Digging Up More Dirt

September 19, 1971 San Francisco at Atlanta

     Yesterday here at The Gridiron Uniform Database, we were continuing our discussion of the pants that the 1964-69 San Francisco 49ers wore.  These pants were made of two separate materials, easily visible in this picture to the left.  (Okay, it's not so visible.)  But this picture was taken opening day 1971, against the Falcons.  We know they wore these definitely from 1964 to 1969, and some of the time, apparently, during both 1970 and 1971 seasons.
     In yesterday's article we were assuming that the pants were definitely worn through the first ten games of 1971, and then not after that point.  We based this on a picture showing John Brodie wearing the two-toned pants, which was from the Week 10 (11/21/71) game at Los Angeles.  We discussed yesterday how this was from the game between the two teams in Los Angeles, and not the earlier game in San Francisco.  But how did we know conclusively that the game was from 1971, and not from 1970?  Here's how Gridiron Uniform Database historian Tim Brulia explains it:

"While I am pretty certain that's a 1971 shot of Brodie and the Niners at L.A. and the shot clearly shows the Rams numerals as shiny (which they definitely were in 1971), there IS a possibility that it could be from 1970. The number fonts used by the Rams on the white jerseys were distinctly different in the two years. The number font used in '70 was very similar to what the Packers use today. The font used in '71 was not as blocky, nor was there a serif on the bottom of the 1's. Likewise the NOB's are cropped off of the pic. The NOB's on the Rams 1970 jerseys were immense. The NOB's on the '71 white were rather normal. Since I can't tell 100% the Rams number fonts nor the NOB font, I am going by the caption that was used with the USPresswire site of 11/21/71."

 Tim then followed up with even more confirmation:

"The Brodie vs LA pic is absolutely from 11/21/1971. The Ram in the pic is #85 Jack Youngblood. He was a rookie in 1971. In 1970, there was NO Ram who wore 85 per pro-football-reference.com."

Okay, so we know that on 11/21/1971 they were still wearing the two-toned pants.  Yesterday we also stated that they absolutely were not wearing the two-toned pants the following week against the Jets.  After analyzing that game again, available here on Hulu, we were more of the opinion that in the Jets game the pants were in fact (left) still the two-toned ones. (More pics from that game here.)  Although we seem to be in agreement that they probably were wearing the new pants for the season finale against the Lions, we aren't certain when they stopped wearing them.  We haven't been able to locate any pictures from the Dec. 6 Monday Night game against Kansas City or the December 12 game against Atlanta.  Or perhaps we're wrong about the Detroit game, maybe they were wearing the two-toned pants for the entire 1971 season, as our Bill Schaefer points out:

The pic from the Lions game (12/19/71)

     I'm looking at the 2 Niners pics (vs Jets & vs Lions) and I think you could legitimately argue that they are both wearing the 2-tone pants.

     In the Jets picture, the Niner laying on the ground definitely has darker material on his hamstring than on his thigh. One would think the surface exposed to the light would be brighter. I think this is definitely the 2-tones working here.

     Now, the Lions pic (right), I could easily get convinced either way. The runner's hammy is darker than his thigh but his 'butt' appears to be the same shade of khaki as his thigh.  Due to the blurry quality of the pic I'd have to go 'inconclusive.'

     But perhaps it wasn't a case of them simply wearing one set of pants until a specific game and then switching to the other.  Maybe they did go "back-and-forth", as Tom, who left a comment on yesterday's entry suggests:

"I wonder if the Brodie vs. Rams photo is a case of the Niners using more lightweight pants because they were playing in L.A. The circa 1968-73 period does have the occasional team wearing a presumably lightweight jersey with no sleeve stripes to beat the heat -- examples that come to mind are the Lions in the '68 opener at Dallas, the 49ers (and surely other teams) at the Dolphins in the '73 opener, the Vikings in a purple jersey with no sleeves early in the '70 season. Maybe the 49ers' shiny pants are a product of the same thinking."

