Holy Cross Crusaders (1951-55)

When I did the "Rivalry Week(s)" posts in November, I promised I'd look at some of the featured uniforms in greater detail down the road. So let's start with Holy Cross, a school I've mostly neglected since this project began.

The Holy Cross uniforms from the 1930s through 1955 underwent little change: Silver helmets, white shirts and silver/gray pants served as the basic template. Purple jerseys were worn less frequently, and in 1951 weren't used at all, to the best of my knowledge. I believe purple socks were worn on and off. 

A good close-up shot of Holy Cross' Tom McCann, from the 1952 Purple Patcher.
You can read a little more about him here.

Above is the early-50s model, with a plain sans-serif number font after using a more serifed block font in the 40s.

Holy Cross' Mel Massucco is depicted in an early 1950s cartoon from
The Crusader newspaper (then called The Tomahawk). He was later
a Holy Cross announcer and was a longtime coach at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 

In 1956, the Crusaders made an overhaul, switching to purple helmets and pants and dumping silver until the mid-1960s. Shoulder stripes also appeared on the jerseys.

The 1951 Crusaders take on Dartmouth in this pic from the '52 Purple Patcher.
Nothing says "old school sports photo" like a dashed line depicting the path of the football
and little arrows with the players' names on them.

The '52 Crusaders, in white, take on Boston College in this pic from the '53 Purple Patcher.
The game was played at Braves Field, which the baseball Braves abandoned for Milwaukee
just before the '53 season.