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Uni Watch DIY Project: A Helmet Headphone Stand

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[Editor’s Note: Paul is on vacation. Today we have a guest entry from Douglas Ford, who’s come up with an interesting DIY project. Enjoy.]

By Douglas Ford

Several weeks ago I decided I needed a place to hang my headphones when I’m in the office.   A miniature football helmet seemed like the just right size for my  Logitech H390s  and I recalled Paul’s previous postings about DIY helmet projects, so I set about designing, painting, and detailing my own football mini-helmet.
  
Step 1:  I scored this  UGA Helmet bank  for $10 on clearance at a Hobby Lobby where it ordinarily retails for around $30:

Part of my plan was to use the helmet to display logos of companies for which I’ve worked, sort of like the little award decals or pride decals used by college football teams. Since my current  employer’s  logo color is orange, I chose to convert UGA’s red and black to a solid white helmet and facemask, similar to what Tennessee wears.
  
Step 2:  The  facemask  pops off  easily, so I removed it and and used  regular painting tape  to cover the surfaces I didn’t want painted white. Over the next several days I applied four coats of  Krylon Flat White-Paint Spray:

Step 3:  At my local  Staples I purchased 30 sheets of  Staples Sticker Paper  from a discount bin for $4.20.  I copied my employers’ various logos from the internet and then  pasted them into a Word document. After printing the sheet, I cut out the logos and applied them to the  back of the helmet:

When I was a child, I always liked these two variations of the Illinois helmet. So I decided to represent my current employer by putting an “A” on the right side of the helmet and the full company name on the  left side:

Since Uni Watch planted the seed for this project, I decided that using the nose bumper as a little homage to this website was the least I could do:


  
The  final result  holds the headset perfectly and looks great”¦.or at least good enough for me. Now when people ask me for my LinkedIn profile, I just send them a few pictures of this helmet instead.

———

Good stuff. Oh, and Douglas also sent along a photo of himself from his uni-clad youth:

“That photo is from 1982,” says Douglas. “E.T. Booth Middle School in Woodstock, Georgia. I would have been 13 years old.”

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Magazine reminder: In case you missed it last week, you can now order your favorite magazines from the Uni Watch Magazine Shop. Full details here. — Paul

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Uni Watch News Ticker:
Today’s Ticker was written & compiled by John Ekdahl

Baseball News: Reader Jerry Lawless sends along a couple of Vandy CWS items. First up, first baseman Zander Wiel’s CWS patch fell off his jersey. Second, catcher Jason Delay wore red, white and blue gear to match the special unis (notice the MLB logo on the helmet as well). …”Last game at Crosley Field was on this day in 1970. Great program illustration from 1948.” (from Todd Radom) … From Phil, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs will be wearing “Thriller” jerseys on July 24th. … The Padres just assigned the number 40 to the fourth different player this season. … Camo jerseys for the Brewers on Sunday? … Could be worse: a baseball got stuck in Jose Loboton’s mask (Thanks to Chris Flinn).

NFL News: Check out the cross on Otto Graham’s helmet in this picture. (Kevin W.) … The New York Football Giants have added a 90th Anniversary patch to their uniforms next season. … While we’re on the Giants, they’ll be wearing their white pants in weeks 9 and 11 versus the Colts and 49ers, respectively.

College Football News: Phil wonders if this is a new Oregon helmet. … It’s not July 1st yet, but Notre Dame’s Coach Kelly has already made the switch to Under Armour. (Warren Junium, III) … Oregon State will probably be experimenting with new uniform combinations this year… Nike football footwear options, given to Nike schools.

Hockey News: A London, Ontario company appears to be fans of a certain Arizona hockey team. Or maybe they just ripped off the logo. … Here’s Michael Buble being presented with some Vancouver Canucks jerseys. (Thanks to Wade for those two entries).

NBA & College Hoops News: Here are the Golden State Warriors secondary logos. Yay black? (Russ Abrams) … Did NBA Live ’15 release the new floor design for the Portland Trailblazers? Here is the original blog entry. (Alex Landers) … Here’s another post with the Warriors logos along with new 76ers secondary logos with Ben Franklin. (Jeff Dahl) … These appear to be the 2014 NBA Draft hats.

Soccer News: It appears President Obama was able to sneak onto the English World Cup team. (George Chilvers) … A couple months ago, the Atlanta Business Chronicle asked their readers to vote on a name for Atlanta’s MLS team, with the “Atlanta Phoenix” coming out the winner. (Douglas King) … A Greek player suffered a jersey malfunction in the World Cup. … Oklahoma City Thunder fans sure do get around. … West Ham United’s away kit has been released for the 2014/15 season. … And here is Swansea City’s away kit. … “Aston Villa, West Ham and Burnley. All three always have claret body, blue sleeves. All in BPL this year.” [Note these are last year’s jerseys — West Ham’s is expected to be similar, and Burnley’s should be unveiled today — PH]

Grab Bag: The Newcastle Knights (Australian National Rugby League) will wear “hi-vis mining” jerseys against the Parramatta Eels on June 29th. (Graham Clayton) … Well, this looks familiar. Spotted in Stevens Point, Wisconsin by Mike Bialas. … Interesting article about marketing sneakers to women. (Tommy Turner) … “These are a set of bags boards that my friend’s girlfriend’s dad made him for his birthday. He is a Blackhawks fan by birth, but the old Mighty Ducks logo and uniform are his favorite. I have never seen a grown man jump up and down and scream like a little girl in happiness before I saw him get these,” says Chris Frank.

