Iconic (or at least long-lasting) helmet logos and designs (Part 1)

Some college teams change helmet logos more frequently than they do head coaches. (Check out the histories of Columbia or UConn sometime and you'll see what I mean.) Others have designs that have endured for decades. 

Today, we're going to look at some first-year styles of popular — or at least unique — helmet logos and/or designs.

Let's lead off with a team that has never even used a helmet logo — Boston College. It may be plain, but there's no denying that the Eagles' plain gold helmet is distinctive (well, as long as they're not playing Notre Dame or Navy). After several years of plain maroon lids and one year with a Michigan-style design, BC introduced the gold helmet in 1939, Frank Leahy's first year as coach. Leahy stayed only two years before he left Notre Dame, but he left behind a "design" that remains to this day.

There were a few alterations that came and went: For a couple seasons (1958, 60), BC had numbers on the sides, and in 1991 it added a maroon stripe down the middle, which was removed in 2020. From 2011-13, the Eagles wore maroon and white helmet stripes for road games only. And in 2012, BC sported a star-spangled look as part of Under Armour's Wounded Warrior uniform.

After several seasons of helmets adorned with numbers or a block "C," Colgate took a different route in 1977. The Raiders put an abbreviated version of the school name on the sides, a cursive "'gate" that appears to have been scrawled by a middle-school student still practicing penmanship. It's weird, silly and definitely stands out. (I always thought Syracuse should have a helmet with "CUSE" on the side.) 

While Colgate briefly ditched the logo for other designs for a few years, the beloved 'gate refused to go away and returned in 1996, albeit in a more streamlined form. The logo was modified again for the 2021 spring season.

True, Cornell's "C" logo may not be considered iconic, but it's definitely exhibited some staying power since the Big Red unveiled it in 1983. While the rest of the helmet has undergone some tinkering every few years, the white "C" on the red helmet has remained fairly consistent.

The 1983 uniform shown above is a bit of a Frankenstein design. They jersey and pants still have the wide stripes and oversize numbers from Bob Blackman's time as coach, when the helmets had "CORNELL" in an arc across the side. The rest of the uniform was gradually toned down as the 1980s went on.

And speaking of Blackman. ... After he became Dartmouth coach in 1955, he outfitted the Big Green in white helmets with two green stripes down the front. But after a decade, he was looking for something different. Check out this entry from the 2001 Dartmouth media guide:

In 1965, Bob Blackman, Dartmouth's innovative Hall of Fame coach, sought a unique source of pride that would immediately identify Dartmouth's successful football team.
He found the answer in a helmet design that became as much a trademark for Dartmouth football as the famed "winged" helmet design that Fritz Crisler brought with him from Princeton to Michigan in 1938.

Unusual step No. 1: Blackman added the classic Dartmouth "D," but he placed it on the front of the helmet instead of on the sides. Unusual step No. 2: The stripes, which normally go down the front of the helmet, were situated at about a 45-degree angle down the sides. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Blackman was sketching possible designs.

As you can see from the above graphic, Dartmouth went undefeated in 1965, so the new helmet must have worked. (What, you thought it was all talented, hard-working athletes and smart game plans? Ha!) The Big Green went on to win seven of the next nine Ivy titles. 

The cover of the December 1965 Dartmouth Alumni Magazine
shows the Big Green in action with their new helmets.
Football has been reinvented about a thousand times since then,
but the iconic Dartmouth helmets remain.

Dartmouth kept the helmet until 1987, when new coach Buddy Teevens "sought a 'fresh start' after four losing seasons," again quoting the media guide. (I also wrote a little about that here.) John Lyons, Teevens' successor, revived the classic helmet in 1999 ("with his team's unanimous endorsement," according to the media guide), and the Green has kept it ever since. (We won't talk about the tree helmet from a few years back.) 

You'll notice the media guide excerpt above mentioned Michigan's winged helmet. Dave Nelson, who took over as Delaware's coach in 1951, was a Michigan man, so it's probably no shock he outfitted his Blue Hens in uniforms that paralleled those of the Wolverines. Nelson previously had coached Maine, where he also introduced a winged helmet in 1949. The Hens have worn them without fail ever since, although the shades of blue and yellow have changed slightly.

Wartime Football (Part IV)

We wrap up our look at World War II football with the eight teams programs by this site that went "full steam ahead" during the war. No shutdowns, no cutbacks, no games against smaller schools like Tufts — their schedules were dominated by big-time schools, at least by the standards of that era.

