The Monday Rob #1

The Gridiron Uniform Database Blog
The Monday Rob #1

by Rob Holecko

I have heard from many of you that you miss the articles that the Gridiron Uniform Database blog presented earlier this year, after the launch of our impressive site this summer.  While I appreciate the comments and kind words, producing a worthy blog article every day did take a lot of time, spare time which I just haven't had to devote to the website after the academic year started back up again.  Also, during the first few months of this site, there were many changes and corrections to the database that provided a lot of content for the blog, content that somewhat dried up as many of those changes have been completed, leaving daily blog updates somewhat unnecessary.

But due to popular demand, we have decided to debut here today a new Monday column that will run every week called "The Monday Rob."  It will give me a weekly opportunity to cover the type of material that I used to bring daily in the blog, such as new developments here at the Gridiron Uniform Database, and a weekly "rundown" of the NFL uniform news of the weekend.  Tim Brulia will continue to bring his weekly uniform rankings, Vilk-style, later in the week.

This new weekly format will afford us the opportunity to keep everyone up to date with what's been going on around here, without the time commitment of a daily report.  With the limited spare time that I have had to devote to the Gridiron Uniform Database, I frankly thought it was a better use of that time to devote it to working on the database itself than on daily blog entries.

While from the front page of the database you can easily view all of the yearly team images from 1933 to 2010, either by year, or by team, our next goal is for our visitors to be able to view what uniform was worn in every single matchup in NFL history.

With limited time to work on this, it has been a slow process for us.  We have begun to add the matchups to the site week-by-week, from the present going backwards, however, so far we currently have only completed the weekly pages back through Week 13 of last year.  While we will continue to do these on a week-by-week basis as time permits, we have come to realize that it is a priority of ours to get this data on the website much sooner.  To that end, on Friday of this week, November 11, we will be debuting a new feature here in the database which will greatly speed up this process that I hope everyone will enjoy.

Another new feature that we have added recently is on the research tab, you'll see a text-based breakdown of the uniforms worn in the Pro Bowls through the years prepared by our chief historian Tim Brulia.  While it was a text-based document like that of the NFL teams that eventually lead to our Bill Schaefer creating the images that now make up the Gridiron Uniform Database, and we currently have no immediate plans to add graphics of these Pro Bowl uniforms to our database, we do have more new research that we will be adding to the research tab in the coming days, so stay tuned.

Speaking of additional research, Tim also recently completed another trip to the Library of Congress in Washington and we will be adding that research, focusing on the AAFC, in the near future as well.

You also may have noticed that we have spruced up the graphics around here a few weeks ago.  We just wanted to give a little recognition for the new look, our new banners are the wonderful work of Mark Young, whom we (Bill, Tim and myself) give our wholehearted thanks to!

Without further ado, here is the weekly round-up...

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Weekly Roundup
The Bills wore white at home yesterday for the first time in 25 years to "whiteout" their game against the Jets, however, we didn't realize until it was pointed out by "Wheels" in the Uni Watch comments that they were wearing their "home" blue socks that they have worn with the blue uniforms in the previous home games, and not the ones they wore with the their white unis on the road.  The Jets pleased those of us who like to see contrasting pants matchups as well as jerseys, even though it made them look like this.   Counting the unique 9-11 ribbon combo they wore in Week 1 against the Cowboys, and the throwbacks they wore Week 2 against the Jaguars, the all-green Sunday is their sixth different uniform combo this year.  They are outdone only by the Rams, who wore their seventh different uniform combo in eight games Sunday against the Cardinals when they donned their white-over-golds.  Only the blue-over-white combo which they wore in Weeks 4 and 7, have they worn more than once.  Their opponent Cardinals wore their black alts, and it must have done them good as they blocked a Rams game-winning field goal attempt at the end of regulation and won on a 99-yard punt return in overtime.  It was their first win ever in the black uniforms, they are now 1-3, with losses last year to the Bucs and 49ers and earlier this year to the Giants.  

We are now in November and the cooler weather means it is the time of the year when the warm weather teams like the Bucs and Chargers that traditionally wear white in the heat of summer transition to the colors.  While last week, the primary white at home teams the Browns and Cowboys, were both on the road, it gave us for the first time this year, a week with no teams wearing white at home at all, as Tim pointed out.  With the Bills white-out and the Cowboys back at home, the early season WAH Chargers wore their blue uniforms for the first time this year against the Packers.   The Steelers and the Saints both wore their throwbacks yesterday against mono-white opponents, and the Saints won, however it may be good karma for the Bucs, as the last time the Bucs lost to the Saints in the their throwbacks, on Dec. 2, 2002, they went on to win the Super Bowl.  This was the second time the Saints wore their throwbacks this year.

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We'll see you in a few days with Tim's Weekly Rankings, and don't forget Thursday Night Football starts this week!