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Comments (67)

    Dear NY Giants,

    If you’re not going to bring back the 1990 uniforms, then please just wear the white pants at home and gray on the road and quit screwing around.

    Thanks,
    The Jeff

    If they insist on keeping the gray facemasks, they might as well stick to full-time gray pants too.

    I can’t wait until the Atlanta Phoenix plays the Phoenix Atlanta. (Unfortunately, such a matchup will more likely be Atlanta United vs. FC Phoenix.)

    C’mon now, no one would ever call a team the ______ Atlanta. Now, an Atlanta Phoenix vs the Arizona Phoenix sounds resonable…. but of course you’re probably right about it ending up as the ultra lame United/FC garbage instead.

    . .. but the ______ Atlantis or Atlantians? If water polo ever gets really big, it could work.

    There is a hockey team named Atlant in the Kontinental Hockey League…

    Incidentally, I didn’t know Jokerit was joining the KHL for the upcoming season. Though it doesn’t surprise me to learn that HC Donbass is suspending operations due to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

    Probably a better name than it appears, simply because all the Phoenix, AZ teams now brand themselves as Arizona.

    Maybe I should have said, “There’s a trend to rebrand Phoenix teams as Arizona”. The Suns are still my favorite.

    Than it appears? The city of Phoenix is not currently being considered for an MLS team, so for an Atlanta team (a ctiy which like the mythical Phoenix, rose from the ashes)to opt not to not use that name because of a hypothetical future expansion team in Phoenix Arizona (again the MLS is considering several locations for expansion, Phoenix is not currently among them), would be dumb.

    Phoenix makes so much sense, it’s kind of absurd that we’ve had 5 Professional Sports teams 3 of which were birds, and yet none of them have been the Phoenix given our city’s history.

    That new Oregon Duck helmet is fitting as the surface looks like an eggshell.

    That’s an unfortunate association; do you really want people to compare your football helmet to something as fragile as an egg?

    Obviously you’ve never been hit by an egg someone threw at you. Sure, eggs do break rather easily, but they can also be painful.

    Personally I think the texture is just stupid because you aren’t going to be able to see it from more than a few feet away. On TV, and every collectible helmet under $300, it’s just a matte white helmet.

    Let’s give Aston Villa credit as they were the first in 1888. West Ham and Burnley both followed suit later on. West Ham debuted theirs in 1901. I know Burnley wore green until 1911, but later changed after not playing well. They picked Aston Villa as they were successful.

    Doesn’t the story go that some players from Villa supposedly lost a bet (a sprint race) to some dudes from West Ham, and because the Villa players had no money, they gave the Ham lads their unis as payment (and Villa would later report them stolen)? Something like that?

    That’s what I’ve read as well – the race winner was a coach at West Ham.

    Burnley’s change was partly based on a superstition that if you wear a green dress to a wedding, the next dress will be black (for mourning).

    I’ve heard that story too. The sprinter was a professional and dad of one of the West Ham players. The Aston Villa players didn’t have the money to pay him so one of the kit washers gave the sprinter a full team’s worth of kits!

    England have announced three new sponsors (warning if you’re at work: rude connotations) :)

    link

    Here’s the new Burnley kit. Their new (old) sponsor is Fun88, an Asian gambling website. They were the shirt sponsors the last time Burnley were promoted. They’re not allowed to be on the “junior” shirts, so they created a new Burnley logo that mirrors the Fun88 logo. I actually like it more than the adult shirt!

    link

    The junior shirt looks really good and much better than the completely blank fronts that you often see on junior kits sponsored by gambling websites or beers.

    That reminds me of NASCAR video games in the late 90’s/early 2000’s (and possibly still today, I haven’t played one in years so I don’t know) where they couldn’t use the alcohol/tobacco/viagra sponsors and you had things like Dale Earnhardt Jr’s “BUD” replaced with “DALE”. I thought it worked rather well there too.

    Are those Nike cleat names not the stupidest things you’ve ever read?

    My favorite has to be Code Elite Pro Shark Destroyer

    I saw the Greek jersey malfunction. What cracked me up was how quickly the camera pulled away, as if there could be no admission of such an awful defect in jersey lettering.

    “Here’s Michael Buble being presented with some Vancouver Canucks jerseys.”

