Boston College, UConn, UMass (2024)

We wrap up our look at the uniforms of 2024 with New England's three FBS teams. Frankly, nothing really new to report here, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Boston College changed a combo or two from 2023, but that was about it. 

UConn was in the same boat as BC, although the Huskies had some fun with a couple helmet designs. One, designed to honor America's armed forces, used a half-dozen different seals depending on the branch of the military (the example above uses the United States Army). Another, used as part of a cancer awareness promotion, used a multitude of ribbons, each capped with the UConn "C" (pink is used above).

I feel like I say this every year, but as bad as the on-field product has been for the last dozen years or so, at least UMass looks good while losing. The Minutemen, who will be rejoining the Mid-American Conference in 2025 with a new coach (Joe Harasymiak — if he can lead Maine to an FBS final four berth, he could very well give this program a pulse), revived the black alternate jersey and it fit in perfectly with the rest of the ensemble (bonus points for altering the helmet trim to make it match the jersey). Sadly, the '90s alternate logo was put on the bench.

Central Connecticut State, Colgate, Holy Cross, Merrimack, Sacred Heart, Stonehill (2024)

The review of 2024 uniforms continues with six FCS teams — two from the Patriot League, two from the Northeast Conference and two independents. Before we start, a minor rant about the two independents ...

Before the season, Merrimack and Sacred Heart left the Northeast Conference for the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Since the MAAC doesn't sponsor football, the schools played as independents on the gridiron. Someone at one of these two schools had the bright idea of having these lonely hearts face off late in the season for the "Yankee Conference championship," complete with a replica of the old Bean Pot trophy last seen residing in the Willam & Mary trophy case.

Of course, this is completely ridiculous, as these schools have zero connection to the beloved and long-gone Yankee Conference of Maine, UNH, UMass and other New England cow colleges. (As a Maine grad, I can call them that.) This reminds me of a story I once read — perhaps apocryphal — about an obscure 1970s band that announced that since no one else was using the name, they were going to call themselves "The Beatles." (It went nowhere.) What's next, Texas State and Texas-San Antonio playing for the "Southwest Conference" championship? 

That said, if hell freezes over and the America East finally decides to sponsor football, I would be more than happy to have Merrimack and Sacred Heart as members.

OK, on to the unis:

Central Connecticut State, the NEC champion, didn't change a thing from '23, with the exception of the NCAA patch worn in the FCS tournament, where it almost upset Rhode Island. (Anyone remember when Rhody almost joined the NEC in a money-saving effort?)

Colgate also changed nada from the previous season, which is a good thing, says I.

Holy Cross made a couple minor changes. The Crusaders made slight alterations to their road jerseys, with wider numbers and a narrower wordmark, and the purple helmets used the "shield" logo in place of the big "HC" that had been used for more than a decade. (I prefer the "HC", but that's just me.) Holy Cross also dusted off the black alternate jerseys, last worn in 2022. The shirts were first worn in 2019 and thus had the college football 150th anniversary patch almost everyone else wore that year. Five years later, the patch remains!

Merrimack replaced the "MC" helmet logo with the school seal, a quite Ivy-ish move, if I say so myself. The Warriors covered up the NEC logo with an American flag patch.

Sacred Heart made a couple very minor changes. The star-spangled helmet, which is usually worn around the anniversary of 9/11, replaced the "SHU" logo with a script "Pios," short for Pioneers. (Funny, I always thought of them as the "'Neers." 😎) Like their "Yankee Conference" rivals, the Pioneers covered the NEC logo with the American flag.

For the second straight year, Stonehill wins the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) award for the fewest uniform designs: The Skyhawks used the same three unis they wore last year.

Bryant, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island (2024)

The uniforms of 2024 continue with the Colonial Coastal Crumbling Athletic Association, which is slated to lose two longtime members in '25: Delaware to FBS (Conference USA and Richmond to the Patriot League (!). With the CAA adding random schools left and right over the last few years, I'm sure the folks there will find a couple community colleges in the Midwest to fill the void left by the Blue Hens and the Spiders.

OK, onto the unis ...

We begin with league newbie Bryant, which realized quickly that the CAA, even in its declining state, ain't the Big South (where the Bulldogs had a winning record in 2023). The only change in the uniforms was the addition of the CAA jersey patch, replacing the Big South versions. (Check out the gold jersey — it appears Bryant slapped a big square bearing the CAA logo over the Big South logo patch.)

Delaware didn't change a darn thing from 2023, although I suspect the Hens will make some alterations once they move up in the world.

Maine did some odd things in 2024. In '23, the Black Bears changed their road jerseys, using a number font similar to that on their iconic hockey jersey. In '24, Maine changed the home shirt to match the road versions ... only to change the road shirt in midseason, adopting drop-shadow numbers (which slowly appear to be making a comeback, perhaps thanks to the NFL 49ers reviving their 1994 uniform). The pants also went a midseason change, as the stripes down the sides were removed. The awesome power-blue alternate shirt, which was used in publicity photos, never saw game day action.

