Colgate Raiders (2014-19)

Starting with the 2021 spring season, I added Colgate to the list of teams covered in this little ol' blog, and I've done a few historical uniforms here and there. Here are all the Raiders' uniforms going back to 2014, the first year of this site. (Eight years? Already?) A few notes:

* Wow, that's a lot of uniforms. Although the 'gate never made wholesale changes, there were always some modifications year to year, much in the manner of English soccer kits. I have the Raiders down for nine separate jerseys and nine separate helmets over six years — a drop in the bucket compared with the Oregons of the world, but quite a few for the FCS level. Some of the helmets are flat-out bizarre: One is maroon with a black airbrush across the bottom; another is a while lid with a gray base that increases toward the back. 

* In 2019, Colgate's maroon was lightened to something closer to red, although a reddish helmet was introduced a few years earlier while the jerseys remained maroon.

* To celebrate the school's 200th anniversary in 2018, Colgate wore a special uniform honoring its most famous team, The 1932 bunch is remembered for the four "uns": Undefeated, untied, unscored upon and uninvited to the Rose Bowl. I plan on doing a writeup on this team eventually, but in short, Colgate in '32 outscored its opponents 264-0 and went home for the postseason anyway (a weak schedule may have had something to do with it). The throwback helmets use a sublimated leather pattern, and the numbers are heat-pressed onto honest-to-god burlap that was sewn onto the jersey, which was the practice in olden times, when teams didn't wear numbers for every game and they could be easily added or removed.  This great article goes into the making of the uniform.

The 2018 team did the '32 crew proud; the Raiders outscored their foes 324-112, including a 287-29 run with five shutouts through nine games, putting them into 1963 UMass territory in terms of defensive awesomeness. Colgate rolled to the Patriot League title before dropping its regular-season finale to Army — which finished ranked in the FBS top 25 polls — 28-14. The Raiders then upset James Madison (!), 23-20, in the second round of the FCS playoffs before falling to North Dakota State, 35-0, in the quarterfinals.