I was surprised to see Western New England University has adopted the EXACT school colors (blue/gold) and mascot (Golden Bears) as Cal. What is up with that? I know schools can have the same colors OR mascots, but both? I know this university used to be a small community college but expanded a few years back and became a university. It also must have changed its colors/mascot then too. Why copy Cal? There is no relationship between the two schools. I checked.
Idaho State University legit stole Princeton’s colors and mascot, and they admit it.
Wow, if I had to choose an Ivy color to copycat, Princeton orange would be last!
How many different color combinations do you think there ARE?
So what if the schools have the same colors…and mascot. It’s not like anyone is going to confuse the two teams…who don’t play sports in the same leagues at all.
Clemson and Auburn (as well as Princeton) have tiger mascots and colors including orange and a dark color.
So who are the copy"cats" here?
I LOVE orange. 
Actually, both Idaho State and Princeton are in conferences in the NCAA Division I FCS. In theory, they could schedule each other for out-of-conference games.
The OP was talking bout Western New England and Cal. My response was directed to those two teams.
They do NOT play on the same conference at all…and it’s highly unlikely that anyone is going to confuse CAL with Western New England…in any way.
Northwestern, Kansas State University and Weber State University are all the Wildcats, and all have purple as their primary color. According to Wikipedia, there are 27 college teams called the Wildcats.
Legend has it that the Chicago Bears wear Blue and Orange because George Hallas got a deal on uniforms from his alma mater, University of Illinois.
Sometimes this is an explicit homage, not theft. Here’s a piece of trivia that can be a fun bar bet during March Madness:
Q: Which three NCAA DI teams adopted red and blue for their school colors as a nod to Harvard and Yale?
A: Ole Miss, Kansas, and SMU.
(If anyone knows of others, speak up; I’m interested to know if these are the only three.)
KSU has the same main color and nickname as Northwestern because their new head coach in 1920 just came from coaching at NU and brought purple and the nickname over.
The Golden Bear has been Western New England College’s mascot since 1951.
Cal’s original blue was specifically “Yale Blue” because many of the school’s founders were Elis!
Someone should emulate the Santa Cruz Banana Slugs. Great mascot.
@EllieMom The story I am familiar with is that Halas chose the team colors to honor U of I and the “C” on the helmets to match the ones on the U Chicago helmets.
Texas A&M. Utah State, New Mexico State are all Aggies. As were a lot of the original land grant colleges - Oklahoma State was known as the Aggies for a long-time.
Texas A&M’s original colors were red and white, but when their order of football uniforms showed up and they were maroon, the school changed the colors.
I heard that Stanford’s colors are red and white as a copy of COrnell’s…not sure how true that is
Duke blue is Yale Blue.
Va Tech’s colors are burnt orange and Chicago Maroon.
I challenge you to quickly distinguish between the colors, logo and mascots for Northeastern University (Huskees) and University of Nebraska (Huskers)
UCLA has Cal’s fight song. They change the start, but the rest is the same.