    The Canucks messed up link It should be an link (´), which in French makes an “e” sound like “ay.” Instead they used a link (`), which in French gives the “e” more of a flat “eh” sound. You’d think the Canucks, being from Canada and all, would have a better understanding of the particulars of the French language.

    This doesn’t qualify as an apostrophe catastrophe, but what should it be called? Maybe an “accent accident”?

    Bleeping Oregon and their bleeping uniforms. I’m waiting for the day when they change up at halftime. (It’s been done before, Notre Dame going from blue to green in-game). Then we’ll see special red-zone helmets, kick coverage helmets, water break helmets…

    I don’t believe the Brewers will be wearing camo. The bobblehead is sponsored by the Wisconsin Army National Guard, therefore the camo jersey on the bobble.

    It looks like Otto Graham and his cohorts were all wearing sweatpants underneath their practice uniforms in that pic.

    link

    Not uni related- but Sports Illustrated has updated their site.

    What’s the best go-to sports site now that I need a new one? Thanks, SI.

    “What’s the best go-to sports site now that I need a new one?”

    Ummm, Uni Watch?

    Nah, Uni Watch has too many articles on food and old clothing, you’re better off just using Fark, Reddit, or Google for current sports news.

    Yeah, but Uni Watch’s comments section is pretty good on breaking the latest news (usually with a heavy dose of commentary).

    Wow. That looks like the bastard child of Buzzfeed and TMZ.

    On the plus side – Astros on the cover this week in the greatest uniforms in baseball history.

    link

    The Guardian?
    /soccer snob

    On the other hand, does one really need a go-to sports site? I basically use Facebook as my news/sports portal, and breaking news comes to my phone. I rarely go to the front page of a major sports site.

    Interesting…

    MLBtv’s featured game today is the Pirates vs. the Rays.

    Oddly, they used a photo of Andrew McCutcheon from Jackie Robinson day for the promo:

    link

    Douglas Ford:

    1) Fun DIY helmet project! Thanks for sharing it. The white “A” in the orange square works rather well as a helmet logo, especially on the white helmet shell.

    2) E.T. Booth Middle School’s basketball uniforms rocked! I love the contrasting shorts and jersey, the brown and gold color scheme, and the striped socks. Winner all the way around!

    Regarding the basketball picture, I got a kick out of the parquet flooring. I would have thought that a synthetic urethane surface, like NC State’s Reynolds Coliseum in the mid-70’s, would have been in use in 1982.

    Quick question: Is Iran the only team in the World Cup to add patches to their jersey for each match? They appear to add a patch with the Iranian and opponent flag in the center front of the jersey.

    I’m pretty sure they’re the only team with patches rather than embroidery – they famously didn’t pack enough uniforms to allow for the traditional shirt swapping.

    The West Michigan Whitecaps (Tigers A-league affiliate) just released a photo of “Storm trooper” jerseys that they’ll wear on Saturday. Not terrible IMHO, but I feel that the whole Star Wars thing is played out.

    link

    ”Last game at Crosley Field was on this day in 1970. Great program illustration from 1948.”

    todd sent that to uni watch yesterday, so the statement is accurate if you understand that…the last game was june 24, 1970 (not today’s date, june 25)…

    link

    they broke ground on riverfront on my 7th birthday, and riverfront opened on the 30th, just two weeks prior to the all-star game, which cincinnati hosted that year…

    link

    i was 9, and we had tickets for a reds game in early july, and i was so anxious for the new stadium to open so we could see it…looking back, i wish they hadn’t quite been ready so i could have gone to crosley……

    link

    “It should not be the privilege of the powerful to dictate which words are hurtful.”

    sorry, from what I understand cornhole is only a midwestern thing, and I know that most people understand that it is also called bags so I went with the more normal name

    Well I’m sure anyone not knowing any better seeing the big ‘O’ on Oregons’ helmet would think it was the Oakley logo.
    Sometimes letters look great/classic on a hat or helmet, for example KC Royals hat IMO would look better with the crown logo etc..

    ..and the Giants can get rid of the ‘ny’ on their helmet rrright abouuuuut NOW!

    What’s up with Douglas’ finger in that third photo? Old football injury? I’m pretty sure fingers aren’t meant to bend that way.

    fyi re: lawsuit re alleged offensitivity of Cleveland Indians name & logo has already been litigated once, in RUSSELL C MEANS 1 THRU 8 vs. CLEVELAND INDIANS INCORPORATED, Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Court of Common Pleas Case No. CV-72-902576.

    link

    Means was a noted Indians’ right activist, or rabble rouser, depending on one’s point of view. link

    The lawsuit appears to have been settled for nuisance value but it is difficult to determine from the court’s docket record.

    Just my opinion, but I would guess that the case has no binding value as precedent. Typically pro sport teams under brand new incorporation each time they are sold, and the Indians have been sold at least 3 times since this case was filed. (Steve O’Neill bought team from Ted Bonda partnership, O’Neill’s estate sold it to the Jacobs Brothers, and Jacobs’ estate sold it to the present owners, Larry Dolan et al.)

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