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Uni Watch

A Close Look at a 1965 NFL Uniform Article

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Longtime reader Jerry Wolper spends a lot of time looking through old newspaper archives. He recently came across a UPI wire story about the ’Skins uniform expenditures in the Oct. 23, 1965 edition of The Pittsburgh Press. The entire article is shown above for your reading pleasure.

The article is jam-packed with fascinating info, so I’m going to single out some excerpts that deserve a closer look, beginning with this one:

A Warrior’s wardrobe now costs more than $250 ”” and this figure covers only the basic game equipment.

Interesting to see “Warrior’s” capitalized. Was “Warriors” a standard nickname for the ’Skins at the time (like “G-Men” for the Giants, for example)? Hadn’t heard/seen that before.

The club pays $35 just for the helmet shell, plus another $25-$40 for the inner protective lining that has to be fitted individually.

Never would’ve guessed that the inner lining could cost as much as, or even more than, the shell.

[S]hoes [cost] $20 per pair with a player using an average of three pairs a season. … Even a little item like shoelaces runs into considerable expense. The [’Skins] purchase about 1100 pairs a season.

In 1965, NFL rosters were limited to 40 players. If you multiply that by the stated three pairs of shoes per player, you get 120 pairs of footwear. And if you divide that into the stated 1100 pairs of shoelaces, you get 9.17 pair of shoelaces per pair of shoes. Seems like a bit much, no? Granted, the shoelaces are probably used by the coaching/training staff as well, and maybe teams had taxi squads back then, like they do now (anyone know?). Even so, the ratio of laces to shoes seems a bit lopsided.

The [’Skins] were the first team in the National Football League to bear the entire cost of uniform equipment. A few teams still require players to pay for their own shoes.

Wish they had said when the ’Skins began picking up the full equipment tab for their players. In any case, it’s nice to see that they were once at the leading edge of a progressive team policy.

NFL rules regarding uniforms are rigidly standardized. For example, the jersey numerals must be exactly the same size for every player and every team. This is a far cry from the days of the old teams, some painted on their jersey front for deception purposes.

Obviously, there seems to be a word or two missing there, but we can all get the basic point. I have no idea what they’re talking about regarding painted jerseys for “deception purposes,” though. Anyone..?

The Boston [’Skins] original burgundy uniforms were as close as Owner Geoge Preston Marshall could come to re-creating Harvard’s 1933 gridiron wear. Marshall figured that the Harvards were probably the best-dressed team in football.

I hadn’t been aware of this ’Skins/Harvard connection. The ’Skins uniform in question appears to be this one, as shown on the mighty Gridiron Uniform Database (click to enlarge):

Standardization breaks down occasionally. Sammy Baugh used to wear a cheap pair of shoulder pads he purchased himself in a five-and-dime store ”” he liked their lighter weight.

I was hoping to find a photo of these pads but came up empty. I did, however, find this article, which includes the following: “Baugh played on and on — eventually wearing out 100 jerseys and 60 pairs of shoes — leading the NFL in completed passes five times. Yet he never changed shoulder pads. Their tattered remnants were called Blue Jays, and they shrank to no bigger than a corn plaster.”

At the start of each season, a player gets two complete uniforms, one for home games and the other for “away.” If he’s still with the team the following season, he wears the old uniforms for the exhibition games and is issued fresh equipment at the start of the regular season. … Discarded uniforms are given to charity organizations if they still are usable. They seldom are. No uniform lasts more than three seasons ”” one in regular play, the following exhibition season, and the next season’s practice sessions.

Very interesting to hear that old game unis could be repurposed for practices two years down the road.

Each player gets two sports shirts at $3.80 per shirt. Even his post game grooming gear is supplied by the club.

Extremely surprised by this. Never would have guessed that teams were paying for the players’ shaving kits, Brylcreem, etc.

In cold weather, the cost goes up. Linemen are given gloves at $4 per pair.

