“Those colors are sacred,” Cornell alum Andy Bernard tells a coworker, who’s wearing a sweatshirt with the University’s name emblazoned in big red letters. “If you’re not a Cornell man, you probably shouldn’t wear them.”
Fans of “The Office” are familiar with Andy’s comical Big Red obsession. The resident blowhard at the fictional Dunder Mifflin paper company, Andy constantly touts his Cornell pedigree. (In past episodes, we’ve learned that he’s a second-generation Cornellian, and that he is still obsessed with his a cappella group.)
But the NBC sitcom’s October 30th episode was a veritable bonanza of Cornellian humor when Dwight—the dour office eccentric whose other job is running his family’s beet farm—shows up in a Cornell sweatshirt just to drive Andy insane. It works. (It is, perhaps, Dwight’s Big Red Bear bobblehead doll that drives him over the edge.)
Andy: “You did not go to Cornell. You’re just doing this to screw with me.”
Dwight: “Not so. Cornell is an excellent school. Without its agricultural program, we probably wouldn’t have cabbage—at least not modern cabbage.”
Andy: “I know it’s an excellent school, Dwight. I went there. My blood runs Big Red.”
Dwight: “Someday we’ll both get together in Comstock Hall and just laugh about all of this.”