Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island (2021)

In our next installment of the uniforms of fall 2021, we move on to the four Colonial Athletic Association teams covered on this little ol' blog. Frankly, there's not much new to report from these guys.

Delaware, thought to be national title contender, instead fell below .500, another reason why preseason polls aren't worth the virtual ink they're printed on. The Blue Hens kept the same unis from the spring 2021 season, and they brought back the "classic" blue shirt-yellow pants combo not worn last season.

Maine made one change, adding light blue alternate pants to give the Black Bears even more of a resemblance to the vintage Tennessee Titans. (An aside: As someone old enough to remember when they were the old Houston Oilers, it's very strange to type "vintage Tennessee Titans.") I corrected one small mistake I made last season: The sleeve trim is separated by navy blue stripes, while the spring graphic shows the white and light blue stripes joined together. For whatever reason, Maine wore those "error" jerseys on photo day for the spring season, but not in actual game play. Huh. 

The mysterious photo day jersey, which will mystify 
historians for centuries to come.

With a new coach TBA coming next season, a uniform change for 2022 is always a possibility. 

New Hampshire played a full schedule after a one-and-done slate last spring, and had their worst record in 19 years. The Wildcats again mixed and matched their jerseys and pants, but the navy blue helmet worn from 2017-19 appears to have been retired. 

Rhode Island racked up its best record since 2001, and had as many uniform combos as it had victories (seven). The light blue jerseys were worn only once; considering light blue is supposed to be Rhody's primary color, it should probably see more playing time. The gray camo pants, last worn in 2019, made a return.

Ivy League (2021)

It's the most wonderful time of the year ... time to begin checking out the uniforms of 2021. Today, we begin with the Ivy League, since its season is all done; besides, it sat out all of 2020, so why make 'em wait any longer?

Oddity that may interest only me: Seven of the Ancient Eight teams wear Nike unis, and of those seven, five have a basic two-stripe pattern on the "sleeves." (They're not real sleeves, but work with me here.) 

We'll go in order of the standings, which means we start with the school with the most Ivy titles in history ...

Dartmouth won a share of its 20th Ivy League title, and I'm still scratching my head over that shutout loss to Columbia at home. Uniform-wise, the Big Green expanded its use of the secondary tree logo, even plastering it on the helmet for a game (the aforementioned loss to Columbia). The new white pants also features the tree on the sides, while the black and gray alternate pants (not to mention the black alternate shirt) are holdovers from previous seasons. 

A couple of corrections from the 2018-19 graphics: The back numbers on the home and road jerseys are HUGE (almost vintage Seattle Seahawks huge), and the black pants, which I always thought had "DARTMOUTH" on the back, actually features ... a tree.

Princeton grabbed a share of its 13th Ivy crown, with its one loss coming to Dartmouth. (Does this give Dartmouth the tie-breaker for the NCAA FCS tourney berth, har-har?) The Tigers made a couple changes this year: The white jersey worn for the 2019 Yankee Stadium game against Dartmouth became the full-time road jersey (complete with the college football 150th anniversary  patch from that year!), and a gray alternate jersey to match the gray pants, also a holdover from '19. The gray jersey has the "classic" Ivy League logo, as the league still can't decide on a full-tine logo. (I ranted about that here.)  

Harvard put up its best record in five years and beat Yale, so it was a successful season all around, presumably. The Crimson made some changes this year, going with a plain white "H" on the helmets after years of black outlined in white. The jerseys, which had been largely unchanged since 1980, ditched the traditional block numbers for a cross between the Chicago Cubs and Star Trek, also rendered in plain white on crimson. The black alternate shirts that had been worn since 2015 were dumped (yay!), and the traditional tan pants returned for the season's final three games.

Columbia, in addition to having another strong season under miracle man Al Bagnoli, set a record that may never be equaled on this blog: The Lions wore 10 different uniforms in 10 games. I believe the only teams to come close to 100% were UMass in 2013 (11 in 12 games; the Minutemen still hold the single-season record for most combos of any of the teams covered on this site) and Dartmouth in 2016 (nine in 10 games).

In the interest of completeness, I have listed the uniforms game-by-game. Columbia wore three different helmet designs: Current logo (weeks 1-4), throwback with numbers (week 5) and a hybrid with a logo on one side and a number on the other (week 6-10). Throw in four different jersey styles (including a kick-arse 1961 throwback) and three different pant styles and, well. ... Columbia really just scratched the surface with these 10 combos. 