Very surprised by this as well, as I don’t recall seeing photos of NFL linemen wearing gloves in the mid-1960s, except maybe on the sidelines. But they’re clearly not talking about the sidelines here, because they referred specifically to linemen, suggesting that ball-carriers couldn’t wear gloves because they’d lose their feel for the ball. Hmmmm.

Speaking of weight, the equipment “weights” more coming home from a game than flying to it. It seems a uniform picks up about two pounds of sweat during a game.

This suggests that road teams in the mid-1960s didn’t launder their uniforms until they got back home. Pretty sure that isn’t the case now.

One additional thought: Given the degree to which we now obsess over who manufactured what, it’s remarkable that not a single uniform or equipment brand is mentioned in the course of this article.

And that’s it. Great article — big thanks to Jerry for finding and sharing it.

———

While we’re at it, Jerry also found an interesting item in the Oct. 14, 1965 edition of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It’s a small excerpt from a column by sportswriter Jack Sell. He wrote:

As it turned out, of course, the NFL didn’t adopt NOBs until after the merger in 1970, nearly five years after this column was written.

•  •  •  •  •

José Fernández update: The uni-related tributes for Marlins pitcher José Fernández keep coming. Here are yesterday’s developments:

• The Marlins went back to wearing their regular numbers and NOBs last night, but they added a “16” memorial patch. The patch design matches the mark that was shown on the scoreboard and outfield wall on Monday night. I think there’s a decent chance they’ll wear the patch next season as well (just as the Yankees did with their Yogi Berra “8” memorial, which was added late last season and then retained for this season), although that would make for a crowded jersey, because they’re also slated to be wearing the All-Star Game patch next year.

• The latest teams to honor Fernández by hanging a jersey in the dugout are the Braves, Giants, and Cardinals. Meanwhile, the Fernández tribute jersey that the Mets hung in their dugout on Sunday and Monday has been signed by the Mets’ players and will be given to the Marlins.

• Players around the majors continue to salute Fernández with handwritten cap inscriptions, as was the case last night for Blue Jays P Aaron Sanchez. Also, Cardinals SS Aledmys Díaz, who grew up with Fernández in Cuba, wore a “16” wristband.

• The Marlins’ team barber, who gave Fernández a haircut before each of his starts, has memorialized Fernández with a tattoo.

• And in a creepy and sad development, a bag of baseballs signed by Fernández washed up on a Miami beach.

It’s always sad when a player dies, of course (it’s happened quite a bit over the past decade), but I can’t recall another death that’s prompted as big an outpouring of grief and support as this one has. Part of it, I’m sure, is that Fernández was an extremely talented player. Another part is that he appears to have been very popular with teammates and opposing players alike. Yet another part is his inspirational backstory of having defected from Cuba, and his symbolic importance to the Cuban-American community.

I think there are some additional factors at work here that go beyond Fernández, including our cultural shift toward less stoic, more demonstrative responses to death and the sports world’s increasing tendency to use uniforms as vehicles for collective and personal expression. Combine those factors with Fernández’s personal narrative and you get the wide range of salutes and gestures we’ve seen over the past three days.

It’ll be interesting to see if the response to Fernández’s death establishes a new protocol. The next time a player passes away — which, unfortunately, will inevitably happen at some point — will his team respond by having all the players wear the deceased’s name and number? That had never been done before, but now that it’s happened once, will it become standard procedure? Or will Fernández remain a special case?

(My thanks to Phil and Christopher Overholt for their contributions to this section.)

• • • • •

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PermaRec platinum anniversary: Twenty years ago today I attended a party for my friend Gina’s 30th birthday, which was held in the gymnasium of the old Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. While I was there, I poked around the school a bit and found an old file cabinet that was about to be thrown out. I opened the drawers and found hundreds of 1920s and ’30s report cards from a girls’ vocational school. They were fascinating, so I took a bunch of them and showed them to my friends Matt, Daniel, and Kenny. They each took some cards as well. After the party, we went to get cheap food in Chinatown and sat there poring over the report cards as we munched on egg rolls and fried rice.