This picture is from Week 7
1970 vs Green Bay -- are these the
two-toned pants or not?

     So there it is.  They definitely wore the two-toned pants from 1964 to 1969, and they also wore them some of the time in 1970 and 1971.  The hardest part of this research is that it isn't always clear, even in color pictures, which pants the players are wearing.  I'd say we still have someways to go to determine exactly which games during those two years were played in which pants.

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     To those of you who have been following along, tomorrow is our official website launch.  We've been trying to get everything ready, but like we said before this website will remain an on-going project, and it will never completely be done.  There shouldn't be any broken links, and we have all of the team yearly graphics in.  You can click on either teams on the right or years on the left and see every NFL (and AFL and AAFC) uniform since 1933.  We will slowly be adding each team's game-by-game head to head matchup page, beginning with the 2010 teams.  We had hoped to have all of the 2010 team season pages done by tomorrow, but that simply won't be possible.  The Steelers and Packers were already in, and on Friday we added the Bears, Vikings and Lions 2010 team pages to complete the NFC North, and we will be rolling out other teams in the coming days.

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     Database Corrections.  Like yesterday's minor adjustment to the 1967 Broncos of depicting the preseason only variations on the bottom of the graphic, rather than the top, we found others that required that adjustment as well, the 1960 Patriots (previous), the 1969 and 1970 Jets ('69, '70 previous) and the 1970 Dolphins (previous).  Another minor change, the 1993 Buccaneers sleeve patch honoring the passing of Bucs' owner Hugh Culverhouse, was only depicted in detail in the white version, and we have added the detail to both versions.  

     Culverhouse was so disliked that they honored his death the year before he died.  Just kidding, although he did die in 1994, the patch was merely to commemorate his life.  He had lung cancer and I guess they just wanted to say thanks for all the years of wonderful team ownership...like not paying Doug Williams money to stay in 1983 and being such a general all-around cheapskate that the Bucs, when they honored Culverhouse with the sleeve patch, were completing their eleventh of fourteen straight losing seasons.   As Joy Culverhouse, his widow, said during the ugly legal fight with trustees for control of his estate when Culverhouse's many extramarital affairs were revealed: "I'd like to dig him up just so I could shoot him."

When Did The Pants Change?

     Yesterday, our first commenter, Tom, alerted us that this John Brodie picture that we ran on Wednesday couldn't have been from the 10/10/1971 Rams-49ers game in San Francisco, because the 49ers moved from Kezar Stadium into Candlestick Park in 1971, which was Astroturf.   (This guy seems to suggest that turf wasn't at Candlestick until 1972, but apparently changes were made to the base cutouts that year.)  Tim assures us the picture was from not earlier than 1971, as the Rams "shiny" front numeral wasn't used until that year.
     This was entirely my mistake, had I looked at Tim's White At Home in the NFL project, I would have seen that in 1971 the Los Angeles Rams did wear white at home, and this picture was actually from the teams' second meeting that year, 11/21/1971, at the Coliseum in Los Angeles.
     So when exactly did the 49ers switch from the two-toned pants to the new style?  Pictures from the week after this game, the 11/28/1971 game at Shea Stadium against the Jets, indicate that they were wearing the new pants in that game, and they were still wearing them the next month when they faced the Lions at home (on the Candlestick astroturf) in the season finale on December 19.
     Assuming then that they didn't "switch back and forth" (and also assuming that Tim is correct about the Rams' numerals, which we have no reason to believe isn't true) then that first picture, (from 11/21/71 vs the Rams) would be the last time they wore those pants.

12/19/71 vs Detroit

11/28/1971 at NY Jets

     The only missing piece, then, would be to confirm that they did in fact wear the "old" pants during other games during the first nine weeks of 1971, and not just as a one-time effort for the Rams game for some unknown reason.
     Thank you Tom, for being our first commentor, and we hope you stay around here at The Gridiron Uniform Database and continue to contribute to the discussions and fact-check us when we need correcting, and we'll look for you in the forum.

