Big Yellow Taxi, not Big Gold Taxi

Well, continuing where we left off yesterday, we have another slew of changes to the database to bring you, so let's get started right away.      From Jay Braiman, we have updated the New York Jets' 1978 uniforms to show that they wore their new green helmets for two games in the preseason with the 1977 uniform tops.  We've also done a minor update to the 1986 Browns, confirming that they only wore the brown tops specifically in the preseason.  Our own Bill Schaefer spotted this while watching their team yearbook video on NFL Network yesterday afternoon.

Following up on a discussion we had in the forum, we have changed the stripe pattern that the 1964 Vikings had on the purple pants they wore from 1962 through 1964.  The Vikings switched to wearing white tops at home in 1964 and you may remember a story on Uni Watch where the Lions forgot to bring their colored jerseys, so the Vikings had to the switch to all-purple after the first quarter.  While it's near impossible to tell from that screen grab what the pattern of the stripes was, other pictures confirmed that in 1964 only the pants stripes changed to a white-yellow-white pattern, the reverse of the yellow-white-yellow used in 1962 and 1963, as far as we can tell.  After the 1964 season, the Vikings did not wear purple pants again until their 2006 redesign.  Special thanks to smith03 who started the thread and to Mako, who brought us confirming photographs. "Don't call us 'yella', we ain't yella', we's gold!"        This reminds us of a particular issue that has been discussed around The Gridiron Uniform Database watercooler recently, and that is the color yellow.  Some people call this gold.  Gold is what the 49ers, Saints and 21st century Rams wear, yellow is what the Steelers, Packers and 20th century Rams wear.  The Vikings trim is yellow, not gold.  Gold is gold.  When referring to the 49ers' gold we shouldn't have to call it "gold" gold, to differentiate it from "yellow" gold.  I'm guessing this particular trend started in the 1960s (Packers) and 1970s (Steelers) when the particularly vociferous fan bases of those championship teams didn't like being called "yellow" because that color is synonymous with being afraid.    You can call gold yellow, you can call a brown horse blue, and you can call the Miami Heat champions, but merely saying it doesn't make it so.      The 1980-84 New York Giants have gone through a few changes thanks to the first of what I'm sure will be many submissions by bigbluelarry.  We added blue belts, widened the torso numbers on both jerseys, we changed the numbers on the white jerseys to a different shade of blue, more of a royal blue, not the same darker blue as on the other jerseys or helmet.  And we also adjusted the color of the socks for both uniform combinations, they too are the royal, and not the darker blue.  Compare the previous 1982 Giants here, with the image pictured to the right. Is that a white collar or an undershirt?      Two other guys who also look to be on their way to becoming valuable contributors for their teams are Cowboys' contributor slats7 and Broncos' contributor WD1983. For the 1979-80 Cowboys, we have added white collars to their blue jerseys, and for the 1981 Cowboys, we have added the new blue jersey they added during that season.       For the Broncos, we have a variety of changes for the 1965 to 1968 period.  For '65-66 we changed the collars to a different color than the jersey was, for '66 we changed the helmet logo, we changed the 1967 regular season pants to blue-orange-blue striping of equal width, and for 1968 we have added an orange jersey/white pants combo which used the 1967 blue-orange-blue striping on the pants, and we also adjusted the orange-blue-orange pant stripes to also be of equal widths.  We have many more Cowboys' and Broncos' changes from these two contributors that are still under consideration, and I'm sure we'll hear from these two again.  Remember all submissions in the forum are constantly and continuously under review to insure that we maintain the most accurate database possible.