After keeping the cards in my own file cabinet for more than a decade, in 2009 I decided it was finally time to do something with them. The result, in 2011, was Permanent Record, a series of five articles (later supplemented with five more in 2012) that I wrote for Slate. It’s easily the most important project — probably the only important project, in the grand scheme of things — I’ve ever undertaken. It’s no exaggeration to say it changed my life, and I know it changed the lives of many of the people I wrote about as well.

Permanent Record lives on, of course, as a project devoted to the stories behind found objects. But it all started with that party in the Stuy gym. Can’t believe it’s been 20 years. So happy birthday to Permanent Record (and also to Gina, who’s still my friend to this day).

• • • • •

The Ticker
By Paul

Baseball News: The Smithsonian Institution is collecting items that show baseball’s impact on Latino history. … Scheduling note: As was done on the final day of the season last year, all MLB games this Sunday will begin at the same time — 3pm Eastern — so that teams competing for a playoff spot will all be on equal footing, scoreboard-wise. … Oooh, look at this nice design the Dodgers came up with to mark Dodger Stadium’s 10th anniversary in 1971. … Speaking of the Dodgers: After the team’s plastic 3-D helmet logos kept breaking and cracking, they switched to a flexible rubberized logo. That has pretty much solved the breakage problem, but Joc Pederson’s logo was peeling off last night (from JoeyE). … Angels P Ricky Nolasco’s cap didn’t have the Anaheim 50th-anniversary patch that everyone else was wearing last night.

NFL News: This display of Cowboys uniforms at the team’s practice facility has a glitch: In the front row, second from right, is a blue version of the team’s “double-star” throwback, and it has the league’s 75th-anniversary patch from 1994. But as Stephen King points out, the Cowboys didn’t wear that jersey in ’94 — only in 1995, when there was no league anniversary patch. … Ravens coach John Harbaugh has changed to a new sideline shirt (from Will Shoken). … The Dolphins are getting ready to wear mono-orange for tomorrow night’s game against the Bengals (thanks, Phil). … Buried on this page is the news that NFL players can’t get tattoos of a football, because the rulebook bans “headgear or any other equipment or apparel which, in the opinion of the Referee, may confuse an opponent because of its similarity in color to that of the game football” (thanks, Mike). … Southwest Airlines was doing some sort of football-related promotion at ATL airport yesterday, complete with uniform and helmet designs (from GJ Marmet). … A Virginia Beach restaurant is using a Colin Kaepernick jersey as a doormat. … Steelers WR Antonio Brown has confirmed that he’s been told to stop wearing his blue shoes or stay in the locker room (thanks, Phil).

College and High School Football News: Michigan State is planning an assortment of uniform memorials for former player Mylan Hicks, who was shot to death last weekend (from @TomboyChick). … Youngstown State coach Bo Pelini isn’t a huge fan of this week’s mono-red uniforms (from Robert Hayes). … Check it out: Jim Harbaugh in Zubaz (from J. Huckel). … Illinois is apparently using white facemasks on the white helmets this week. Usually navy. … Here’s Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz talking about the team’s new yellow shoes (from @hawkeyenick). … New matte black helmets for UNLV (from Phil). … Here’s a trend I hadn’t been aware of: As we enter homecoming season, a Maryland high school has adopted a gender-neutral homecoming court this year, which means “those honored at halftime on Oct. 7 could include two boys, two girls, transgender students, or a boy-girl duo.” According to the article, this is becoming more common at high schools and universities.

Hockey News: New centennial branding logo for the NHL. Have to wait and see how it’s deployed, but for now I’m a bit underwhelmed. … Bloomington Thunder G Logan Halladay will raffle off his mask as part of a season-long charity initiative. … Admirably simple Gordie Howe memorial patch this season for the Red Wings, plus they’re painting a “9” behind each net. Although not shown there, the Wings will also be wearing an arena-farewell patch (from Derrick Vergolini). … In a related item, an annual rite of autumn took place last night, as the Wings played their first preseason game and, true to form, used straight, block-lettered NOBs, just as they do every preseason. They’ll switch to their standard vertically arched NOBs when the regular season starts. … Pucks at the World Cup of Hockey have been implanted with microdata chips. … The WCHA is retiring a deceased referee’s number, and on-ice officials will wear memorial decals in his memory this season (from Daniel Donell). … Here’s the logo for the Penguins/Flyers Stadium Series game, which will take place at Heinz Field on Feb. 25 (from Jared Grubb). … Speaking of the Pens, their new road uni made its preseason debut last night (from @AceMcTasty). … Drummonville’s belly striping and sock striping are, in Patrick Thomas’s words, “an OCD nightmare.”

