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Briefly Exploring Clint Richardson’s Auburn Uniform Database

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By Phil Hecken, with Clint Richardson

If you’ve been reading Uni Watch the past several weeks, you’ll notice there have been several ticker items mentioning the “AUD” or “Auburn Uniform Database,” a project undertaken by my pal Clint Richardson. If that name sounds familiar, Clint has partnered with me several times on UW articles — usually when Auburn football makes the National Championship Game, but other times as well.

Those ticker mentions all come from Clint’s twitter account (@Clintau24), where he has been documenting various decades of uniforms for the Tigers. He’s not finished yet, but he’s getting close. Once he is finished, I’ll have him back for a much-larger look at the AUD. But until then, I had asked Clint if he could briefly explain the AUD to UW readers, and if in all of his researching, he’d found anything really unique or out of the ordinary.

Here’s Clint:

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The AUD
By Clint Richardson

The Auburn Uniform Database began in 2013 as what I imagined to be a rather quick summer project in documenting Auburn basketball uniforms, specifically around the turn of the century. I soon realized the potential for so much more and began sharing my love for Auburn and uniforms to a broader audience. As we near the end of the fifth anniversary of the site, I look back and forward with much pride and excitement. Last summer I migrated the site to a WordPress hosted website, which has paid dividends already.

One of my favorite aspects of the Auburn Uniform Database is the excuse opportunity to research Auburn history. Over the last few months, I have expanded the historic team uniforms tremendously, including football uniforms dating back to 1933. With a combination of the team sports covered on the site (baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, football, soccer, softball, and volleyball) the AUD boasts over 175 years of Auburn athletic uniforms.

There’s also a list of field designs used in bowl games (a personal favorite) the Tigers have played in, with only a handful of games missing.

The Auburn Uniform Database has covered topics from marching band uniforms to football conference patches to Auburn potentially replacing the AU logo in 1995. No detail is ever too small to care about. I implore you to check out the AUD and see all that it includes.

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Famed Auburn coach Ralph “Shug” Jordan was no stranger to tweaking Auburn’s football uniforms. When he first took over in 1951, the Tigers wore orange pants. Orange jerseys were worn the next four seasons. Blue leather helmets were replaced with white suspension lids. Jordan oversaw the addition of the Northwestern stripes, gigantic player numbers, and eventually the AU logo on the helmets. And maybe even experimented with a tiger head once before. But there’s one thing that doesn’t get talked about a lot – number outlines.

Throughout the 84 seasons of football uniforms confirmed through photographic and newspaper evidence, never has Auburn worn two-colored numbers. Well, maybe.


In the early 1970s, Shug wanted to give the blue jerseys a bit of a pop, and apparently adding an orange outline to the white numbers was the way to go. With most photos of the era, it’s difficult to tell for sure if and when this actually came to the field. Andy Carpenter, a Twitter follower, once shared photos of his father’s jersey from the era. Low and behold, there are the orange outlines.

Lee Carpenter played for Auburn from 1971-1974. He was involved in the infamous “Punt Bama Punt” Iron Bowl from 1972. Andy has even shared his father’s jersey from that game. With this criteria alone, it’s easy to narrow it down to 1973 and 1974.

Auburn’s own yearbook, the Glomerata, only has one image from the 1974 season showcasing what could be the orange outlines.

Georgia Tech’s Blueprint yearbook has a few better photos.

That’s all the evidence I’ve been able to gather on this topic. No doubt the orange outlines existed, but it’s difficult to nail down the specific games. There didn’t seem to be much talk about the tweak to the uniforms back in the day either. Newspapers.com, a great asset, doesn’t seem to have any articles with even a mention.

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Thanks, Clint! Great work so far, and thanks for the information on the orange outlines. As we’ve all seen when conducting photo research, the further back you go, the less photographic evidence and other documentation that exists. That’s why sites like Clint’s AUD and the GUD (Gridiron Uniform Database), among others, are so invaluable — they’re researching and documenting the past and keeping them in digital formats that will grow over time and serve as permanent records of our uniform history past. I look forward to bringing you more when Clint’s AUD is “complete.”

