Dandy Don and the Giants' eggshell pants?!

     On Thursday the Giants, 49ers, Rams and Redskins were added to the database and we only have eleven teams (the Iggles and the ten teams that came from the AFL) to go before all 32 teams will be in. Then it will just be a matter of finishing the yearly index pages and the bulk of database will be ready to go public. That doesn't mean that the work will be done, however, as this website will always be a "work in progress," forever being updated and tweaked in the interest of attaining 100% historical accuracy, which is in fact, unattainable.
     As with yesterday's Redskins' pant-stripe detail, the Carolina Panthers' pant-stripe with the cat's head is asymmetrical and will possibly require a left- and right-side view, and those changes will be considered next. 

~ ~ ~

     A matter was also brought to our attention Thursday, and that was a few possible uniform database inconsistencies that were addressed upon the viewing of an old recording of one of the earliest ABC Monday Night Football telecasts.  No, not the September 1970 New York Jets at Cleveland Browns game which was actually the first regular season Monday Night game, but an ABC nationally televised preseason Friday night game a few weeks earlier between the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

     This game was the grand opening of Three Rivers Stadium, and in viewing it we noticed a few interesting things:  First, as far as the uniform database goes, we learned that the Giants' white road uniforms without the triple-striped sleeves that we had believed had not debuted until 1971, did make an appearance a year earlier (at least in the preseason), and also that in this preseason game they wore them with a "darker" white pant, possibly a gray or an off-white or eggshell color -- or maybe they were just really dirty, (just kidding).

     I found it interesting that being that this was the grand opening of  Three Rivers, one of the cookie-cutter astroturf stadiums of the era, they really went all out, painting the endzones almost like it was a Super Bowl, and not just the home teams' end zone, which was black with Steeler-font stenciled "Steelers70", but also the visitors' end zone, which was painted blue with white GIANTS in basic block letters.
     Another item of interest noticed by Tim was that the Steelers' well-documented tradition of not having front helmet numbers on their preseason helmets, apparently did not begin until 1971, as in this game the front helmet numbers were present (right).
     See more pictures from this game here.  As Tim, who remembers watching this game over forty years later, pointed out, in a sideline interview Giants QB Fran Tarkenton kept calling Don Meredith "Dandy Don," years before the nickname was "cool".