1978 New York Jets 1986 Cleveland Browns 1964 Minnesota Vikings 1980-84 New York Giants 1981 Dallas Cowboys 1966 Denver Broncos 1968 Denver Broncos 1994 Denver Broncos 1973 Miami Dolphins 2005 Arizona Cardinals

     Speaking of the Broncos, we have another change we have confirmed.  As we told you yesterday, we were looking at the throwback jerseys the Broncos wore in 1994 for the NFL's 75th anniversary celebrations.  While there are many pictures of the home orange throwback jersey they wore on 9/18/94 against the Raiders, there are surprisingly few images available of the following Monday Night game at Buffalo when they wore the white road throwbacks.  In the database we originally had blue sleeves on these jerseys, and I don't know if this was just an educated guess in the absence of any real proof, i.e. the home throwbacks were orange with the blue sleeves, so therefore we'll assume that the road throwbacks were white with blue sleeves.
     We have no problem with using this type of logic, if you have no proof of anything, you go with your best educated guess.  As it turns our we were able to locate proof that the throwback sleeves were orange.  While the video of that game was unavailable to us, I did remember that the Broncos played on Monday Night Football again later that season, in a particularly memorable game against the Chiefs -- the famed Elway vs. Montana matchup -- and this footage was available to us.  Monday Night Football tends to use footage from previous games in the opening montage, and more often than not they'll use previous MNF footage when it's available to them, and sure enough, when Hank Jr. started singing, there was the Broncos road throwbacks in the background.  Additional screenshots here in the forum. WD1983 also supplied us with an image from that game on a 1995 football card (left).



     Another Dolphins' change comes to us courtesy of dirwulf, and that is a Chicago Tribune newspaper image (right) he has found of a 1973 Dolphins' player, Lloyd Mumphord, wearing a stripeless jersey during the preseason.  In this you can see he is clearly wearing the "dolphin-in-the-sun" helmet variation that we discussed yesterday.  As we told you, sometimes the Dolphins wore differing helmets in the same game, but with no specific proof that any Dolphins wore the other helmet variation in this game, we'll stick with just this helmet-jersey combination for now, although it is probably reasonable to assume that there very well may have been Dolphins in that game with the "dolphins-across-the-sun" helmet variation.  Dirwulf also tell us in the forum that RB Norm Bulaich (left, pictured in 1978) continued to wear the "in-the-sun" variation, possibly as late as 1979.

     One final change was submitted to us by andrewharrington, and that was the name lettering on the 2005 Arizona Cardinals jersey backs did not have an outline around the letters as they did beginning in 2006.  In 2005, they were simply white.

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     Which brings us to one important change, beginning tomorrow in an effort to bring a professional journalistic atmosphere to this "blog", we will only be attributing credit for submissions to people with proper names.  If you want to continue posting with a handle in the forum that is fine, however, you'll notice that timmyb in the forum is referred to as Tim Brulia here in the blog, and accordingly we will only be referring to "real people" here in the future.  So Andrew Harrington (or is it Andre Wharrington?!) and Jay Braiman will be mentioned here in the blog when they give us further contributions, but names like Dirwulf, WD1983, bigbluelarry, and slats7, will no longer meet the naming conventions of this enterprise.  We, of course, will continue to accept your contributions, however, please understand that if you retain the anonymity of a forum handle, we will be unable to give you proper credit here in the blog, unless you submit your real name along with it.

     On a related issue, forum PMs and emails are fine if you want to wish us a happy birthday, but if you have any questions related to football uniforms, or the site or anything of that nature, we ask that you use the preferred method of getting in touch with us by posting it in the forum.  That way others can see the contributions and comment on and discuss them, and if it is a simple question like, "How come you only depict the number 11?" or "Why don't you do the pre-1933 uniforms before doing the head-to-head matchups?" or "Are you guys stupid, don't you know that [insert team]'s helmet was [such-and-such color] during [such-and-such season]?"  I'm sure others will appreciate your question and the resultant answers.

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     Tomorrow, Tim Brulia will be bringing us some long awaited research on the 1941 Philadelphia Eagles' colors that I know everyone is dying to hear about!  So be sure to join us Friday for that and keep those submissions and corrections coming in the forum!