You can find Parts I-II here and Part III here.

The surprising thing about these eight schools is that six are from the future Ivy League — which, of course, shut down entirely during the 2020 COVID pandemic. (Someday, there will be nostalgia for 2020, which frankly gives me the shudders.) But in the 1940s, the Ivies, while not as prominent as they had been earlier in century, hadn't completely marginalized themselves from the big time — yet.

Onto the teams ...

Brown played a few smaller schools and service teams during the war, but the Bears also faced Army twice, losing by a combined count of 118-7. (Thanks to the war, Army was able to assemble a virtual all-star team and crush everyone in its path.)

Brown mostly wore white jerseys, but occasionally broke out the brown jerseys when facing another team that wore white at home, such as Penn.

Colgate also got to face Army (a 42-0 loss in 1943) in addition to traditional eastern powers such as Syracuse, Penn State, Holy Cross and the Ivies. 

As far as I know (it's hard to figure out because many school yearbooks were suspended or minimized during the war), the Raiders wore only the maroon jersey both home and road to go with the white helmet and gray pants.

WWII was the best and worst of time for Columbia, which put up a goose egg on 1943 (discussed more in this post) and dropped only one game (a 32-7 loss to Penn) in '45. Maybe dropping wartime powers Army and Navy from the schedule had something to so with it. 

The Lions' uniforms always had an off-kilter quality to them, and these are no different, with navy stripes down the sleeves and snaking their way around the wrists. Tan pants were largely a thing of the past by this point, but Columbia carried on.

Cornell did all right for itself, posting winning seasons all three "war" seasons. Most of the games were against Ivy/Patriot League-level teams, with t he occasional Syracuse/Navy/Penn State tossed in.

The uniforms were rather plain, but the helmets are consistently inconsistent. I thought maybe this was a wartime thing, but a search through old photos shows the Big Red's mix-and-match pattern started in the late 30s.

Dartmouth had its shares of ups and downs. Thanks to the addition of solid players provided by the V-12 naval training program in 1943, the Big Green came within one point (a 7-6 loss to Penn) of an undefeated season. In '44, the V-12s were gone and Dartmouth fell to 2-5-1, including a 64-0 loss to Notre Dame, a game the Green "hosted" at Fenway Park (discussed more in this post). In' 45, Dartmouth slipped to 1-6-1 despite the return of coach Tuss McLaughry from the war. (One thing I forgot to mention: Many teams during the war had interim coaches as the regular guys were in the service.)

For '44 and '45, Dartmouth added green pants so the Big Green could wear something green against Notre Dame, which insisted on wearing its green jerseys. By '46, they were gone.

Holy Cross' run to the Orange Bowl during the 1945 season was discussed in this post. The Cross was no slouch during the other war years, either (6-2 in '43, 5-2-2 in '44). A perusal through the school's Tomahawk newspaper reveals the Crusaders didn't make a decision on football until the summer of '43. As was the case with Dartmouth, Holy Cross received a boost from the V-12 program.

Penn was the last of the Ivy schools to play big-time opponents on a regular basis, so it's no shock that the Quakers went full speed ahead during their war. Penn went 17-7-1 fro 1943-45 and was ranked No 20 in the final AP poll in '43 and No. 8 in '45. A fun bit of trivia: Penn played ONE road game during that whole period, and that was in New York. Franklin Field was one of the largest stadiums in America (73,000 capacity) at the time and thus was a destination for schools large and small that wanted to play in front of a big crowd in a big city. So strange to think Philly was once a college football hotbed.

Penn's uniforms were largely unchanged throughout the 1940s. I love those striped sleeves because they screamed PENN, going back to the 19th century.

The highlight of Yale's World War II run was in 1944, when the Bulldogs went 7-0-1 but went unranked anyway — most of their wins were very narrow and none of their foes were close to being ranked. Like Penn, Yale played in a huge stadium and hit the road only twice (Columbia and Princeton) during the three-year span.

Like Cornell and Penn, Yale's helmets had more than one pattern. I wonder if depended on the brand the players used, or if different patterns were made available?

Wartime Football (Part III)

It's time for Part III of our look at how select college football programs handled World War II. Parts I-II can be found here.

This time, we're going to check out four programs that operated throughout the war, but on a decidedly limited basis. They may have played, but they certainly didn't have visions of bowl games or national titles dancing in their heads. And let's start with a team had gone bowling in recent seasons.

