At colleges across the country, sports teams are getting ready for the spring season. Which brings to mind a story about the little color that could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There once was a Quaker farm kid who grew up to be an engineer, helped develop the telegraph, and became a founding member of Western Union. As a result, he became fabulously rich. His name was Ezra Cornell. Eager to provide opportunities for other young strivers, he created a land-grant college in Ithaca, NY, and hired Andrew Dickson White as its first president. At its opening in 1868, the school busted out its new colors: Cornelian Red for its founder, and White for its president. Presto, the Big Red.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
30 years later, Cornell\u2019s football team rolled into Philadelphia to play Penn. Sitting in the stands that day was Herberton Williams, an executive from the Joseph Campbell Preserve Company across the river in Camden, who took one look at Cornell\u2019s uniforms and thought, \u201cMy, don\u2019t those boys look sharp in PMS Red 187.\u201d He shared his thoughts with John Dorrance, a chemist at the company working on a new idea called \u201ccondensed soup.\u201d Shortly thereafter, Dorrance\u2019s product, clad in Ezra Cornell\u2019s team colors, won a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Shazam, Campbell\u2019s Tomato Soup!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
30 years later, at the other end of Pennsylvania, Andrew Warhola was born to a Slovakian immigrant family. Sickly and a hypochondriac, young Andy could not join his father and brothers in the coal mines, so he was shipped off to study art at Carnegie-Mellon. There, legend has it, he developed a love for movie stars, money, Coca-Cola, and Campbell\u2019s Tomato Soup, which he claimed he ate every day for years. In 1962, he unleashed an idea called \u201cCampbell\u2019s Soup Cans\u201d which was nothing more than silk-screened paintings of 32 Campbell\u2019s Soup cans lined up like a grocery shelf. Most art critics dismissed it as tripe, but the public loved it. Kapow, Pop-Art!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dennis Hopper bought one of those first canvasses for the bargain price of $100. In 1970, \u201cVegetable Beef\u201d sold for $60M, setting the record auction price for a painting by a living American artist. In 2006, \u201cPepper Pot\u201d sold at auction for almost $12MM, and ironically proved the critics right: Pepper Pot\u2019s distinctive ingredient IS tripe, AKA stomach lining. Today, the rest of Warhol\u2019s work in PMS 187 hangs in the Museum of Modern Art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that wasn\u2019t good enough for the ivy-league brainiacs. Not long ago, some idiot thought Cornell needed a \u201cbrighter\u201d look for their uniforms, and redid them all in PMS 186. The student body howled. Ezra Cornell started spinning in his grave. Instant PR meltdown!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thankfully, they quickly regained their senses and brought back the classic, PMS 187. Which you\u2019ll see on the backs of their athletes when they take the field next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You go, Big Red.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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