Tim & Bill's NFL Uniform Project - Part II - Tim's Story

Originally Published at Uni Watch
By Phil Hecken

I’m back again with Tim Brulia, Uni Watch uniform historian, and his able partner, Bill Schaefer, with Part II of their incredible NFL Uniform Project. If you missed last weekend’s Part I, do yourself a favor and go back and read that before continuing.
When we left off with Part I, we heard “Bill’s Story” of this project. Bill actually had a bit more to lay out that I didn’t include last weekend, so I’d be remiss in not including it here:

I guess what we’re looking for is to set up as a database of our images kinda like FUPP. However, we’re hoping to set it up in such a way that you can both access any team from say a ’1990′ page of thumbnails (like how FUPP is set up) or, if you preferred, you could click on ‘Dallas Cowboys’ and see their entire history in thumbnail form where you could then choose to go to any year for that particular team.
Once we get past this point, we would love to be able to come up with a way to display the “Weekly Pair-Ups.” Whether this can be achieved by either accessing a seperate team page that displays their schedule for a certain season and each game score serves as the link to the pair-up images of each game or by just having a “2010 NFL Schedule and Results” where the game scores similarly serve as the link to the image. The specifics are kind of negotiable at this point – at least until we get the bulk of the site up and running. As non-computer programming people, Tim & I don’t know which would be harder to set up so we remain open to either approach.
We both agreed that a forum would be useful so that comments, criticisms, and suggestions can be made with Tim & I having power to moderate. If someone comes in with an error they think they’ve found, along with the proof of the alteration needed, we want to be able to see that, correct it, and give credit where it’s due.
I think the bottom line is that we want the site to be user friendly and logical in its structure so that you never have to ‘hunt’ for something.