Despite a run of three bowl appearances in four years (a pretty amazing feat back when there were five bowl games, tops), Boston College opted to dial down the program during the war. Holy Cross and Clemson were replaced with the likes of Camp Hingham, Rome Air Force Base ... and Harvard, which also went informal. (True fact: BC and Harvard have played each other only four times in football, twice in WWI and twice in WWII. Hopefully they won't play again for a LONG time.) Quarterback and future Holy Cross coach Ed Doherty was the lone Eagle from the '42 team that lost to Alabama in the Orange Bowl.

Yup, BC once faced Harvard on the gridiron, and
this page from the Sub Turri yearbook has the info. 

BC's uniforms kept the pace from recent seasons, and for some reason in '45 the Eagles unearthed the maroon pants from the late '30s. 

Unlike its Ivy brethren, Harvard opted to dial it down during the war. Yale and Dartmouth were dumped for gentler foes such as Tufts and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, in addition to BC. Weird to imagine D-III Tufts hosting FCS Harvard today, but it happened. With the war over in August 1945, still-informal Harvard decided to add full-speed ahead Yale to its schedule. Yale prevailed 28-0 on Dec. 1, one of the latest dates in The Game's history.

As you can see from these photos, Harvard's varsity rosters
were tiny during WWII. (The second photo appears to be just a starting lineup,
however, and not a full roster.)

Harvard's helmets were a little odd, as the back top half of the crimson helmets were painted white. The jersey numbers were identical to the ones used by the Boston Red Sox, as noted here.

Maine barely qualifies for this post by virtue of a 1943 game against a prep school — a 20-6 loss to Phillips Andover that served as the Black Bears' entire schedule. In '44 Maine played New Hampshire and Norwich (Vt.) twice, and in '45 it faced UMass and UConn twice and Rhode Island once; I believe it was the last season Maine and UNH didn't face off until the truncated Spring 2021 season. 

The season summaries in the UMaine Prism yearbooks note that many team members had not previously played football, and if you look at the photo below, you can tell. Because most of the players were too young to serve Uncle Sam, it looks more like a high school team than a college team.

The 1944 Black Bears, who appear to wearing practice uniforms.
What photos I've seen of them in action are in the all-blue versions.

Wisecracks aside, the fact that these schools were able to put a football team on the field amid depleted manpower was a victory in itself.

Princeton is an odd case. The Tigers went 1-6 in 1943 as a "full speed ahead" team and retreated to informal status in '44, defeating Muhlenberg before losing to Swarthmore and Atlantic City Naval Air Station. (The NAS team was known alternately as the Corsairs, Hellcats, Sailors and Tars. Tars?) But in '45, Princeton reverted to a full-blown schedule and went 2-3-2, playing mostly against Ivy League foes.

I'm not 100% on the uniforms, but it appears the Tigers had orange numbers on the front and white numbers on the back. The traditional tiger stripes adorned the sleeves and socks.

Wartime Football (Parts I-II)

Not too long ago, I posted a photo of Cornell's 1945 roster on this site's Facebook page (and if you haven't done so yet, crush that like button like you're crushing a blocking sled during two-a-days), which got me thinking about wartime football. World War II turned the game upside down, as manpower shortages forced some programs to shut down entirely during the war and others to play on a limited basis. Some, however, kept on going like nothing was amiss.

The Northeast scene was no different. Twenty-one teams covered by this little ol' blog had football teams at the time World War II broke out. The state of the programs during the prime war years (1943-45) can be divided into four categories:

1) Shut down entirely (no team from 1943-45)

2) Partially shut down (played at least one season from 1943-45)

3) Played on limited basis (played throughout 1943-45, but with small schedules against smaller schools/military camps/etc.)

4) Full speed ahead (played full schedules).

First, we'll get category No. 1 out of the way.

Shut down entirely

Central Connecticut, Northeastern, Vermont.

Maybe it's a coincidence, but two of those three programs later dropped the sport. CCSU soldiers on, however.

OK, on to group No. 2, the main subject of this post.

Partially shut down

Six schools covered by this blog fall into this category.

Boston University shut down the program in 1943-44, but threw together a 5-game schedule in '45 upon the end of WWII that summer. Perhaps the '45 Terriers should have stuck with intrasquad games: BU lost all five game by a combined score of 235-3. When you're losing 70-0 to Tufts, that's not a good sign. The Wikipedia season summary puts it best: "The season finale against Harvard was so one-sided that head coaches Dick Harlow and Walt Holmer elected to cut 5 minutes from each of the final two quarters." (And, as we'll see later on, it's not like Harvard was operating on all eight cylinders during the war.)