Yale, on the other hand, is the symbol of simplicity, and knows how to add a few slight modern touches to freshen up an otherwise plain look. The lone Nike holdout, Yale retained its look from 2019, with the exception of a "DS" patch worn in the season opener against Holy Cross.

Next is a three-way logjam for the Ivy basement. Penn eliminated the awesome red throwback helmet from 2019 and revived the white lids from '18, albeit with a weird pattern that belongs in the '90s. In this post, I noted that Penn went 0-18 wearing white helmets in the mid-50s as it was transitioning from a big-time schedule to a more traditional Ivy slate. Two of the Quakers' three wins in '21 came in the white helmets, so perhaps they're being better luck this time around. Everything else about the uniform, including the red alternates (worn exclusively with the white helmets this year, making for a very appealing combo), stayed the same from 2019.

Brown did some interesting things to its unis. White the Bears introduced new home and road jerseys with silver trim, the helmets and pants retained the silver-with-red-trim look, making for an odd Frankenstein uniform akin to 1970s Maryland. Maybe if we made the helmets and pants more in line with the jerseys, like so ...

... then Brown would have a winning combo. 😎

The Bears also added black alternate pants and retained the (still plain) brown alternate helmet from '19. Like Dartmouth, Brown has pretty big numbers on the jersey backs.

Lastly, Cornell kept its look from 2019, right down to the 2000s-esque league patch on the road shirts. The white alternate jerseys with the names on the backs, however, appear to have vanished. 

Ivy League (1982)

In our last post, we took a look at the wild 'n wacky Yankee Conference season of 1982, when four of the league's six teams shared the YC title. The Ivy League season that year wasn't as crazy, but three teams wound up sharing the trophy for the first time since 1969, highlighted by Penn's worst-to-first Cinderella season.

The big story in '82, however, came off the field: The Ivies, who had long sequestered themselves from big-time football, were formally booted from Division I-A (FBS) to I-AA (FCS) by the NCAA, which was tired of the Ancient Eight globbing off their precious TV money. The NCAA cited the Ivies' failure to meet minimum stadium and attendance standards. What's funny, of course, is that those standards haven't been enforced since, allowing FBS wannabes like UMass and about half the MAC schools to stay put. 

The Ivies weren't alone: Other small Eastern schools such as Colgate, Holy Cross, Richmond and William & Mary also got the heave-ho. (Looking back, it's fascinating how the Eastern schools of yore, all roughly equal in playing level, could have gone one way or the other. Boston College, Syracuse, Temple and Rutgers went one way; the others went, well, the other way.)

And now, onto the teams and uniforms ...

Harvard took home a share of its first Ivy title in six years, a lifetime for these guys. Offensive lineman Mike Corbat was named a I-AA All-American. (One advantage to the I-AA demotion: Ivy players could earn All-America honors since they didn't have to complete with the Billy Simses and Dan Marinos of the world.) Oddly enough, the Crimson's two league losses came to their co-champions, Dartmouth and Penn.

Harvard had recently changed its jerseys to what I consider the "classic" look, with the school seal on the shoulders and the black outlining the numbers. Amazingly, these jerseys remained virtually the same until ... 2021. 

I wrote quite a bit about Penn's '82 season in this post. Condensed version: Penn had been a joke for years, was widely predicted to be a joke in '82, won Ivy title, stayed a force for decades. A season-ending loss to Cornell enabled Dartmouth and Harvard, which won their season finales, to pull into a three-way tie for the championship.

The Quakers changed their uniforms just a year earlier, and kept this look into the '90s.

Despite a 5-5 overall record, Dartmouth was good enough in league play to earn its third and final Ivy title under coach Joe Yukica. (The Big Green had to wait eight years for its next championship.) Quarterback Mike Caraviello was named the league's rookie of the year.

Dartmouth's uniforms were basic, but do the job; actually, the jerseys bear a passing resemblance to the '90s New York Jets with the black outline. Of course, the classic "D" helmet makes any uniform better. I wrote a bit about them here.

Next, we come to a four-way logjam of 3-4 teams, which means only one Ivy team finished waaaay under .500 in league play. Gee, wonder who that was ...

Brown had another solid season under solid coach John Anderson (after he left in 1984, the Bears were decidedly less-than-solid until Mark Whipple arrived in 1994). This was during the era when Brown had the secondary "Bruins" nickname on the helmets, which I guess would be like Yale having "Elis" on its lids or Auburn and "War Eagle."

No. 85 in the above graphic is for tight end Steve Jordan, who went on to a long, productive career with the NFL's Minnesota Vikings. (Youngsters reading this might know him better as Cameron Jordan's dad.)

