New Hampshire Wildcats (2010-13, 1998)

There are two guarantees to UNH football year in and year out: An NCAA tournament appearance and a win over arch-rival Maine for the Brice-Cowell Musket. The Wildcats have reached 10 consecutive NCAA FCS tournaments, and have defeated Maine 11 times in their last 12 outings, including a pair of wins last season. The loss of revolutionary offensive coordinator (and UNH grad) Chip Kelly to Oregon after the 2006 season didn’t slow UNH down a bit. As long as coach Sean McDonnell is around, one figures the Wildcats will always be in the NCAA title hunt.

The current stadium, Cowell Stadium - a place so hideous that the school pretty much acknowledges it openly, marketing it as “the dungeon” - is in the process of being replaced by a $25-million facility. If you’re a UNH fan, these are the good ol’ days. 

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Some notes about UNH’s uniform history:

• UNH is a fairly tradition-based team. The basic look (silver helmets, blue/silver uniforms) has been around since 2003. The uniform was virtually unchanged from 1976-99, when red trim was used.
• Silver was originally used in 1950s and ’60s.
• Nike has made the home jerseys since 2001, when UNH overhauled its football uniforms following a rebranding the year before. In 2000, UNH’s helmets sported the new logo, but the older jerseys with red trim hung around for another year.
• Oddity: For several years, UNH had two different jersey manufacturers. In the late ’90s, Wilson made the home shirts and Russell handled the roads. From 2001-06, Nike made the homes and Wilson did the roads. This may go back even further, as the “classic” 80s jerseys had those Champion-style numbers (slanted 2s, curved 7s) at home, but the roads used smaller, blockier numbers.

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Slooooowly but surely, UNH is adding yearbooks to its digital archives: Check out "The Granite" here. It's amazing how little Cowell Stadium has changed over the decades.

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The 2013 uniform (see above) had a nice, clean look. Note: Some, but not all, jerseys had the “straight” 2s; others had the “slanted” 2s (see illustration). Some, but not all, jerseys had the “Packer”-style 5’s; other had “straight-across” 5s. I chose the “Packer” 5s because, well, I think they rock. UNH used this look from 2009-13 (home) and 2010-13 (road). The Wildcats have unveiled new uniforms for 2014. I’ll try to get them on here once they hit the field for an actual game.

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The “classic” UNH uniform takes us to 1998, when Jerry Azumah ran his way to the Walter Payton Award as the best player in Division I-AA (now the Football Championship Subdivision) and went on to a Pro Bowl career with the Chicago Bears.

As noted above, UNH had this basic look from 1976-99, with only a few tweaks along the way — a run of longevity matched by only Yale and Delaware in this project. The ’90s are a bit of a minefield, in regards to the location of manufacturers’ logos and the name and number fonts. UNH appears to have mostly worn a serif font for the names in ’98; it wouldn’t shock me if the Wildcats wore sans-serif names that year, too. We’ll look at other variations of this classic design as we go along.

Up next: The Rhode Island Rams.