CuriosiD: Why do the Detroit Lions wear ‘Honolulu’ blue?

WDET’s CuriosiD series answers your questions about everything Detroit. Subscribe to CuriosiD on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of CuriosiD, we answer the question:

Why do the Detroit Lions where “Honolulu” Blue?

The Detroit Lions updated their uniforms for the upcoming NFL season, adding black to the Honolulu blue and silver they’ve worn for 90 years.

But what is Honolulu blue, anyway? And how did it get its name?

WDET listener J. Liedel asked us to find out.

So, for our CuriosiD series, we go deep into the team’s past, which didn’t start in Detroit, but in a small town in Ohio.

The short answer

George Richards — who owned the Detroit radio station WJR and bought the team in the spring of 1934 — chose that name Honolulu blue because it reminded him of the ocean water he saw on a trip to Hawai’i, according to an old Lions media guide.

So began a new — and blue — era for the Detroit Lions.

Spartan origins

Portsmouth, Ohio is almost 300 miles south of Detroit. One can drive there in about five hours. Drew Feight is a history professor at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth. He says like many towns on the Ohio River, Portsmouth was booming in the early 20th century.

“There was steamboat construction and stuff like that, but we emerged as a manufacturer of iron and steel products,” Feight said.

As Portsmouth grew, so did interest in football. The first professional league formed in Canton, Ohio in 1920 and eventually became the NFL. Feight says local business leaders wanted a piece of the action.

“Like a number of cities in Ohio at this time, you see the emergence of this sort of semi-pro football that grew out of teams that were sponsored by the different industries,” Feight said.

The Portsmouth Spartans joined the NFL in 1930 and quickly became one of the league’s best squads. In 1932, they took part in the fledgling league’s first playoff game. They lost to the Chicago Bears 9-0.

Portsmouth’s success brought the team fame, but not fortune. Feight says the Spartans never made a profit.

“Ticket sales, as far as this market was concerned, were never large enough to really be able to pay the salaries for the emerging stars,” he said.

A new owner starts a new era

The Spartans’ owners sold the team to George Richards for less than $8,000 in 1934. Richards, who owned Detroit radio station WJR, renamed his new team the Lions and decided they needed new colors. He asked one of his players to help him replace Portsmouth’s purple and gold. Glenn Presnell and his wife met Richards to discuss his contract. In a 1999 interview with journalist Bill Dow, Presnell recalled that conversation.

“[Richards] said ‘I want you to look over these jersey colors here.’ They had a table with all the different kinds of uniforms for our jerseys. Orange and black, red and white, all kinds. And my wife saw that Honolulu blue and silver. And we said, ‘that’s what we like.’ So, he selected that,” Presnell said.

Success soon followed. The Lions won their first NFL championship in 1935. The Lions wore blue and silver throughout the Great Depression and World War II. After back-to-back losing seasons, they hired a new head coach in 1948 to shake things up.

“When you’d see the Lions run out in these blue uniforms, it was just gorgeous.”

— Bill Dow, journalist and Lions memorabilia collector

Lions fans see red

Bo McMillin had been the head football coach at Indiana University for 14 seasons. Jason Aikens is the curator of collections at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. He says McMillin brought a college mentality to the NFL and thought the Lions would look better — and play better — in IU’s crimson.

“[McMillin] switched the colors to red, red jerseys with silver pants,” Aikens said.  “And for special games against special rivalries, he had the team wear black.”

But the new colors didn’t last long. Neither did Bo McMillin, who was replaced after three lackluster seasons. Buddy Parker took over in 1951, restoring the original colors, and the team’s roar. The Lions won back-to-back NFL championships in 1952 and ’53. They earned another title under George Wilson in 1957, when they added white jerseys for away games. Journalist and historian Bill Dow collects Lions memorabilia. He’s a big fan of the Honolulu blue.

“When you’d see the Lions run out in these blue uniforms, it was just gorgeous,” Dow said.

Dow especially likes the throwback uniforms the team introduced in 1994 to celebrate the NFL’s 75th anniversary. The outfits resembled those of the 1935 world champions.

Black comes back

The team wore home blues and road whites exclusively until 2005, when then-team President Matt Millen brought black uniforms back. At that time, the NFL allowed teams to wear a third-color jersey for no more than two regular season games, so the Lions didn’t don the black tops often.

They lasted three seasons. Millen was fired in 2008. But black is back again in 2024, thanks to head coach Dan Campbell, who wore the color when he played in Detroit. Team President Rod Wood says he hopes the third time is the charm.

“[Campbell] said ‘hey, Rod when can we get the black jerseys back?’” Wood recalls. “And I said, ‘I’ll make a deal — when you win the division, I’ll bring the black jerseys back.’”

Wood made good on that promise after the Lions won the NFC North in 2023. He and the rest of the front office modeled the new black jerseys during the 2024 NFL Draft in Detroit. That did not impress Dow.

“I don’t really like the black uniforms” he said. “When the Lions wore them, they were not successful at all.”

He is correct. The team wore black for six regular season games from 2005 through ’07. They won two and lost four. Their overall record during that stretch was 15-33.

Whether black will overshadow the Lions’ recent success remains to be seen. But fans can expect to see the Honolulu blue and silver wave in Detroit for years to come.