Cornell limped to another mediocre season in the finale for legendary coach Bob Blackman, who built a powerhouse at Dartmouth (and designed those awesome helmets!), but failed to replicate his magic at Illinois or Cornell. An aside: The story I always heard was that at Dartmouth, Blackman was the only Ivy coach who actively recruited players, while his contemporaries viewed such a practice as unseemly. I wonder if the other schools had changed their tune by the time Blackman reached Ithaca?

I've written about Cornell's unusual uniforms before, and I'm a proud owner of a vintage Big Red jersey, complete with curved, oversized sleeve numbers. In '83, the weird Dartmouth-eqsue helmet was replaced by the classic "C" version, which Cornell has worn ever since (albeit with quite a bit of tinkering).

Yale, which shared the '81 title with Dartmouth, took a tumble in '82 and suffered its first losing season in 11 years. The Bulldogs were one of two Ivy schools — along with Harvard — to meet the NCAA's stadium and attendance requirements for staying in I-A had they wanted to (can you imagine the outrage if that had happened?). Yale's smallest crowd that year, home or road, was 13,300 for its season opener at Brown; compare that with 2019, when its largest crowd outside of the Harvard game was 7,500 at Richmond.

Yale uniforms were a bit dull, but it's Yale, and that classic block "Y" is going nowhere.

Princeton was in the midst of a 20-year stretch (1969-89) without an Ivy League title as gun-slinging QB Brent Woods set season school and league records for total plays, passing attempts, completions, yards (passing and total) and yes, interceptions. (Amazingly, he is still at or near the top of these lists today.)

The Tigers' basic uniforms didn't change much in this era, but they kept changing their helmet logo every few years. That's supposed to be a Tiger on the '82 headgear, but it looks more like a runaway chipmunk. In '84 Princeton said to hell with it and went with blank helmets.

Last in the standings but perhaps most interesting otherwise, we have Columbia, which won one game and still boasted the league's player of the year in QB John Witkowski, which is kinda like Andre Dawson winning the '87 NL MVP for the last-place Cubbies. But unlike the Hawk, Witkowski didn't earn his award based on vague intangibles or questionable stats like RBIs: He was a great I-AA/FCS quarterback stuck with a lousy defense that served up nearly 40 points per game.  

Witkowski's most extreme experience in '82 came on Nov. 6 against Dartmouth. From this vintage Sports Illustrated article:

While the Lions stumbled to a 1-9 record in 1982, Witkowski completed 250 of 453 passes (55%) for 3,050 yards and 29 TDs. In one game, a 56-41 loss to Dartmouth, he connected on 39 of 64 throws for 466 yards and five TDs. His stats for the fourth quarter alone were 16 of 28 for 209 yards and three scores. And lest there be any thought that Columbia had a ground game capable of keeping the Big Green off-balance, note that the Lions' top rusher that day went 38 yards. That runner was Witkowski.

Witkowski still holds most of Columbia's career passing records. Had he been behind center at one of the Ivy's co-champions, they might have been tempted to say "SCREW I-AA!" and take a shot at the Penn States or Georgias of the world. Maybe. 

Witkowski's favorite targets were Don Lewis (84 catches, still a record 1,000 yards on the nose, still second all time) and Bill Reggio (70-987).

Also of note: This was Columbia's last year at historic-but-run-down Baker Field before its replacement, Wien Stadium (officially Robert K. Kraft Field at Lawrence A. Wien Stadium, ahem) was built in 1984.

As for the uniforms, the bizarre two-logo helmet above that resembles something out of a high-school all-star game was replaced by a script "Columbia," which lasted three years. The Lions were changing their unis on a near-yearly basis, long before that was cool or trendy in college football. The road jerseys, for this one year only, looked like practice shirts with a plain number on the front and back and nothing else.

The Brown Daily Herald takes a few parting shots at Baker Field
after the Bears topped Columbia 35-21 in the final game played there.

Yankee Conference (1982)

If you like some excitement and drama in your college football (and if you don't, you're probably watching the wrong sport), then 1982 was quite the vintage season in New England. 

A sophomore named Flutie was leading Boston College to its first bowl game in 40 years. And on a smaller level, the Yankee Conference had its wildest season ever, as four of the league's six teams shared the conference crown. With two weeks left in the season, all six teams still had a crack at the title, with Boston University holding the inside track thanks to tiebreakers. When the dust settled, BU, Maine, UMass and UConn all had a share of the YC's Bean Pot trophy with 3-2 records, but the Terriers came away with the league's automatic NCAA I-AA (FCS) tournament berth despite a 5-6 overall record. 

