Ivy League 1956

And now, the Ivy League uniforms of 1956, the first year of formal Ivy competition. Some notes:

* In the first official league game between two Ivy teams, Brown defeated Columbia, 20-0, on Sept. 29, 1956. Use this info for good and not evil.

* Yale ran the table to win the first Ivy title; the Bulldogs' only loss to was to Colgate, 14-6.

* According to Mark F. Bernstein's book Football: The Ivy League Origins of an American Obsession, each Ivy team was required to have a dark jersey and a white jersey, which meant several teams -- Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and Yale -- added new shirts around this time, although Columbia, with its light blue scheme, eventually went back to wearing one top for several years.

* As noted in our last post, this was during the time teams were transitioning from leather helmets without facemasks to plastic shells with facemasks. The Ivies were ahead of the Yankee Conference in terms of modern helmet use; I believe Cornell was the last holdout to plastic shells.

* The first year of Ivy play was the final year for Columbia coach Lou Little, who retired after  the season with 110-116-10 record with the Lions, 131-121-12 overall. 

* Dartmouth's quarterback was future Cincinnati Bengals boss Mike Brown -- the son of legendary Cleveland Browns and Bengals coach Paul Brown. While the younger Brown's passing stats were modest, if that (530 yards, 6.8 YPA, 2 TDs, 6 INTs), his rushing numbers raise an eyebrow -- 56 attempts, 24 yards (remember, in college, QB sacks were counted against his rushing, not paying total) and TEN touchdowns. Brown appears to have been a short-yardage threat for the Big Green in '56, and would be considered a fantasy football "vulture" in today's game. 

Yankee Conference 1956

These are the uniforms worn by the six Yankee Conference teams (all state land-grant schools) in 1956, listed in order of performance. When I was growing up, it seemed hard to believe that little ol' Maine was in a league with the likes of UMass and UConn, but it worked -- well, sometimes -- for many years. (BTW: Would those two schools, which later moved to the FCS level, win the CAA in 2019?)

Some other notes:

* This was during the time when teams were transitioning from leather helmets with no facemasks to plastic shells with facemasks, so you see a little bit of everything in the graphic above. UMass and Vermont were the last two holdouts, finally switching to plastic shells in 1958.

* If you examine the standings closely, only last-place Rhody played a full conference slate. UVM was a YC member, but the Catamounts played as little as one league same some years, as it preferred to play the Norwiches and Middleburys of the world. Presumably a slate with four YC games when you could play as many as five was considered good enough. (Also note that YC teams played only 7-8 games total, not 11-12 as FCS teams do today.)

* Rhode Island wore a white jersey for the whole season. Also check out the helmet: Stripes and ram's horns? One or the other is fine, but both?

* In '57, UConn, Maine, UMass and Rhody all put uniform numbers on the helmets.