The 1925 Project (Part 5)

Part 5 of our look at the New England(-ish) teams and uniforms of a century ago continues with eight schools that today are part of NESCAC (New England Small College Athletic Conference), basically the Ivy League's Division III Mini-Me. (And if you don't believe it, just remember NESCAC decided to allow its football teams to compete in the NCAA postseason not long after the Ivies made the same decision.)

I'm not going to go in to mountains of detail on each team here, but I will leave a few notes:

• Amherst was coached by DeOrmond "Tuss" McLaughry, who left after the season for Brown. His time with the Bears is discussed here. He also coached at Dartmouth. Also, I don't believe the Mammoths/Lord Jeffs had an official nickname at this point, so that space in the graphic is left blank.
• Notice how in the cases of Amherst, Middlebury and Tufts, some helmets had stripes and others did not. I *think* this was done to differentiate players based on position (remember, this was before teams wore uniform numbers on the front), but I could be wrong.
• The Trinity uniform could be a mash-up (see note on the graphic).
• Middlebury might have had the toughest schedule of anyone here. The Panthers opened the season against Harvard and Yale and lost by a combined score of 121-0. Middlebury also lost 33-0 to NYU, a well-regarded program.

And at last, the uniforms:

Amherst Lord Jeffs (1984)

Our informal tour of Division III schools takes us to Amherst, where the Lord Jeffs (oh, wait, can't call them that anymore) displayed an amazing run of uniform consistency that blows away the likes of even Delaware and Yale.

The basic template -- white helmets, purple shirt with white stripes and white pants -- was used from the 1930s until 1993, when most of the stripes were eliminated and an old-english "A" was placed on the helmet. (For me, nothing says "elite private institution" like the color purple and old-English lettering.)

The Amherst players are all smiles during an undefeated season.
These pic are all from the '85 Amherst College Olio yearbook.

Anyway, this uniform rules, a Princeton that went through the wrong batch of laundry. The  looks is such a hardcore throwback that the numbers on the jersey front use that short, wide font that went out with the 60s. Several of the sleeves also remained pretty long.

The '84 team picture.

The folks at Gameface have tons of Amherst pictures you can find here. I chose 1984 because the site had images of home and road uniforms, but this image could really represent the whole decade. Also, the No-Longer-Jeffs went undefeated that season.

The '84 Jeffs in action.

Up next: Well, if we're going to do Amherst, then we should do its arch-rival in Wayoutwest, Mass. ...

I wonder what's the story behind this picture? Are they angry at the Lord Jeffs' name?
Or are they angry that Amherst is dropping the name?
Or maybe they see a purple cow on the horizon ...