— Bill Schaefer
Thanks, Bill. If there is anyone out there reading this who may have interest in setting up a uniform database as Bill is describing, drop Tim a line. OK? OK!
Now, lets move on to Timmy Brulia’s description of this magical mystery tour:

~~~
Hi, I’m Tim Brulia.
A little bit about me and my interest in sports uniforms in general and pro football uniforms in particular.
I am originally from Huntingdon, PA and currently reside in Enola, PA. Aside from sports, I have an interest in music, swimming, and the highways and byways of Pennsylvania.
My love of sports uniforms coincides with my love of sports going back to my childhood. Unlike a lot of you, my father was never much of a sports fan. He’d watch the occasional football game, but otherwise, he had no interest. He did like to hunt and fish, though. He passed on at an early age (48), a victim of colon cancer.
I have been a fan of sports since I was 8 years old. As previously mentioned, I also loved uniforms at roughly the same time. I drew little pictures of uniforms by pencil and then by crayons. Baseball and football gained my interest at first and then basketball, then hockey and later, soccer.
Fast forward to 1990. In a local bookstore, I bumped into the Marc Okkonen epic book. “Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century.” I had seen samples of his work of the White Sox and Pirates prior to the book, but to see a team by team history and then — even better — a year by year synopsis of every team’s uniform blew me away. I was amazed and was thirsting for more.
The 21st century arrived and in 2001, I discovered Andrew Greenstein’s marvelous nhluniforms website. Originally, his site consisted of uniforms only from the 1967-68 season, the first season of the expansion era of the National Hockey League. I made contact with Andrew and was able to supply him with enough information to help him be able to bring the site back in time. At first back to the 1942-43 season (the first season of the “Original Six” era) and then all the way back to the first season of the NHL (1917-18).
About a year later, I came upon the “Football Uniforms Past and Present” (fondly known as FUPP) site, which depicted NFL and AFL uniforms going back to 1959. As with the aforementioned work, I was awed and delighted to see such a site! Of course, the geek in me noticed a few things that needed to be revised. I made contact with the site administrator, Craig Wheeler. He was more than happy to make the adjustments needed and Craig was extremely pleasant to work with. But alas, life got in the way and eventually, the site went dormant.
After a few frustrating years to either see FUPP be resurrected or to see a new site come about, I took it upon myself to try and do something about it. So, I went about researching old newspapers, books, magazines, on-line archives, anything to try and determine what teams wore what and when. About 2006, I finally was able to piece together what uniforms were worn by every team in the major pro football leagues since 1933.
Why 1933? 1933 is basically the B.C./A.D. timeline in pro football history. Prior to 1933, the NFL was very much the gypsy league. Teams came and went with mind-numbing frequency. Franchises moved, scheduled games on the run, occasionally employed ringers, folded in mid-season, and the like. By 1933, though, the NFL decided to shed this fly by night operation and become a true first class operation. 1933 was the first season of a rulebook separate from that of college football, two separate divisions, a true Championship Game between division winners, franchises in major markets (Portsmouth would move to Detroit in 1934) and an eventual attempt at a fair and balanced schedule. While eventually we hope this site will include as many uniforms as possible in the 1920-1932 period, for the reasons mentioned, we feel that 1933 is a good starting point.
Getting back to the story, I was able to have Paul Lukas of the Uni Watch blog website, perhaps the most well read web site dedicated to sports uniform news and discussion, place my research for the 1933-1958 era as a “research project” on his site [see link above -- PH]. He promoted the documentation in early February of 2009. This had followed an earlier submission to his site of “White at Home in the NFL”, a project that was greatly enhanced by the diligent work of Kevin Tepley and Kyle Standefer, which details team by team (later season by season) every instance of teams that wore white jerseys for home games in the NFL since 1957. In the 1933-1958 document, I did ask that anyone who was willing to tackle the project to seek me out and I would be more than willing to assist. Good folks did contact me, but for whatever reason, were not able (or have not been able) to see it through. Nonetheless, I thank any and all to those who approached me for their interest.
However, one individual, Bill Schaefer, who first touched base with me in September of 2009, was the one who persevered. He showed me samples of his work. From there, we went into a frenzy of emails, tweaks, and much back and forth discussion on colors, stripes, fonts and the like. By early 2010, we had completed the 1933-1958 era. At Bill’s suggestion, we decided to tackle the rest of the unis; from 1959 through 2003 to complete the FUPP era, and then bringing it on home from 2004 to the present. Some uniforms were tweaked as many as 6 or 7 times from original draft to finished product. We have disagreed often, but when we came to the final product, we both made sure that we were at least on the same page. “Just get it right” has been our mantra. Bill’s dedication to the project and attention to detail are unmatched. His patience with me is appreciated more than I can say. I can’t thank him enough!
In conclusion, I have only supplied Bill and others with the descriptions. It is Bill who deserves full and total credit for bringing the words into illustrations that vividly show what the words look like.
Enjoy!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
And thank you, Tim.
As you can see, dear readers, Tim & Bill are really onto something incredibly important in the annals of uniform history documentation. And, as I alluded to last week, they’re almost there. Here’s where you fine folks can help — if anyone out there has the knowledge and tools to help them build a website, to the specs Bill & Tim have laid out above, you’d not only be assisting them tremendously, but you’d be advancing the documentation of uniform history a thousand-fold in the process. If you’re interested, please contact Tim directly.
Thanks.

Tim & Bill's NFL Uniform Project - Part I - Bill's Story

Originally Published at Uni Watch
By Phil Hecken

No, the team you see listed above in today’s splash photo isn’t some kind of crazy “cross sport concept uniform” by one of the many tweakers who contribute to Uni Watch. What you’re looking at is an outstanding graphical representation of the 1936 Pittsburgh Pirates, who finished that season with a record of 6-6-0, good enough for Second Place in the NFL’s Eastern Division.
“Wait,” you might say, “wasn’t Pittsburgh’s football team called the Steelers?” Not in 1936, they weren’t. The Steelers were founded as the Pittsburgh Pirates on July 8, 1933, by Art Rooney. The ownership of the Steelers has remained within the Rooney family since its founding. It was actually somewhat common practice at the time for NFL teams to take on the names of their MLB counterparts. The NFL team from Pittsburgh kept the name “Pirates” for seven years, from their founding through the 1939 season.
Today, I am pleased and honored to bring you a look at the beginning of an historical research project which may only be exceeded by the incredible work of Marc Okkonen, whose seminal work “Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century” is basically the “bible” to which uniform historians turn for their reference. Many of you are familiar with Uni Watch Uniform Historian Tim Brulia, whose White at Home in the NFL and Pro Football Uniform History Project are staples of the Uni Watch “Research Projects” found in the tab bar at the top of this page.
Tim is now embarking on a much grander project in both historical importance and scope, and for this project he has enlisted the able assistance of Bill Schaefer, who is the graphical genius behind Tim’s work. Basically, what the two of these men have done is to chart the entire NFL uniform history since 1933, and put those uniforms into graphical form, a la Okkonen, or the now defunct FUPP (Football Uniforms Past & Present) project.
Today, I’m going to officially introduce the Uni Watch faithful to the second half of the “Tim & Bill” tandem, Mr. Bill Schaefer. He and Tim have made tremendous strides in this long, on-going, and immensely important project, and they’re almost ready to reveal it to the world. I’m privileged to be able to bring you a taste of what lies in store. We’ll begin today with “Bill’s Story”:

~~~
My Story
By Bill Schaefer
When I was 5 years old, my Dad became a season ticket holder for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He still is to this day at age 66. From 1977 to 1990, I attended a minimum of 5 home games per year with only college attendance in Florida and moving to South Carolina eventually breaking the string. Getting to attend the Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa with him was a first for me. It was my Dad’s fourth (XII, XIII, XXX, and XLIII).
When I moved to Florida in 2002, I got my first job that required work on a computer. This was actually my first run-in with the Internet. During some down time, I discovered “Football Uniforms: Past and Present” and began using its images as screensavers. I noticed that some of the Steelers’ images were missing anniversary logos that I knew had been worn. I was there! I found the images (and photographic proof) and sent them to Craig Wheeler. He made the appropriate corrections in short order. I was so proud of my tiny contributions!
However, soon after the completion of the 2003 season, the site ceased updating. I tried my darnedest trying to revise the 2003 images each year to suit the changes that ensued over the next half-decade to build upon my ‘screensaver cache.’ The problem that I continued to have was that Craig’s templates were asymmetrical. This made alterations extremely difficult to make, as well as getting them to simply look good, but I kept at it.
Over Spring Break in 2009, while conducting online searches for then upcoming AFL 50th Anniversary Logos, I came across Tim Brulia’s column posted on “Uni Watch” outlining the research he had done for the 20+ years previous to the decades covered on Craig Wheeler’s site. In it, Tim mentioned that if anyone would like to take up the task, for them to contact him. As a high school math teacher with the upcoming summer off, I figured I’d try my hand at it during my ‘spare vacation time.’ If I sucked at it, no one had to know.
Working with a much more user-friendly, 2-dimensional template, I began work on constructing images from Tim’s vivid descriptions. Using the color samples I found on “The Society for Sports Uniform Research,” [since renamed "ColorWerx" -- PH] I was able to achieve better matches to Tim’s words as closely as possible while utilizing the correct shades described. Over the course of the summer, I constructed several leather helmet templates and from there first drafts of almost every team and year listed from 1933-1958. I was pretty pleased with my product. As I neared completion, I emailed Tim to introduce myself and send him a small sample of what I had done.
The next several months became a whirlwind of emails sending comments, suggestions, revisions, and even more revisions back and forth between Tim and myself. When this stage was completed we decided to ‘up the ante’ and decided to tackle the renovations to the images in FUPP — additions, alterations, exclusions, etc. Now, after more than 24 months of work, nearly everything we set out to accomplish is ready to roll — and then some.
As with Craig Wheeler’s original site, Tim and I will welcome any contributions as far as corrections to errors we have made given that precise and (to borrow from NFL lingo) ‘indisputable’ photographic proof can be provided. Since we are dealing with images that are, in some cases over 70 years old, there are still a few inclusions that we know need to be fixed. We have, as yet, been unable to execute these few corrected renditions due to a lack of availability of the necessary proof. Otherwise, we are now at a point where every professional team from 1933 to 1958, including the AAFC teams of the late 1940’s and all ‘defunct’ NFL teams of the era, is represented as accurately as possible.
We are truly fortunate for the research Tim Brulia has put into this project. Without it, there would be no project. He is a stickler for detail, but that is exactly what is needed for organizing a task like this. Throughout the process our motto has been “Just get it right.” I feel fortunate that my recently discovered graphic skills are worthy enough to become an integral part of something that has never been orchestrated before. It is my hope that this site will provide the opportunity for many of the NFL’s fans who may never get the chance to visit Canton, Ohio, to not only see, in color, where the game came from in its humblest of beginnings but to also develop a true appreciation for professional football’s founding fathers, earliest warriors, and the characters of the game upon whose backs the NFL was built.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Thank you Bill. Just outstanding, outstanding work so far. But Tim and Bill’s story isn’t complete — its ending has yet to be penned. Tim & Bill still don’t have a home on the Interwebs yet. We’re hoping that will change in the near future. But for now, that’s Part I of Bill and Tim’s NFL Uniform Project. I’ll be back next weekend with Tim’s story.