Get A Grip!

LaVern (Lavvie) Dilweg of the
Green Bay Packers wearing
"grip strips" in the late 1920s

     The Falcons, Saints, Bucs and Seahawks team pages are in, we now are more than halfway done in getting all the team pages in.  Of course once that is done there are still all of the year pages and head-to-head matchups to come, but our immediate goal as we work towards the official launch of our website is to get the team pages done, and we are certainly on our way.
     Speaking of launching the website, one of the things that must be done before that can happen is the choosing of a domain name, our permanent location here on the internet.  On Wednesday, we finalized our new domain name, and Tim & Bill's Football Uniform Project can now be found on the web at Gridiron Uniforms (gridironuniforms.com).  The new name of the website will be 'The Gridiron Uniform Database.'
     Also Tuesday we launched our forum, a place where web visitors can gather to discuss the uniforms in our database as well as submit changes and corrections, and ask questions.

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     It was also a busy day for Bill as work continued on updating the Redskins uniforms.  In the interest of completeness and accuracy, we made the decision to depict the stripes on the Redskins pants more accurately.  In the image to the left, you can see how the Packers' pants stripe is symmetrical, while in the Redskins' example in the middle, you can see that the stripe is not symmetrical, therefore the decision was made to depict it separately for both left and right side views.  This did, of course require a total overhaul of all of the Redskins' team pages.  Shortly after this, a similar situation was also discovered with the Philadelphia Eagles images, and work will continue on those as well.

1933 Dodgers

1933 Giants

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     Another on-going discussion we are having here at the Gridiron Uniform Database is the proper location of the "grip strips" on the uniform, which was worn by teams such as the 1933 Brooklyn Dodgers and the late 1920s Green Bay Packers as in the picture at the top of this entry.  (Read more about the Packers' Grip-strip uniforms here at the Green and Gold blog).  Is the location of the strips, which aided ball carriers by helping to prevent fumbles as they carried the ball, adequately depicted in our '33 Dodgers database image to the left?  Or would utility dictate that the strips would have been naturally placed more to the inside of the arms, where the ball carrier would be naturally holding the ball.
     In this picture (right) from the October 23, 1933 New York Times, a Brooklyn Dodger ball carrier is stiff-arming a New York Giant defender, but it is hard to tell exactly whether or not the placement of the grip strips differs greatly from the graphic or not.  The picture also gives a good image of the '33 Giants front uniform number pattern, as we have depicted above.
     The Steelers and the Bears paid homage to the "grip-strip" styles in their 1994 throwbacks, however they were purely decorative at this point, as in the modern-day, NFL rules did not permit uniforms to help ball carriers grip the ball.

Barry Foster carries the ball without any extra grip help from his uniform