NBA/WNBA News: The Trail Blazers plan to “modernize” their look when Nike takes over the NBA’s uniform contract in 2017-18. Further info here (thanks, Phil). … Reports continue to indicate that NBA jersey sponsorships advertising may not be as big a cash cow as everyone had expected. As you can imagine, I’m so upset about this that I walk around giggling (thanks, Phil). … Here’s a decent look at the Knicks’ 70th-anniversary patch (from Robert Hayes). … “The Minnesota Lynx are playing the first two games of their playoff series at the Xcel Energy Center,” says Dustin K. “It makes for an odd sight with the hockey boards and glass still up around the court.”

College Hoops News: Slight update for UConn. … New uniforms for Butler (from Brian Miller). … Pitt’s new uniforms have the same annoying number font as the new football unis. Yes, I know the font is inspired by the Cathedral of Learning on the Pitt campus, but that doesn’t make it a good piece of typography; it just means it has a “story.” … Just like last season, Adidas has come out with retro-style fauxbacks for a bunch of schools. And just like last season, they look pretty good. … New uniforms for the Colorado School of Mines. … No visuals yet, but Arizona’s new uniforms will reportedly look like Team USA’s Olympic uniforms (thanks, Phil).

Soccer News: New third kit for Barça. … A French soccer team is letting fans choose the team’s new seat-replacement scheme (from James Gilbert). … A Columbus Crew fan wants people attending this Saturday’s game against the Chicago Fire to wear colors that will create a checkerboard pattern in the stands (from Bobby Gindal). … Real Madrid right back Danilo has a lowercase “i” in his NOB.

Grab Bag: Signed up the other day for the fall-winter season of curling at Prospect Park here in Brooklyn. When I learned to curl in 2010, it was something of a lark, mainly so I could write an article about it. But I found I really liked it, so I jumped at the chance to participate when they started offering curling at Prospect Park in 2014. Now I’m hooked. … Signs of Pinktober: Green Bay police officers will wear pink badges next month. … Nike and Under Armour are competing to score uniform deals for DC-area schools (from Tommy Turner). … For reasons that aren’t clear to me, police officers in Fairfax, Minn., wear a sleeve patch that shows a baseball game. Color vs. color, too! (From Brad Koenig.)

 
  
 
Comments (89)

    You’re right, who would have guessed the Washington Redskins would be a pioneering football team in the NFL.

    Of course “pioneering” nowadays is who has the ugliest “edgy” uniform, a title currently held by the Browns.

    Yeah, the Browns’ unis aren’t particularly “edgy”, unless you consider having the team name for a pants stripe edgy. They just suck.

    Out of the Jim Harbaugh Zubaz tweet, you didn’t notice that Randall Cunningham was wearing a BBFS Eagles jersey? I’ve never seen that before anywhere, I guess they did a one-off for the photoshoot.

    RE: Painting the jersey for deception…

    My Dad told me about an olden team that had a football painted (or sewn?) on the front of their jersey so their opponents couldn’t tell who really had the ball.

    googling now…

    I believe it was soon outlawed, but perhaps something like that is what the author was referring to.

    I also read somewhere that running backs wore forearm pads that had footballs painted on them, as a ruse. George Halas’ teams maybe?

    I thought about that, too. I remembered from something I read as a kid that the team was called the Carlisle Indians, which as it turns out was a college team coached in the early 1900s by Pop Warner. Warner had football-shaped patches sewn onto the front of the team’s jerseys. A few minutes of googling turned up surprisingly few references, though.

