Black Out? No! - 20 Reasons To Not Wear Black To A Nebraska Football Game

You've seen 'em, I've seen 'em, the emails, posts, requests for a "Black Out" game. They show up every year like urban legend emails, despite constant rebuttal.

It's a bad idea for everyone to wear black to a Nebraska football game. Maybe not you, because you're special, but everyone else, trust me they would look bad in black. Bad as in bad as in not good.

In an effort to convince you, once and for all, that it's a bad idea here are 20 reasons to not wear black to a Nebraska football game.

20.  Black isn’t in the school colors, those are Scarlet and Cream.

19. I named my yearbook "A Sea of Red". I don’t plan on changing the title.

18. Black only looks good on Johnny Cash, the clergy, Steve Jobs and Elvira. You are none of these people, except on Halloween.

I'm guessing you're not coming close to this on halloween either.

17. A whole gob of "Star Wars" geeks in Darth Vader outfits will show up looking for Siths. Riots will break loose and it will be a bad experience for everyone.

16. Your dandruff will show... more.

15. Perhaps if there were more "little black dresses" in the discussion it'd get more traction, but that’s probably not going to happen.

14. Could we re-establish some old traditions before we try to start some new ones? Too much change at one time could kill people, worse yet, give them strokes. You’re just looking for an easy way to move up in season ticket allotment, aren’t you?

13. This is really a dark, evil plan backed by the T-shirt lobby. It’s not so much that everyone would have to buy a new shirt, it’s that black goes ‘not black’ after it’s washed only a few times. There are many different hues of red, so it stays reasonably red for a while. Hence, once the black shirt buying has started, you’re committed, you have to keep constantly buying new black shirts. (If you’re in college, this is why you wash your white clothes separate from all the other ones, okay?)

12. Nebraska Cornhuskers or Huskers, not Nebraska Goth’s.

11. Are we going to change the old joke "Look for me, I’ll be wearing red" too?

10. Buy a new shirt, change the joke, holy crap, can’t you go save a friggin’ whale or something?

9. You feel warmer when you wear black, don't you? That's because black absorbs light and heat. If more of us are wearing black, we're slowing warming the environment. Haven’t we done enough to destroy this planet???

8. Games at Memorial Stadium are not a funeral nor a formal event.

7. If you want to go to a place where the logo or the designs change often, go to Iowa State where they change every two years.

6. I know you want to wear red to support the blackshirts, but remember those lines from ‘The Incredibles’? 

Helen: Right now, honey, the world just wants us to fit in, and to fit in, we gotta be like everyone else.
Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special.
Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.

If everyone is wearing black, then how special are the Blackshirts?

5. From color psychology:

Black is the color of authority and power. It is popular in fashion because it makes people appear thinner. It is also stylish and timeless. Black also implies submission.

The most emotionally intense color, red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. It is also the color of love.

The color of love versus the color of submission. Emotional intensity versus a fashion statement. This needs no explanation. You are trying to look thinner, aren't you?

4. We’re a "Sea of Red" not black.

3.  If your response to #4 is "Can’t we do black just for one game?", the answer is "No, because then you’ll want to do it all the time."

2. After all, we’ll have bought the shirts. People will then be confused about which to wear, or they’ll convince themselves they look great in black (gag). Sooner or later, we won’t even be a "Sea of Red" anymore and all because of you. Admit it, you’re really from Missouri or Colorado, aren’t you?

1. 85,000 people in black in Memorial Stadium won’t look cool at night on TV. Below is an approximation of what it would look like. The problem is that black inherently absorbs light, but the other non-black objects around it would look more brilliant because of the contrast, thus negating the affect. This is why a white-out, such as done at Penn State, was so cool because white reflects really well and on TV would bleed over other colors.

This looks like a football field surrounded by.. brain-eating zombies? Goths? Thousands of black ants? People from Mizzouri?