The Terriers' uniforms were identical to what they wore at the start of the war: Black helmets, red jerseys and socks at home; white shirts and socks on the road. I like how the stripes on the sleeves and socks are in sync.

Connecticut took only the 1943 season off, then played full eight-game schedules in '44 and '45, unlike most smaller schools in New England. A few liberties had to be taken, however, as the Huskies played Norwich, CCNY and Brooklyn twice. (And those mighty '44 CCNY Beavers went 0-8 and were outscored 333-0. As in ZERO points. Wonder how they would have fared against BU.) The '45 team faced more traditional foes such as Maine, Lehigh and BU. UConn went 7-1 both seasons.

I think I've talked about these uniforms before, but the jerseys are distinctive; I can look at an old photo from the '40s and can immediately tell it's UConn thanks to the shoulder panels and the stripes on the wrists of the sleeves.

Depending on your source, Delaware either shut down entirely or returned in 1945 for a four-game slate. (The late, great College Football Data Warehouse lists the coach as "unknown," which should tell you how informal this team was.) The Blue Hens defeated Drexel and Haverford, tied West Chester and lost to Johns Hopkins — their only defeat from 1941-46, when the Hens went unbeaten in '41, '42 and '46.

I can't find any decent photos of Delaware's uniforms from '45, so I offer the ones from '42. Note the use of plastic helmet shells, a rarity in that era. Plastic shells took off after the war and were worn by almost everyone by the mid-50s. Ironically, one of the last holdouts was Delaware, which appears to have worn leather lids into the '60s. 

Massachusetts (State, as it was called until 1947) played a brief schedule in 1945, beating Maine twice, tying Amherst and losing to Brooklyn.

The uniforms were largely similar to what the Statesmen (yes, that was their nickname; "Redmen" came a couple years later and "Minutemen" in 1972) wore in 1942, with tan/gold helmets replacing the maroon versions. Wonder how people would react if UMass wore all-mustard yellow unis today?

New Hampshire is an interesting case, for a couple reasons: 

1) The Wildcats had no football in 1943, brought it back in '44 and dropped it again in '45;

2) For years, the Wildcats' media guides said UNH had no team in '44. (And for years, UNH and its arch-rival, Maine, listed different records for their all-time series, since they faced off twice in '44.)

But UNH indeed fielded a team, dropping two games to Middlebury and going 1-1 against Maine — the last time the rivals faced off more than once in a season until 2013, when they met in the regular season and the NCAA playoffs, which I'd rather not discuss. 😁

The Wikipedia entry on this team is remarkably detailed, and it's worth a read.

I'm unsure what the Wildcats wore on the road, but the best guess is they used the same duds as in 1942, when they went undefeated. (The home unis bear more than a passing resemblance to what Maine wore in the 1950s.) Only one member of the '42 crew played for UNH in '44.

Rhode Island (State, as it was called until 1952) punted on 1943-44 but played three games against Maine, Boston University (both wins) and Rutgers (a loss).

The few photos I've uncovered of the '45 Rams are fuzzy and hard to make out, so again I offer you the 1942 uniform, which used four different shades of blue. The helmets are light blue, but the front leather portion is painted white. The jerseys have a pair of light blue stripes down the sleeves and the numbers are the only dark blue portion of the uniform. It's not a pretty uniform, but it's an interesting one.

Next up: Teams that played on an informal basis throughout the war.

The (Somewhat) Complete Holy Cross Uniform History, Part IV

OK, time to get off my lazy butt and finish this thing. The fourth and final (?) chapter of Holy Cross' uniform history covers the 2000s.

Part I Part II Part III

2000: Numbers return to the helmet sides (again), and purple pants are worn on the road. Otherwise, the uniform maintains the basic look it had in 1999.

2002: The helmets go blank.

2003: Plenty of ugly number fonts have been employed over the years (Oregon, West Virginia, I'm looking in your direction), but Holy Cross' 2003 football uniforms might be the worst. The home jerseys feature what appears to be Bodoni font on PEDs, with enough curves and serifs to render the numbers practically unreadable. Not shockingly, this style lasted only one year.

2004: Common sense, and traditional numbers, return.