    I remember reading that as well, but I didn’t remember who did it or when it occurred. I would love to see photos, but my searches turned up nothing.

    I’m wondering if that shoelace total is just for what was used in shoes. In the 60s, I believe there would have been “shoelaces” used in shoulder pads and pants. As far as teams using old jerseys for practice, that was common until the late 1990s or early 2000s when jersey manufacturers started supplying separate practice jerseys to teams. NFL Films showed footage on “Roger Staubach: A Football Life” of Staubach practicing while on leave from the Navy in the 60s. The collection of old Cowboys jerseys on the practice field (including a lot of the original double-stars) was pretty amazing.

    Proofreading: “found an old file cabinet that was about to thrown out”

    And, of course, you’re welcome.

    Great work today Jerry & Paul!

    Re: “deception” — touched on above and I agree. Jerseys had friction strips and sleeve patches, often the same color as the leather football, painted or sewn on them which would provide the illusion of a football, done so as to confuse opponents.

    RE: Fairfax, MN police patch with baseball game…

    This is about all I could find that might relate–especially the last sentence. They are proud of this baseball complex.

    ” ….Memorial Park Baseball Grandstand complex. The baseball park has had the distinction of being named the amateur baseball park of the year in 1996. The St. Paul Saints have played at the complex a couple of times. The Fairfax Cardinals Amateur Baseball team plays there, as well as, the Fairfax Legion Team. Baseball has always been a favorite with Fairfax residents. ”

    Also, they have NINE police officers in Fairfax. Coincidence?

    “Bridgeview Fire?” Of course, the Chicago Fire do play their home games in the suburb of Bridgeview, but must you reflexively and unthinkingly copy the entirety of a story’s text without checking for accuracy?

    Forgive my ignorance or if I may have missed something above, but do you know how much of a player’s uniform is paid for by their team these days and any idea what the cost might be (ballpark estimate, of course)?

    Uniforms are provided as part of the league’s arrangement with its outfitter (Nike, in this case). No out-of-pocket expense for the player. But players who routinely trade jerseys after a game may be hit with a jersey-replacement fee, which I believe is a few hundred bucks.

    We see this in minor-league soccer; the New York Cosmos wore Nike uniforms for their first two years, but they had to pay for them. They signed a big contract with Under Armour for uniforms beginning with this season, but I’m told that they pay for those as well.

    No pic as of right now, but Encarnacion on the Jays wore his hat with the 16 patch on it last night, left over from the game before. I believe he was the only one.

    MLB.com actually described the Jays’ Fernandez memorial as a ‘sticker’ (and the broadcast crew a ‘decal’).
    Vid: link
    Pic: link

    As seen in the video, some players on Sunday had them on-field & some didn’t (being a sticker, which could fall off, probably makes sense then).

    I first noticed on Monday when some players still wore them – although at first, from just noticing a glint on left temple, I thought it might have been early introduction of the New Era logo creep.

    “The rulebook bans “headgear or any other equipment or apparel which, in the opinion of the Referee, may confuse an opponent because of its similarity in color to that of the game football”

    If that’s the rule, how are the Browns allowed to exist? Alternatively, why don’t they use bright pink footballs?

    The Redskins’ 2012 faux-leather throwback helmet would seem to be a clear violation of this rule. So enforcement would seem to be not a high priority for the refs on the field.

    they are allowed because the rest of the rule mention that there needs to be a contrasting element. such as the orange numbers on the browns jersey

    Y’know, if the NHL were to add that 100 logo as a patch for all teams, the Red Wings’ unis would be very crowded. Kind of like the Penguins in 1991-92, when they had their 25th anniversary patch and Badger Bob memorial patch in addition to the NHL 75th patch.

    If they wanted, the Pens could easily roll out a 115th anniversary patch commemorating the birth of pro hockey in Pittsburgh. Everything didn’t start with the NHL and those six teams.

    Re: Butler
    Do they wear black or navy? It’s so dark I can never tell. Or do they go black and navy together – if so, why? And, ick.