The Ivy League also had its share of drama, as it was playing its first year as a I-AA league after being dumped from I-A/FBS for money reasons (shock!), and three teams (Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn) split the league title. 

Today we're going to take a look at the teams and uniforms of the '82 YC season, and hopefully get to the Ivies down the road.

In control of its own destiny, Boston University lost to UConn 13-10 in its league finale to set up the four-way tie. Thanks to a complicated series of tiebreakers that probably required a call to nearby MIT, BU secured the automatic bid to the 12-team tournament, where it lost 21-7 to Colgate. (Oddly enough, BU's season finale a week earlier was against Colgate, a 22-21 loss in front of a rousing throng of 1,887 at Nickerson Field.) Future Colts/Bills wide receiver Bill Brooks was named YC rookie of the year, and teammates Paul Lewis (RB), Mike Mastrogiacomo (G), Paul Farren (C) and Mike Pierro (DT) were named all-conference. 

The uniforms are pretty standard, with two stripes apiece on the sleeves and socks. The  helmet logo — "Boston" with the tail underneath — is a little awkward; Maine and Dartmouth adopted the tail-under-the-school name helmet later in the decade. (The constant in all this? Buddy Teevens, the BU offensive coordinator and later head man at Maine and Dartmouth.)

I wrote about Maine's trials and tribulations in this post from 2020. Long story short: If not for the YC's overtime rule, the Black Bears finish 7-2-2 and likely get into the NCAA tourney. As it was, Maine was the only YC co-champ with a winning record, and the Bears' four losses were by a combined 21 points. The title was Maine's first in eight years and last for another five.

The uniforms, as you can see, are essentially Penn State's with blue helmets. Among Maine's unis all-time, these rank near the bottom for me. Among the notables were QB Rich LaBonte (YC offensive player of the year), RB Lorenzo Bouier (still second on the program's all-time rushing list), coach Ron Rogerson (YC coach of the year) and longtime radio analyst Bob Lucy, who has been calling Black Bears games with Rich Kimball since I was student there, and I haven't been a student there in quite a while.

UConn helped create this delightful mess by defeating Boston University and Rhode Island in its last two league games to force the four-way tie. The Huskies' big star was linebacker John Dorsey, who was named YC defensive player of the year. After a six-season NFL career in Green Bay, Dorsey went on to a longtime career as an NFL executive and GM; these days he's a senior personnel executive for the Detroit Lions.

This was during the period when UConn abandoned navy blue for a lighter shade, almost like the NHL's Quebec Nordiques. But after years of almost annual changes, the Huskies stuck with this basic look from 1977-88 before returning to navy blue, still using the same template. I wrote a little about this uniform here.

Another year, another Yankee Conference title for UMass, its 14th since 1960. Like UConn and BU, the Minutemen finished at 5-6 overall. Late-season wins over UConn and New Hampshire secured UMass a share of the crown. RB Garry Pearson was a Division I-AA All-American; he is fourth on the school's all-time rushing list.

This was near the end of the period when the Minutemen used gold as a trim color, which, as I've probably said a billion times before, gave them more than a passing resemblance to their rivals on Chestnut Hill. Speaking of which, '82 was the last year of the annual UMass-BC game, which had been played since 1965; Flutie and the Eagles downed Pearson and the Minutemen 34-21. I wrote a blurb on UMass' unis here. 

Although Rhode Island ended up out of the title picture, the Rams still finished 7-4, highlighted by the six-OT win over Maine (see the Maine link above), which probably garnered more ink and camera time than any league title ever could. As noted in that other post, this was during a rare hot period for the usually dismal program, which reached three I-AA tournaments between 1981-85. Tackle Rich Pelzer was a I-AA All-American, and wideout Tom (You Mangy) Mut was a first-team all-YC selection, as were defensive linemen Dennis Talbot and Tony DeLuca and cornerback Jim Roberson.

Like UMass, Rhody was into the gold during this time period; it was used as a secondary color during the entire coaching reign of Bob Griffin (1976-92), but never before or sense. I'd love to see this style return as a throwback uni. 

You know it's a crazy season when perpetual title contender New Hampshire finishes dead last; amazingly, this is the last time to date UNH has finished last. (I don't count the aborted spring 2021 season, when the Wildcats played only one game.) TE Paul Gorham, T Ken Kaplan and S Arnold Garron were all-YC selections. Arnold Garron and his brother, RB Andre Garron, are UNH Hall of Famers; their dad, Larry Garron, was a fullback for the AFL Boston Patriots from 1960-68.