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Special Buckets…

…for today’s Stadium Series game

Seems like the NHL (and the Flyers and Penguins) are, *ahem* pulling out all the stops for today’s Stadium Series game between Philly and Pittsburgh — not only will the game be a kind-of “color rush” on ice, but both teams will have special helmet decals (or paint, I can’t quite tell) for the game. Whoop — check that — looks like a decal.

I’m not 100% certain, but I believe the Flyers will be going shoulder-to-toe orange (with black accents) while the Pens will be going shoulder-to-toe black (with gold accents). What we didn’t know, until yesterday, is whether the helmets would follow suit. Seems like they’re combining the best of both worlds, as it were.

We know the sweaters:

I expect the Flyers to have predominately orange pants, and the Pens to have mostly black. I’d imagine socks will follow suit. But the helmets — they’re…something else.

Here’s what the Flyers will wear:

And the Penguins:

And here they are together:

This will be the first time (to my knowledge) that both teams will be sporting the equivalent of NFL-sized logos on their hats. I’m not sure whether I’ll love it or hate it. Obviously, I’ll need to see them on the ice to render a final decision. I’ll have a full recap of the game tomorrow.

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Hand Drawn NHL Concepts

You guys know I love uniform concepts, so yesterday, reader (and Griffins Contest Winner/Designer) John Elbertson turned me onto a pretty cool little site (Morgan Edwards Design), a section of which is devoted to “Hand Drawn NHL Concepts.”

You can check out the full set of concepts here.

Most of these are quite close to what teams currently wear (or have worn), but with just enough tweaks to really make them interesting, at least to me. A couple of them really caught my eye (click to enlarge):

I like how he blends the orange and the teal (not a combo I thought I would like) for the Ducks, and I love the light (not quite “powder”) blue concept for the Jets. There are others that are really great too.

Anyway, take a poke around there — it’s well done — and tell us your favorite (or least favorite) in the comments below! Thanks again to John for pointing this website out!

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Click to enlarge

And now some quick words from Paul: Hi there. In case you missed it this past week, we’re currently auctioning off the very excellent Uni Watch hockey jersey shown above, which was made by the one and only Wafflebored. Full details here.

While we’re at it, we also announced this week that Uni Watch is once again partnering with Grey Flannel Auctions to provide free appraisals of your sports-related collectibles.

If you have game-used jerseys, autographs, or other potentially valuable memorabilia, you can submit photos and descriptions to GFA and get a free appraisal, with no further obligation, within 72 hours. It’s like an online version of Antiques Roadshow. If you want to consign your item to GFA, that can be arranged, but you’re under no obligation to do so.

For full details on all of this, look here.

That’s it. We now return you to your regularly scheduled weekend content.

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Too Good For the Ticker


Too Good…

for the Ticker

As you guys and gals know if you follow me on the Twitter, I have a number of accounts who @ or tag me in classic old-time baseball photos — and many of these do make it to the ticker.

Occasionally, there are a few that are just so outstanding they’re too good for the ticker.

I had a pair of those yesterday.

The first comes from my pal Alex Cheremeteff, who found a photo of skipper Sparky Anderson when he was at the helm of the 1964 Toronto Maple Leafs, who were a high-level minor league baseball club located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, that played from 1896 to 1967. Over the years, the team had many Major League affiliations, and in 1964, their major league club was the Washington Senators.

The team had an absolutely killer cap & jersey logo too: (click to enlarge):

Here’s Alex’ tweet:

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The second tweet comes from SABR Bio Project, who also tweets some awesome old school baseball photos. This tweet is of the 1927 Detroit Tigers, who wore a one-year-only special uniform that season depicting a tiger head on the left breast of the jersey. DTTN shows it like so:

There aren’t too many good photos of this uniform out there (in fact, DTTN shows this photo of the home uni), so when I saw SABR tweet the nice quality road photo, I knew it was TGFTT.

+ + + + + + + + + +

That is one scary lookin’ Tiger!