New Hampshire dusted off an old friend this past season — the "NH" helmet logo used from 1976-99. The Wildcats had used the logo occasionally in the past (a few Homecomings and a few times on a blue alternate helmet in 2017-18). My only suggestion would be to add a stripe or two down the middle, a la the "classic" look.

Speaking of stripes, UNH's silver helmet is no slouch itself in the classic helmet department (it's been used since 2003 and has been worn by many an NCAA FCS tournament team), but in midseason it randomly lost its stripes and looked rather naked without them. 

Rhode Island made no changes this season, although like UMaine, the Rams trotted out two different sets of road uniforms, something they also did in 2023.

There was one minor but significant addition to the jerseys late in the season — the NCAA patch symbolizing participation in the NCAA FCS tourney. Rhody reached the postseason for the first time since 1985 and the glory days of Tom "Air:" Earhardt.

Ivy League (2024)

This isn't your parents' Ivy League. Nor your grandparents'. Maybe not even your great-grandparents'.

Not one, but two monumental events happened this year that shook the Ancient Eight and their fans to the core:

1) Columbia earned a share of the league title for its first crown since 1961;

2) The Ivies agreed to participate in the NCAA FCS Tournament starting in 2025.

It's perhaps fitting that the last Ivy school to play a postseason game was Columbia, which upset Stanford in the 1934 Rose Bowl. Brown, Harvard and Penn also have tasted postseason action, all in the Rose Bowl. that's been it ... but wait 'til next year.

After the '61 title, Columbia plunged into decades of irrelevance until the arrival of Penn legend Al Bagnoli as head coach in 2015. After a couple rough years, Bagnoli guided the Lions to four winning seasons over the next five years. Although Bagnoli retired before the '23 season, successor Jon Poppe finally brought Columbia to the top.

OK, on to the uniforms. There were very few changes from 2023, so I'm just going to step aside and list them in alphabetical order. I'll add two points:

1) Penn wore nine different designs in nine weeks before using a repeat design in Week 10 (spoilsports!).

2) Cornell added a black alternate jersey, leaving Penn and Yale as the only Ivy teams to have not gone to the dark side at some point in their history.

Iconic (or at least long-lasting) helmet logos and designs (Part 2)

Time for Part 2 of our look at first-year logos that became popular, or least stuck around a while. Part 1 is right here.

I discussed Princeton's 1935 uniforms in this post about the time an imbibed fan ran onto the field during a Dartmouth-Prineton game. Suffice to say, it's one of the most iconic designs in college football, at least if you're fan of Michigan or Delaware.

Princeton ditched the design in 1938, frequently going with plain orange helmets for the next 60 years. In '98, the Tigers revived the design to coincide with their move into brand-new Princeton Stadium. The result was once of the classiest uniforms I've ever seen. In 2012, Princeton reversed the colors and the design — at least to these eyes — seemed to lose its magic. 

Any team called the Rams damn well better have rams' horns for a design, right? Rhode Island debuted the horns in 1955, as discussed in this post on the Rams' Refrigerator Bowl team. After only two seasons, however, the horns were replaced by numbers, In '62, the horns returned and remained there in a variety of shapes combinations until 1993. In 2000, with a new coach, Rhody re-embraced the horns (as part of another classy uniform) and remain to this day. In 2011, Rhody adopted the current light blue-on-navy design.

I don't know if you can call a logo whose original run was a mere decade iconic, but if you lived in New England in the 1990s, you'll remember the UMass logo from the Minutemen's widely successful men's basketball program. (I always called it the "Calipari logo" as a result.) The swooshing "U," the "Mass" that looked like it came out of the 70s — it was hard to forget. I think the basketball teams used it a few years before football adopted it in 1993, but I could be wrong. In 2012, 2019 and 2021-23, the logo was revived as an alternate.

These appeared in the William & Mary student paper "The Flat Hat,"
in 1994-95. Two things: 1) "The Flat Hat" is dumb name for a paper;
2) "Dumb-ass Yankees?" You lost the Civil War in 1865, I'd suggest you get over it.

———

After many years of using plain white helmets with numbers on the side, New Hampshire unveiled its first helmet logo in 1976, an interlocking "NH" that was rounded on the top and bottom, almost giving it the shape of a football. Amazingly, the helmet stuck around until 2000, when the Wildcats replaced it with another long-lasting logo. I wrote more about the 1976-77 Wildcats here and here. And best of all, the logo made a (more-or-less) full-time return in 2024!

Long before Oregon and other schools made a plain letter logo iconic, the Ivy League schools had already mastered the art. A plain serif "Y" is dull as dishwater anywhere else — but on a Yale helmet it's a classic. The Bulldogs first wore it in 1966, Carm Cozza's second year as coach. I first wrote about the '66 Bulldogs here; this uniform lasted for three decades.

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.