The uniforms are the classic UNH style worn from 1976-99; I've written about the unis and teams here, here and here and probably a few other places. 😎

UMass Minutemen (2011-12)

We live in the age of "doubling down." Not just do people refuse to admit to mistakes these days, they'll further defend themselves at the first hint of criticism in an effort to ultimately be proven right. Think Al Bundy and his 555-SHOE hotline on "Married ... With Children."

Which brings us to UMass football and its decade-long disaster known as "FBS football."

I try not to badmouth any schools on this little ol' blog, but UMass' move to football's top tier ... well, as John Fogerty once sang, "Things got bad and things got worse." At least UConn's move up was based on certainties (a new stadium, a BCS conference). UMass' was based on ifs:

* IF we do well in the MAC and get an invite to the Big East ...

* IF we draw at a stadium two hours from campus (Gillette Stadium; that's like UConn playing home games in the Yale Bowl) ... 

Anyway, UMass got kicked out of the MAC when the league realized the school was using it as a steppingstone to a bigger conference, and the Minutemen played before bad crowds at Gillette and returned to campus, where they've played before even worse crowds than in their FCS days. (Don't believe me? Check the attendance figures on UMass' season-by-season Wikipedia pages. I know college can get sketchy with this stuff, but if these numbers are to be believed, they drew more for Stony Brook back in the day than BOSTON COLLEGE in 2021.) Oh, and they've never won more than four games in a season. In an effort to boost the program, the school killed it dead. 

And what does UMass say? "Just give a few more years. ... We'll find the right coach. ... We've got a good plan." Yup, doubling down, even though a return to FCS and the CAA makes all the sense in the world. (And I don't want to hear about money. If you're content winning 1-2 games a year because you're getting seven figures from Florida State and Georgia in body bag games, then you're better off not having a program at all.)

(deep breath) OK, rant over. Onto the uniforms. As you can see above, UMass revamped its unis between 2011 and '12, and it's a good example of how much football uniforms have changed as a whole over the last dozen years. The '11 unis have thick black panels on the jerseys sides and tails crawling up, a la the Denver Broncos. Fashion-wise, they're holdover from the 'aughties. The red-white-blue helmet stripes were done as a 9/11 tribute in the season's second game (which was also when names are added to the shirts), and the Minutemen wound up using them the rest of the year. 

Watch what you ask for, fellas.

In 2012, UMass did a complete overhaul under new coach Charley Molnar (a name that still makes some fans shudder). Black, a trim color the previous few years, became the predominant hue, and the current logo (MASS over the U) debuted, one of the few things the Minutemen have done right in the last decade. The overhaul also marked a change to the "modern" football uniform: UMass switched to the Adidas Techfit jerseys (the kind that look as if they were spray-painted on you) and the Ridell Revolution helmet started to see more use over the next year or two or three. Molnar was fired after the 2013 season -- and the black helmets, jerseys and pants went with him. At least UMass didn't "double down" on that mistake.

UConn Huskies (2000)

Another UConn post, I know, but I've developed a morbid fascination with this program, along with FBS dead-ender UMass, which just dumped coach Walt Bell and his 2-23 record (putting him a half-game worse than Charley Molnar's 2-22 mark from 2012-13). 

While UMass' jump to college football's highest level has become one of the biggest disasters in New England sports history, UConn's futility might be even more frustrating for its fans. After moving up from FCS/I-AA and the Atlantic 10 (now CAA) in 2000, the Huskies were a .500 team in its third year and a bowl team in its fifth. UConn's amazing rise was capped in 2010 with a share of the Big East title and a trip to the Fiesta Bowl (yes, THAT Fiesta Bowl, not the Junior Fiesta Bowl or anything like that). After losing to Oklahoma, coach Randy Edsall took a plane to Maryland while the rest of the Huskies went to Storrs. After that, well ... as we used to say at my last job, "Wysiwyg" (What You See Is What You Get). 

As fast as UConn rocketed up the standings, the program crashed to the bottom just as quickly, and Edsall's ballyhooed return in 2017 didn't change a thing. These days, UConn is in FBS independent purgatory, and a return to the FCS level isn't out of the question (although, like with UMass, pride and money likely will stand in the way of logic). 

