Cornell Big Red (1950-51)

Some teams seem easy to research at first glance ... until you do a little digging and you want to bang your head against your laptop in frustration. Nineteen-fifties Cornell is one of them. Goofy-but-charming helmet, red shirt, white pants; not too bad. Oh, wait, but several Big Red players wore this Dartmouth-style helmet while some were wearing the other helmet, then you have the gray pants they broke out sometimes, and what about the socks??

And you thought it was hard to keep track of today's cornucopia of uniform changes.

I do wonder, however, if any uniform-obsessed Cornell fans existed in the early 1950s; if someone nudged his roomie at a game and said (with a little too much gleam in his eye), "Oooh, look! The Big Red's breaking out the gray pants today!!"

A nice shot of the early-1950s Cornell uniform,
from an eBay listing.

This 1951 photo shows the two different helmets Cornell wore
 -- check out No. 10's helmet on left and compare it with the other guys.
It eventually became the standard Big Red helmet as the decade went on.

Sarcasm aside, I was surprised how often gray popped up in Cornell's 1950s-60s uniforms after assuming that the current unis marked he first time the Big Red had gone gray. And I am eternally grateful to the Cornell Daily Sun photogs from the era who snapped virtually every game, home and road.

Another neat oddity: the sleeve stripes on the wrists instead of the upper arms, although I think I prefer the latter.

The early-50s home uniform, with the gray pants.
I love those 1960s-70s Dallas Cowboys-style numbers.

Can't get enough from the Big Red? Check out these uniforms: 2013-14, 1999-2001, 1994, 1983-84, 1985-89, 1977-82, 1967-75, 1965, 1961-64. Rivalry week: Cornell-Penn.