Try saying the color loud enough to be heard. Red, easy. Yellow, not so easy.

I call BS. With the smallest additional effort to enunciate you can be loud enough to be heard.

In a varsity contest that follows NFHS rules you have White and Something else. No matter how you pronounce the other color the players, table, coaches can tell it is either White or something else. ;)

If the players, fans, coaches, or admin are going to get upset with me for using a color that takes slightly less energy to say, let them. They're going to have a better reason to be mad at me before the game is over anyway, and they'll forget all about it.

If my partners started saying "purple," I'd probably join them, but this is an area where it's just as easy not to stand out.

While I may not be as harsh as ref2coach, I too wonder why we need to use one-syllable colors? Can anyone point me to a mechanics manual, memo, or anything that spells this out? Or, is it possible this is one of those myths that has been carried forward from generation to generation, without any actual reasoning behind it? For those that want to play the "slippery-slope" card of not wanting to distiguish between burnt umber and magenta, how are those questions any different than any other non-real-world plays we come up with to discuss other rules? Can anyone actually give me a real-world example of a burnt umber uniform, or a team known as the Fighting Magenta Penguins? If not, then it probably doesn't apply. :rolleyes:

But there is, for example, a high school conference close by that include two teams - the Purple Raiders and the Blue Devils. I've never understood the reasoning behind calling the Purple Raiders "blue", when that's not the color of their uniforms, mascot, team name, etc., and they happen to be playing an opponent that does have a blue team name, mascot, etc. It has always felt a little like we were disrespecting that team in that instance.

The Rainbow Coalition ...
 

Because that's the way God, and Dr. Naismith, intended it to be.

So, um...which Verse, or which one of Dr. Naismith's Original Rules, refers to one-syllable colors? ;)