Today, we look at the 2000 Huskies, their first year as a Division I-A/FBS program. UConn was independent its first few years as it transitioned to the big time before joining the Big East in 2004 (a year ahed of schedule; that's how fast UConn improved in the early 'aughties). We'll look at UMass' first FBS season down the road.

UConn 2000: A new hope.

A highly (and I mean highly) irreverent look at the 2000 Huskies can be found here. (TIL: The "SB" in "SBNation" stands for "SportsBlogs," not "Super Bowl" or "San Bernardino" or "Sweaty Bowlers.") This was written back in 2010 (the Fiesta Bowl year), when the program was still high and mighty, so it's kinda funny to read this now.

The team: The Huskies went 3-8, with two wins over MAC teams (Buffalo, Akron) and one over FCS Colgate. Two of their losses were to old Yankee/A10 rivals — Northeastern and Rhode Island.

The players: QB Ryan Tracey, a junior college transfer, threw for 15 TDs against only 5 interceptions. He left the team in 2001 following a knee injury. Running back Taber Small scored 9 TDs and WR John Fitzsimmons had 42 catches for 676 yards and 9 TDs.

The 2001 UConn media guide cover. Of the three images shown,
the stadium hadn't been built and the QB was already gone, leaving only coach Edsall.

The coach: Ah, Randy Edsall. 74-70 in his first stint at UConn, 6-32 after his return. As Mark Whipple proved at UMass, you can't go home again. (Although Buddy Teevens at Dartmouth has disproven that theory to an extent.) In all seriousness, Edsall did an amazing job taking the Huskies from FCS/I-AA anonymity to the Fiesta Bowl in 12 years, which is what makes the rapid decline so hard for Huskymaniacs. 

The uniforms: UConn carried over its unis from 1999, with one important change: The Atlantic 10 patch on the front was replaced by a Big East patch, even though Big East play was years away. The rest of the uniform has your typical '90s trappings (drop-shadow numbers, faded vertical stripes). Reebok was the manufacturer before it was replaced in '02 by mallrat brand Aeropostale (!), followed by Nike a couple years later.

A UConn jersey, c. 2000. Sadly, not mine. 

The aftermath: Covered above. Honestly, ESPN should do a 30-for-30 on this program.

Bridgeport Purple Knights (1948, 1974)

Halloween has come and gone, but that won't stop us from taking a trip to the football graveyard, will we?

The University of Bridgeport in Connecticut fielded a football team from 1948-74, playing as a College Division/D-III independent. The program was fairly nondescript until the late 1960s, when it won 8-plus games four times in a five-year span, capped by an 11-0 1972 season and a win over Slippery Rock in something called the Knute Rockne Bowl in Atlantic City (also the site of the Boardwalk Bowl, where UMass and Delaware played at different times). The Purple Knights went 9-2 in '73 and reached the newly created Division III semifinals. In '74, Bridgeport went 6-4 and ... and ...

The school pulled the plug on the program, citing a lack of student support for a program that hogged two-thirds of the athletic budget. (Vermont also dropped football after the '74 season.) This article from 2012 (warning: tons of ads, popup videos and spam) gives a good summary of the team's final years, and for a small program, it had some decent star wattage: Defensive coordinator Dave Campo later coached the Dallas Cowboys, linebacker Joe Mack later was a Canadian Football League general manager, and Tim Rosaforte became a golf writer/TV analyst. 

The first Bridgeport football team, 1948.
Miss Kick-Off?!?

The uniforms featured here are from the program's first and last seasons. The 1948 team, which seemed do pretty well for a first-year lot, went all-purple, a la Holy Cross of the 1950s. Home games were played at Candlelite Stadium, a baseball facility that also hosted the minor-league Bridgeport Bees, an affiliate of the Washington Senators.

The '74 Purple Knights uniforms at home (top)
and on the road (above, background).

The '74 bunch wore one of the more unique unis for that era, recalling the old Chicago College All-Star Game and the late-'40s Holy Cross teams. The helmet logo -- a "B" squeezed into a football shape -- is similar to what Penn wore in the 1970s. And check out the block "B" on the socks; Delaware had something similar for years. By this time, the Knights were playing at 12,000-seat John F. Kennedy Stadium, which is still in use today.

JFK Stadium. Look closely for the Bridgeport Jets sign.
They were a New York Jets affiliate during the all-too-short
heyday of minor league football in the 1960s and early '70s.

Despite the program's abrupt end, Bridgeport football may have new life -- the university recently announced the addition of several sports, including a sprint football (178 pounds of less) program. Knights fans, rejoice!