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:

Williams Ephs (1957)

Since we showed an Amherst uniform last time, it's only fitting we profile its ancient rival, Williams. Like Amherst, the Ephs (named for founder Ephriam Williams) have worn purple since the 19th century. You can read more about the history of the name, colors and mascot here.

A couple nice shots of the Williams bench in 1957.
Note that not all helmets have numbers on the side.
These are from the delightful Williams College Memory Project.

The uniform above is a pretty snazzy model, with gold pants and unique thicker-than-usual numbers. The helmets are vaguely like Brown's from that era, but not all of them had numbers on the side. Note the use of sleeve numbers on the road shirts -- I think UNH is the only other team in this project that wore sleeve numbers that early.

The '57 Ephs went 6-0-1 and beat Wesleyan and Amherst for the Little Three title.

The '57 Ephs in white.

 Next up in our Division III tour: Another NESCAC school, this time in Maine.