    Circumstances cause for bigger reactions too. Cardinals have lost 3 players in the past 15 years – first one to a heart attack (Darryl Kyle) and last two from drunk driving (Hancock and Taveras). I think Kyle’s was seen as maybe the most impactful at the time, also just right after Jack Buck passed away. It also happened during the season to a starter like Hernandez. Tavares was most like Hernandez in his career, very young and just getting started but it was out of the season and the story afterwards with him being drunk and killing someone else was unfortunate. Hancock’s was during the season right after a game, but like with Tavares it was his own fault.

    Sad I have to list 3 for one team.

    If you look at the pertinent bit of text from the original article (bottom of the first column), you’ll see that I took a passage that was in the middle of a sentence and re-cast it to serve as a complete sentence. Hence the brackets.

    The Penguins’ new retro road unis just look link.

    ESPN needs to update the Pens’ graphic, though, since they no longer have Vegas gold.

    That Pens-Flyers Stadium Series logo is every bit as underwhelming as the NHL’s 100 logo. Design department: Pittsburgh bridge? Check. Pens colors? Check. Corp sponsor logo? Double check. OK, we’re done here.

    It’s interesting that certain parts of the uniform back then were comparable in cost to those parts of the uniform today, despite today’s equipment being objectively much better.

    For instance, the 1965 helmet cost a total of $60 (shell plus liner), which is equivalent to about $460 today. That’s more expensive than most of today’s high-tech helmets. And the $20 shoes from 1965 would be equivalent to $150 today, which can buy a pair of cleats that are far more lightweight and performance-oriented than the old canvas/leather/metal cleats of that day.

    Film of Cowboys practices in 1971 shows a lot of what appear to be former game jerseys and pants. I don’t recall any having names on the back, which would make sense since names started only the year before.

    I was just talking to my 8 y/o son about the Skins uniforms this morning, speculating that they were related to Boston College. I will update him this evening.

    The Cowboys did wear that uniform in 1994. Look at the Packers-Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game as one example.

    The NHL anniversary logo is so underwhelming. Mostly not bad, but kind of a gentleman’s C of a design. The only strong demerit I have for it is the confusing metallic ribbon. Metal elements don’t flow like ribbon, so it took me a bit of puzzling to figure out the gray quadrilaterals inside each 0 are supposed to be the back of the ribbon wrapped unevenly around the number. Which also means that the black centers of the 0s are empty, and not pucks, even though they’re perfect circles of black. All in all, I hope the logo is used mainly in the league’s print and digital marketing and not on uniforms.

    A question that popped into my head. One of the Marlins’s reaction to the Fernandez tragedy is to retire his number. Jose was only 24, does this make him the youngest person to have their number retired in baseball? In the other major leagues?

    Other than another death, I can’t imagine a reason why a person would have a number retired so young.

    I’d have to rack my brain for baseball, but in hockey, the Penguins retired 21 for a deceased 21 year old Michel Brière. So that’s one such man younger than Fernandez’s 24, sadly.

    Sometimes numbers are not formally retired, but are taken out of circulation. For example number 28 for the Canucks, worn by Luc Bourdon who I believe was 21 when he passed away.

    In the NFL, the Browns retired Ernie Davis’ number when he died at age 23. And he never even played a game for them.

    Blues’ defenseman Bob Gassoff was killed in a motorcycle accident at age 24, and his number 3 was retired.

    Taxi squads are a Paul Brown innovation that dates back to the 1940s, I believe. So named because the team owner put them on the payroll of his taxi company, although they didn’t actually drive cabs. So yes, both the concept and the name were well established in the 60s.

    Y’know, I don’t really hear “taxi squad” much, if at all, in modern usage. It seems people are content with the term “practice squad” these days.

    I’m just going by a small sample size of Detroit sports radio, though, so I dunno.

    I don’t think they HAD practice squads in the old days. you were either on the team or not.

    My recollection of Taxi Squad meant guys who had other jobs but could be called to the team if someone got hurt, etc. Taxi drivers sort of set their own hours so they could more easily stop what they were doing and get to the team ASAP.

