These are the uniforms worn by the six Yankee Conference teams (all state land-grant schools) in 1956, listed in order of performance. When I was growing up, it seemed hard to believe that little ol' Maine was in a league with the likes of UMass and UConn, but it worked -- well, sometimes -- for many years. (BTW: Would those two schools, which later moved to the FCS level, win the CAA in 2019?)
Some other notes:
* This was during the time when teams were transitioning from leather helmets with no facemasks to plastic shells with facemasks, so you see a little bit of everything in the graphic above. UMass and Vermont were the last two holdouts, finally switching to plastic shells in 1958.
* If you examine the standings closely, only last-place Rhody played a full conference slate. UVM was a YC member, but the Catamounts played as little as one league same some years, as it preferred to play the Norwiches and Middleburys of the world. Presumably a slate with four YC games when you could play as many as five was considered good enough. (Also note that YC teams played only 7-8 games total, not 11-12 as FCS teams do today.)
* Rhode Island wore a white jersey for the whole season. Also check out the helmet: Stripes and ram's horns? One or the other is fine, but both?
* In '57, UConn, Maine, UMass and Rhody all put uniform numbers on the helmets.
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