The Tulsa Golden Hurricane is the athletic identity of the University of Tulsa, an NCAA Division I program competing in the American Athletic Conference. The university lists its official colors as old gold, royal blue and crimson, with blue and gold as the basic colors and crimson as a trim color [1][2].
Design and History
The nickname “Golden Hurricane” dates to 1922, when new football coach Howard Acher sought a distinctive name for his team. After a practice remark about “roaring through opponents,” Acher considered “Golden Tornadoes,” but discovered Georgia Tech had already adopted that name in 1917. He evolved meteorologically from tornado to hurricane, and days before a game against Texas A&M, the squad voted on “Golden Hurricane,” with “gold” added because of the color of the team’s new jerseys [3][1].
The core athletic mark has long centered on a script “Tulsa” wordmark paired with hurricane warning flags. In December 2021, the athletic department updated its logo as part of a broader rebranding campaign covering fundraising, marketing and licensing. The updated primary logo, described as the “Tulsa Script + Flag,” incorporates gold into the official athletic logo for the first time. The mark offers two script options: a gold script for use on blue or dark backgrounds, and a blue script for lighter backgrounds such as gold and white [4][5].
Director of Athletics Rick Dickson framed the update as a return to tradition: “Re-establishing our traditional royal blue and old gold as our primary colors and script Tulsa with Hurricane Flag logo as our core identity is essential in growing our historic brand” [4]. The 2021 revision eliminated the double outlines on the script and slightly adjusted the blue and old gold tones, while the red in the flag remained unchanged [6]. The full external rebrand continued into 2022, with new merchandise and updated brand guidelines released in February of that year [5].
Earlier iterations of the primary mark include a 2016 version featuring the Tulsa script on red and black hurricane warning flags, with the script noticeably adjusted, including a wider gap between the “L” and “S” [7]. The 2016 update accompanied fresh adidas uniforms and a remastered identity system [8]. A 2014 secondary logo featured “TU” in blue and gold; in 2017 that mark was shifted from athletics to institutional usage [9].
Meaning and Symbolism
The hurricane warning flag motif directly references the nickname’s meteorological origin. The gold in the script and color palette ties to the “Golden” portion of the name, which itself derived from the color of the 1922 team’s jerseys [3][4]. The university’s official color scheme of old gold, royal blue and crimson has been documented since at least 2008, when the athletic department described blue and gold as the basic colors with crimson as trim [2].
Typography and Design
The script “Tulsa” wordmark is a custom-drawn element rather than an off-the-shelf typeface. A designer involved in the 2016 remaster noted that the wordmark was drawn by hand rather than set in an existing font, with the revision focused on subtle refinements to letterforms and spacing [8]. The 2021 update further simplified the script by removing double outlines [6].
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