    The original taxi squad was a mechanism where the Browns could pay extra (non-roster) players through the owner’s taxi company. I’m pretty sure that NFL teams had seven-man taxi squads in the ’60s (maybe to keep players away from the AFL) until they expanded rosters from 40 to 47.

    The Cowboys are using an Apex retail version of their 1995 double star jersey, which incorrectly had the anniversary patch. Not sure why that was, but I once read it was because the Cowboys wanted to wear them during that 94 season, but the NFL wouldn’t allow a 5th jersey. If that were true, it would explain why Apex made a bunch of retail jerseys with the patch.

    Wow, I’d actually forgotten about this… but looking up the Cowboys’ 1994 season, their throwback game was the link, who won in overtime on a Jason Hanson field goal.

    It’s amusing to see the Cowboys wearing their regular silver helmets in that game, considering they were one of the teams impacted by the “one-helmet” rule in 2013, having worn a white helmet with their blue throwbacks in recent seasons up to that point. Because they’d already been scheduled to wear blue on Thanksgiving, instead of mixing uni eras again, they just went with their regular blue unis against Oakland.

    Of course, I still love the simplicity of the Lions’ throwbacks, though they’re too plain to be regular uniforms in today’s league. Still, I’d rather see them in those than wearing anything with black on it. Especially if it’s that WCF patch that shouldn’t be a perma-memorial, but is now thanks to Martha Ford.

    My best guess on the number of shoelaces used is that its a result of spatting. When the spatting gets cut off, the shoelaces get cut up as well.

    Let me start by saying I love this website! But, for as much as you complain about the gaudiness of new uniforms, colors, patches and everything else… why are we underwhelmed by the centennial logo for the NHL? I think it’s clean and basic and states it’s purpose.

    A centennial is a big deal. This strikes me as more plain and blah than clean and basic. I realize those are all very flexible terms, open to individual interpretation. One person’s “blah” is another’s “classy,” and so on.

    I’ll say this: I’d rather see them err on the side of plainness than on the side of over-gaudiness. But I do think there’s a happy medium.

    Especially when the NHL 75th and Stanley Cup 100th logos were pretty cool, the NHL 100th falls short in comparison. Even the NHL 2000 patch was alright.

    The NHL 75th was so cool, the Penguins mirrored it for their own 25th patch!

    The 2000 patch was one of those things that didn’t really need to exist, but it was okay.

    Surprising how many other errors are on the Cowboys display. They did not wear ‘mint’ pants with their navy jerseys back in 1984 with the ’25th’ patch (Dorsett jersey in back row) but instead wore silver pants. Also, the pre-1976 (1976 was the red-white-blue helmet stripes) uniforms to camera’s left of Staubach’s #12 wore a dark grey pants – again, not the metallic mint.

    I guess we shouldn’t expect any better from the Cowboys with their ‘train wreck’ of coordination in their current unis.

    I’ve said the same thing every time that picture comes up. Roger’s jersey has the wrong font too. Should have serrifs.

    I don’t think I’ve ever heard the Cowboys’ pants for their white jerseys described as being colored “mint” before. (I’d say it’s more like a metallic cadet blue, though I’ve also sometimes called it “platinum-green”.) But yeah, it’s especially jarring to see those pants with a navy jersey. But hey, at least they got one aspect of those pants right – the numbers on the hips! (You can *barely* make out the blue oval with the number in it, but it’s there.)

    I apologize in advance for asking as I assume you’ve explained it before (it’s also possible I’ve asked before), but why do the Red Wings do that switcheroo with the name plates every year (from straight to arched)? Seems like a hassle. Is there some dreaded story behind it?

    The party line is that you have to “earn” your vertically arched nameplate by making the final roster cut.

    I think the real reason is that vertical arching is a more time- and $$-intensive process, and there’s no point in doing it for all the preseason players who won’t be making the team.

    Whoa, talk about burying the lede (if such a thing is possible on a ticker item) on the Drummondville picture. How long have the Remparts been incorporating that castle design in their uniform?!? That’s incredible.

