the move, which was brought to many of the teams before the change was made official.

“I thought maybe it’ll be bad,” former SU offensive lineman Matt Tarullo told The Daily Orange at the time. “But the more I think about it, the more I’m OK with it. It’s pretty weird, but I like the Orange. Change is good.”

Former Syracuse Chancellor Kenneth “Buzz” Shaw remembers one committee proposing to him a name change from the Orangemen to the Wolfpack. Shaw, who left SU the same year that the name was changed to the Orange, said he knew of other schools, like North Carolina State, that had the same name.

Sure, he thought, wolves are symbolic for being gregarious and working together, but it wasn’t original and it didn’t represent the school.

“You can mess with logos and things like that but the important thing is to stay important to what your making is,” Shaw said. “To me the Orange had been there a long time, and that pretty much told a lot about the university.”

Veley said, though, that the change to the Orange was almost necessary. The different trademarks and lack of uniformity made it almost inevitable. But SU’s rebranding didn’t stop there.

Gross changed the interlocking SU emblem to the block S logo. Over the years, several of the jerseys have evolved and modernized. The catchphrase for SU has since become “New York’s College Team.”

Just over a decade since the change, the project has succeeded in what it set out to accomplish.

Every once in a while Veley will hear someone refer to Syracuse as the Orangemen. He’s not naive to the fact that the Orangemen was a brand that everyone identified with. And like any brand, he said, it takes decades to fully phase out.

But when he goes to the Dome now for every basketball, football and lacrosse game as the public address announcer and sees the hordes of fans donning the school’s bright orange color, he knows that the change, now 10 years later, was a smart one.

“You’ll go through phases and you just want to remain consistent, and you want to keep the history and the tradition of the program in the forefront,” Veley said. “I think that’s the key.”

Published on February 11, 2015 at 12:18 am

Contact Sam: sblum@syr.edu | @SamBlum3