Rhode Island Rams (1936-39)

This is the second part of our post inspired by this awesome color clip of Rhode Island playing UMass in 1939. On Monday, we profiled UMass (then Massachusetts State College); today, we look at Rhody (or Rhode Island State as it was known at the time). 

The Rhody helmets from 1936-39 were similar to UMass' in the basic pattern, except the striping stayed separate at the front of the helmet, while UMass' stripes joined at the front.

A nice shot of the 1937 Rhody Rams in action against Brown, from the '38 Grist yearbook.

From the '40 Grist, Rhody takes on Providence in 1939,
two years before the Friars shut down football.

The jerseys are unique; a small number perched on top of the classic "RI" logo, which is still used today. The CFL and the old World League did something like that in the 1990s, albeit a million times gaudier, and didn't Wisconsin and Nebraska do something similar a few years ago? But I've never seen anything like that from this time period.

The blue was closer to electric blue than light blue, not all jerseys had sleeve stripes on the wrists (another unique trait for this period) and the socks changed year to year. I'm not 100 percent about that 1938 road uniform; that's based on a poor photo from the 1939 Grist yearbook.

A Rhode Island player is carted away in 1939.
That's actually a pretty dangerous way to take a player off the field.
This was taken at Brown Stadium; is it me, or is that grandstand HUGE?

The 1939 freshman team, whose players are dressed in whatever
appears to be have been lying around the equipment room. It was common
for freshman/jayvee teams of the era to wear recycled uniforms from seasons past;
Maine's non-varsity teams from the period wore an even more mismatched mishmash.