2009: Shoulder stripes appear on the home shirts, and white pants return.

2013: Big, wide numbers, almost like what the Boston Red Sox wear on the jerseys, are used on the helmets.

2014: An old friend returns in midseason in the form of the interlocking "HC" logo, which has been worn on the helmets ever since. The road jerseys add a slightly arching "HOLY CROSS" wordmark.

2016: The home shirts are redesigned to match to road models, and a black alternate helmet is introduced, including one with a Yankee Stadium motif that was worn for a game there against Fordham. (Considering Worcester is in the heart of Red Sox territory, this could have resulted in treason charges in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but somehow did not.)

2017: A gray alternate is added with another stylized number font (Clarendon Condensed?) that's a little easier on the eyes than the 2003 jersey. Note the patch the smart kids got to wear:  a graduation cap bearing the words "ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE 3.0+GPA." Let's just say that if I played for The Cross, I wouldn't have had one of these on my shirt.

2018: The gray alternate shirt is replaced by a black version, complete with matching pants.

2019: Plenty of mixing and matching going on here, with 10 uniform combos worn over 13 games. A classy white alternate helmet replaces the black version.

2021 (spring season): The home shirts use a new font for the wordmark and numbers. The  home shirts keep the older look right down to the college football 150th anniversary patch.

2021 (fall season): The home shirts now match the road versions.

2022: After three years in mothballs, the black jerseys return using the old design — complete with the college football 150th anniversary patch!

2023: The black jersey is retired again, but the black pants remain.

UMass Lowell (1980-2002)

In the grand tradition of Vermont, Boston University and Northeastern, here's another hockey school that fooled around with football for a while. The University of Lowell Chiefs/UMass Lowell Chiefs/UMass Lowell River Hawks fielded a varsity team at the Division II and III levels from 1980 through 2002. The school was formed in 1975 following the merger of Lowell State College and Lowell Technological Institute (a.k.a. Lowell Textile, which had a football team until about 1950).

One major caveat: I'm uncertain about some of the color combos the Chiefs/River Hawks used, and the 2002 road uniform is just a shot in the dark (thus, the "No Reference" label, which the awesome Basketball Jersey Database uses for a few early NBA/BAA teams). As I think I've said before, once a program dies — especially a small-school program — its history tends to die with it. 

Much of the research comes from grainy black-and-white photos from the Sojourn yearbook, whose quality was rather haphazard. (Hey, at least they had a yearbook, which is more than I can say for my alma mater.) But if anyone out there has any info, feel free to pass it on!

There's also a Facebook page with some vintage photos.

1980: Not long after winning a national club championship, Lowell took the field as a varsity unit for the first time. The unis bear a vague resemblance to those of the nearby New England Patriots. I'm not certain of the color combo on the chief logo is correct, but it's the same combo the hockey team used later in the decade.

By 1982, the chief logo was gone from the helmets.

***

1983: By this time, Lowell worse something that looked more suited for practice than Saturday afternoons. That said, the plain jerseys with the stubby numbers were a mainstay well into the '90s.

The sleep-inducing Lowell uniform of 1983. 

***

1984-85: The helmet becomes silver, with a "Chiefs" script on the side, and better matches the pants than the white lids did.

The silver helmets in 1984.

***

1991: For its finest season as a varsity unit (the Chiefs were undefeated until the NCAA D-III Tournament), the newly rebranded UMass Lowell went all red, with not a trace of blue to be found.

1994: The Chiefs become the River Hawks, and the new logo appears on the helmets. Everything else stays the same.

1999: Sometime in the '90s, the River Hawks elevated their program from D-III yo D-II and blue overtook red as their primary color. The numbers are HUGE, a la the old Seattle Seahawks. The shoulder logos that face each other bring to mind the weird Patriots unis of the Drew Bledsoe era.

2002: For their final season, the River Hawks went with a very plain design, with a number on only one side of the helmet. Sleeve numbers are absent, and the only logo is a Northeast-10 Conference patch on the front. The only trace of red is on the belt, which is strange for a team that wore nothing but red a decade earlier.

Addendum: The spring 1994 name change was a nifty process, as school administrators whittled the options down to four and put them to the students in a (non-binding) referendum. The River Hawks won out, but the logo did not.

The final four candidates are presented in the Connector student paper.
The Lightning and Raging Rapids logos look like they belong on an Arena Football team,
and the Ospreys logo uses lettering out of the 1970s.

The winning name, but not the winning logo.