    In the 90’s, I used to go to a Can-Am youth hockey camp that was held at the Remparts’ arena in Laval, Quebec. Or maybe it was just their practice arena, I’m not sure. Anyways, that was a fascinating experience for an American kid – the camp was bilingual, but French was obviously more prevalent, so it was a lot of kids’ first real “fish out of water” experience.

    I went for three years, and each year we got a jersey that was based on an NHL template. I know one year was the Sabres’ black jerseys, another year was the Blues’ red and yellow design, but I can’t recall the third year. So adorably 90’s.

    The memory on it may be foggy as you pointed out. Remparts do not play in Laval, QC. Laval is a Montreal suburb. Quebec Remparts are from Quebec City. It is about 160 miles between the cities.

    They did play on the campus of Laval University in the late 1990s, which to confuse things is in Quebec City. The tournament was probably there.

    The present team is Quebec Remparts version 2.0. They had played between 1969 and 1985 before relocating. The Remparts were reborn in 1997. They’ve had different variations of castle designs in uniforms past.

    Only Thurman Munson ranks with JDF16 in outpouring of grief with baseball. If it happened today Yankees would all had worn ’15’ the next game.

    How many times did Frank Gifford slip and called Dennis Thurman as ‘Thurman Munson’ on Monday Night football.

    I also remember Yankees on a Game of the Week on Sept. 1, 1979 when the Yankees catcher stepped up to the plate.

    Joe Garagiola – ‘This is Brad Gulden, he is the catcher and hitting eighth today. He is a left-handed hitter. Brad Gulden!’

    After about a minute Tony Kubek ended the awkwardness and said ‘He’s got pretty big shoes to fill…’

    I really wish the Dolphins were wearing mono aqua instead of orange so the Bengals could wear mono orange instead of white.

    I agree that I’d like to see the Dolphins in aqua against the Bengals in orange, but the Bengals actually chose white uniforms, which have been specially designed for the Color Rash. They weren’t forced into it.

    I’ve also noticed something for tomorrow’s Ticker– the NHL Centennial Classic logo has also been released

    Great find, Jerry.

    Once again, it breaks my heart that Gannett has pulled the Milwaukee Journal and Sentinel archives off Google. Hundreds of years of research material just taken away.

    Thank you.

    I agree 100% about the Milwaukee papers, and continue to appreciate my access to Pittsburgh’s.

    “Wish they had said when the ’Skins began picking up the full equipment tab for their players. In any case, it’s nice to see that they were once at the leading edge of a progressive team policy.”

    One reasons the ‘Skins may have been progressive in this regard is that they were probably one of wealthiest teams in the league in ’65. The only other teams in the “South” at that point were Dallas and St. Louis, and Washington’s owner, George Preston Marshall had historically being very aggressive in making Washington the Team of the South:

    link

    “From the year the Redskins moved to D.C. in 1937 until 1960, when the Cowboys were formed, the Redskins were the NFL’s southern-most team.

    Long-time owner George Preston Marshall regarded the region as his team’s natural territory.

    Marshall, a shrewd promoter, seized the opportunity to attract southern fans, feeding them a steady diet of burgundy and gold in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

    Shortly after the Redskins came to D.C., he launched a radio network that stretched from New England as far south as Florida. He later added television.

    He arranged for the Redskins to play exhibition games in such cities as Mobile, Ala., Norfolk, Va., Memphis, Tenn., Shreveport, La., Winston-Salem, N.C, and Amarillo, Texas.

    The Redskins thus built a loyal southern following and became known as the ‘Team of the South.’

    *****

    Marshall’s most powerful promotional tool was his radio and TV network, which was sponsored by the American Oil Co., otherwise known as AMOCO, and Marlboro Cigarettes.

    The network included about 40 TV and 100 radio stations at its peak and included stations in northeastern states such as New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

    The owner’s slogan was, ‘The Redskins every Sunday … in your living room or at the stadium.'”

    My understanding is that Washington had by far the largest TV and radio network in the NFL for many years.

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