OK. Now, on to the ticker…

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The Ticker
By Anthony Emerson

Baseball News: Yankees OF Clint Frazier’s new glove has red accents as a nod to his hair and the inscription “Pop Piece” as a reference to his cat, Papi (from Matt Shevin). … We finally got to see Dom Thompson-Williams’ crazy NOB on the field during a game yesterday (from @CespedesBBQ, Guy Haberman and Bill Burke). … The Royals have placed an order for Nokona ShowBelts (from Erik Spoonmore). … Everything is a product: Topps is now selling a Manny Machado baseball card with an insert of the tablecloth from his Padres introductory press conference (from @atopgreeneshill). … The Tulsa Drillers will celebrate their 2018 Texas League championship with gold gear on opening day (from @kyle47). … The Omaha Storm Chasers will rebrand as the Omaha Runzas on June 8 (from Jack Wade). … UCF has unveiled a pretty awesome new jersey (from Richard Grossman and Jeff Sharon). … Vanderbilt has revealed their Sunday unis (from Crosby Kisler). … This MLB The Show video depicts Walter Johnson in a Senators uni that wouldn’t be worn until 13 years after he died (from William F. Yurasko).

NFL/AAF/Pro Football News: Here’s a decent article on Starter’s recent resurgence, most notably with the new spring football league AAF (from Philip Tutor). … “1st game of the 4th season of the so called “Professional” League of American Football in Mexico and the Fundidores are not wearing identical jerseys,” notes Pixteca.
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Hockey News: New Blue Jackets C Matt Duchene will wear No. 95 (from Tyler Johnson). … Whoa, check out these gorgeous pics from a 1985 Minnesota high school tournament, Hastings vs. Anoka. Hastings in cooperalls and clear boards! (Many thanks to Tom Whitfield).

Soccer News: Stoke City’s keepers will be wearing a plain green shirt with no advertisements, maker’s mark, badge or NOB in honor of the late Gordon Banks, who wore a similar kit over 200 times for the Potters. Banks died on the 12th at the age of 81, and was a native of Stoke-on-Trent (from Gabriel Hurl, Andy Connelly, and @bryant_rf). … Paris Saint-Germain’s 2019-20 home kit has been leaked to FootyHeadlines (from Josh Hinton). … Also from Josh: Atlético Madrid are moving to Puma from Nike. Their contract with Nike wasn’t supposed to expire until 2026. … Chris Stride of the University of Sheffield has released research indicating that the explosion of replica kit sales in England was primarily a fan-driven, rather than manufacturers forcing them upon consumers (from Mark Coale). … Here’s a look at all of the new MLS kits that have been released so far (from Phil). Phil will be back next weekend with Kyle Evans and CJ Fleck when they bring you the annual MLS Preview.

Grab Bag: Spire Motorsport’s new No. 77 car will make its debut tomorrow in Atlanta. It appears that Spire has taken the number font from the defunct Furniture Row Racing (from Christopher Hickey). … These Aussie football guernseys clearly weren’t green-screen tested (from @torak). … Virginia Tech wrestling is going BFBS (from Andrew Cosentino). … Paul will have extremely conflicted feelings about this purple brannock device (from @j_foreigner). … K-State will don its lavender throwback uniforms for Oklahoma State today (from Phil).

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Comments (10)

    Looking like it will be black pants for the Flyers for the outdoor game based on the recent practice with the players sporting those lids.

    link

    This type of helmet decaling a regular practice for NLL teams (only the Toronto Rock abstain). Lets just keep it there. It is fine for a few one-offs in hockey but do not want to see this become a regular thing.

    Would have been cool if the Flyers just went with orange helmets for the game.

    Just as props sitting there, the helmets looked cool. In action pics, not so good. Worth a try, worth noting it didn’t work out.

    RSB

    Liking a lot of the tweaks in the NHL hand drawn concepts. Also some not so much.

    One home and away set that is totally fine is the Ottawa Senators. Put them in that right away and they will look so much better.

    “This Almost Happened”

    Man, that was almost as much of a dodged bullet as the Cuban Missile Crisis. That proposed logo was bad even by 90s standards.

    K-State will don its lavender throwback uniforms for Oklahoma State today (from Phil).

    While most of the time people say “jerseys” when they should be saying “uniforms,” this time they would be right. Only the jerseys are/were lavender.

    Those clear dasher boards are a telltale sign of the old St. Paul Civic Center; torn down years ago, the XCel Energy Center was built on the site.

    I’m a day late on this, but this pic posted of a Panthers home game yesterday shows a lot of empty seats.

    link

    Official game summary says 10,750, 55% capacity. Anyone think it looks like HALF that amount?

    -Jet

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