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.

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

Ya, it's been a while. Time to get back to the Holy Cross retrospecticus. Where did we leave off? 1969? Part III will take us through the 1990s.

Part I Part II

1970: Back on the field after the '69 season was cut short due to a hepatitis outbreak, Holy Cross ditches the stripes on the shirts, but keeps them on the socks, at least for cold-weather games.

1971: The "HC" logo and sleeve numbers vanish, making for a very plain uniform.

1972: The helmets are now white, and a squished version of the "HC" logo is on the sides. 

1976: With a coach in town (Neil Wheelwright), Holy Cross makes its biggest overhaul in years. Purple helmets return, this time with numbers on the side, and a spaced-out "H O L Y  C R O S S" wordmark appears across the front. I always liked this jersey, and I have no clue why.

1979: A crusader logo replaces the numbers on the helmets.

1981: Another new coach (Rick Carter) means more changes. Stripes return to the sleeves, white pants replace the silver models and the numbers return to the helmets. Also note the addition of the Champion logo on the sleeve.

1986: The silver pants return. This was the style The Cross wore when it went undefeated in 1987 and two-way threat Gordie Lockbaum was a legit Heisman Trophy candidate.

1992: A new "HC" logo debuts on the helmets and home jerseys. Curiously, the road jerseys and plants retain the older style.

1994: The road uniform matches the home version.

1996: Helmet numbers and purple pants return, and names on the back are worn for the first time. By this point, we're getting into the era when if you didn't like Holy Cross's uniforms, just hold tight because they'll probably change in the next half-hour.

1998: The full Holy Cross logo appears on the helmet, the silver pants return and the names on the back vanish. A year earlier, the Crusaders started wearing the Patriot League patch on the jersey fronts. The jerseys have a Wilson logo; the pants are from Reebok. Ah, the days before exclusive apparel deals. ...

1999: The 1990s were full of oddball fads, like the swing revival that was a big deal for about a week or people randomly shouting "Who's your daddy?!" Drop-shadow numbers were another fad of that era, although at least they lasted for more than a week. Holy Cross joins the parade in 1999 and keeps them through 2002.

Boston State Warriors (1974-75)

No, this is not a mashup of two famous NBA teams, but a football team from a school that no longer exists. 

Boston State College operated under several names before settling on its final moniker in 1960. The school had a football team from about 1970 until the school closed in 1982 and merged into UMass Boston, which, alas, does not have football. After a few rough years on the gridiron, the Warriors were generally pretty decent, with their best season coming in 1975, when they shared the New England Football Conference championship with Nichols.

In '81, with the school's fate all but sealed, the lame-duck Warriors lost their first eight games before defeating Bridgewater State 12-2 in the program's final game. According to accounts from The Boston Globe and the school yearbook, only 22 players dressed for the finale — BSC started the season with 47 — and eight played both ways.

A couple shots of the 1974 Boston State Warriors,
taken from the BSC yearbook. The green and silver
with a hint of gold go well together.

Judging by photos from the yearbooks, the jerseys were pretty consistent throughout the team's existence: Plain green or white jerseys with a small Native American logo on one sleeve and no sleeve or shoulder numbers. The helmets and pants, on the other hand, seemed to change frequently.  The 1974 uniform shown above has a unique (well, unique for such a plain uniform), silver-green-and-yellow combo. Under first-year coach Mac Singleton in '75, the Warriors switched to green helmets and yellow pants, with a helmet logo that bears more than a passing resemblance to these guys. The socks came in all sorts of stripe combos; the one shown above seems to be the most frequently used.

BSC in action against (I think) Maine Maritime in 1975.
Someone's missing a logo on his helmet, tsk-tsk.

A close-up of the '75 BSC logo, not to mention
a helmet that's taken an absolute shellacking.

As for notable players, defensive back Earl Garrett was the next-to-last selection in the 1974 NFL Draft (Minnesota Vikings) and also was picked by the Detroit Wheels (no, Mitch Ryder was not the coach) in the World Football League draft that same year. For a Division III player, that's still a whale of an accomplishment. Quarterback John Rogan set New England career records in 1980 with 372 completions, 782 attempts and 5,133 yards and was named New England D-III player of the year by the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference and United Press International.

Dream Japan Bowl (2023-24)

This, kids, is how the the Ivy League postseasons. For the last two seasons, representatives of the Ivy League and Japanese college football have faced off in a postseason all-star game called the "Dream Japan Bowl." Each side has won a game, while promoting international goodwill and and all that fun stuff. Hopefully, the series continues for a while.

The uniforms, as you can see, are decidedly un-Ivy. The Ivy jerseys, with the horizontal navy and royal blue bands, kinda resemble a muted version of those Steelers alternates from about a decade ago. The Japanese jerseys use a very distinctive font that took forever for me to reproduce. (These were easily the toughest uniforms I've ever had to create; all apologies if they're not picture-perfect.)

For helmets, I simply used a lid from an Ivy League champ from the previous season. (The 2023 game was played after the 2022 season, etc.) For Japan, I used the helmet of the Fujitsu Frontiers, who have won multiple Japanese national championships (called the Rice Bowl), including the 2023 season.

Boston College, UConn, UMass (2023)

Enough procrastinating. (There's no nation like Procrastination, where the next game is always tomorrow.) Let's wrap up the uniforms of 2023 with New England's three FBS representatives.

Remember when Boston College was going to dump Jeff Hafley as coach and bring in Bob Chesney from Holy Cross? Instead, the Eagles had a winning record capped by a bowl win. BC made no changes from previous seasons, except for the all-maroon ensemble worn for the Fenway Bowl.

There might not be a more complicated team to keep track of than UConn. Even though the Huskies have only two jerseys and two pants, they trotted out seven different helmet designs, many of them with very minute differences; some weeks the helmets had stripes, some weeks they didn't. UConn also had two specialty helmets — a "Husky Heroes" lid with a red-white-and-blue logo and a cancer awareness helmet with the "C" logo in a variety of colors. 

I've said a million times before and I'll say it again: UMass may be bad, but at least the Minutemen look good while they're losing. The uniforms remained the same as in previous seasons, although UMass fiddled around with the facemark color a couple times. I wonder what it's like to be the equipment people, having to swap out 100-plus facefasks on short notice?