Rice Blue and Rice Gray are the official colors of Rice University. In 1912, Rice's first president,Edgar Odell Lovett, chose as the school colors "a blue still deeper than the Oxford blue" and"the Confederate gray, enlivened by a tinge of lavender." According to Rice lore, Lovett selected the blue and gray in recognition that Rice's founder, William Marsh Rice, earned much of the fortune that funded Rice's initial endowment during the Civil War.