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     Thursday was a big day here at the GridironUniforms.com.  We completed entering all of the yearly index pages, if you'll look over to the left where it starts at 2011 and goes down to 1920, you can click on any of the years from 1933 to 2010 and see the uniforms from that year.  With those yearly pages on the left and the team pages on the right, the "meat" of our website is now on-line.  We hope to have most of the 2010 team pages in by Sunday, our official launch, however, all the team graphics, at least are complete, and our website is pretty much "good to go."

     Another feature we launched yesterday, we are now on Twitter.  Now you can get tweets to let you know when updates have been made to the database, as well as when riveting articles like this one have been posted.  You''ll see to the right a badge where you can sign up to follow us, and down at the bottom of this page a twitter widget that displays our recent tweets.  Just follow us @GridironUniform. (Yes, it's singular.  Apparently twitter only allows 14 characters in a twitter name.)

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     Database Changes.  The 1940 Chicago Bears have been "tweaked" again.  If it seems like it was just yesterday that we changed these uniforms, it's because it was.  Now another change:  We decided the socks (which they actually did wear during the regular season) should be orange and not white.  We were continuing to study the size (no, not the color) of the Bronco on the 1962-66 Denver helmet, and feel that at 90% of the size that we previously had it made it more accurate (new 1964, old 1964), and also made a clerical change with the 1967 Broncos in that we are now depicting the "preseason only" uniforms below the regular season, rather than above, as we have done in other cases.

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     Well, now it's off to work on the 2010 team pages.  Since we have already done the Packers and Steelers, we'll probably try to knock out the rest of the NFC North & AFC North first, and then tackle the other divisions.

The Green, Green Grass Of Home

     We have completed another decades' worth of year pages, as 1987 through 1996 have been added to the database.  This, of course, includes the NFL's 75th Anniversary season of 1994, when league-wide for at least a few games, every team wore throwbacks, even though some of them really didn't look any different from what they normally wore.  One team liked the throwbacks so much they petitioned the league to wear them the rest of the year, they won ten straight games wearing them, and even wore them when they won the Super Bowl.  Another team adopted a "throwback style" uniform as their regular dark-colored jersey the following year, and they went on to win the Super Bowl, too.
     Another feature we are adding here can be seen on the 2010 team pages which we are currently working on.  Along with the plethora of features which we discussed yesterday, we have decided to also include, whenever head-to-head match-ups are displayed on the site, whether a game was played indoors or outdoors, and on what surface the game was played on.
     In this image from the bottom of the Steelers page (right), you can see that the symbol above the Super Bowl indicates that it was played in indoors, while there is no such symbol over the AFC Championship game against the Jets.  And below the game images, you can see the different colors, indicating that the AFC Championship was played on grass, and the Super Bowl on Field Turf.  We are still working on which shades of colors will represent which surfaces, however you can see where we're heading with this.

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     Database changes:  A new feature here in the blog, whenever there are changes to the database, there will be a mention of it here with links to both the new and replaced images.  
     Today there are a few such updates to the database, starting with some changes that have been made to the late 1930's Bears uniforms.  First of all adjustments have been made to the 1936 Bears' shoulder stripe pattern.  (old version)   The changes to the numbers of the 1937, '38 and '39 Bears that we discussed last week here in the blog have been adapted.  (Note: It turns out we didn't discuss this last week, we'll bring you that story in an upcoming article.)  Old versions here: 1937, '38, '39.  The 1940 Bears had adjustments made to their sanitary socks.  (old version)    I don't really see that much of a difference with the 1936 and 1940 changes, but then that's what makes these guys the masters of detail that they are.
     The early 1970s Giants jersey, which I know we did discuss last week, have been added to the database.  The 1970 Giants now have the new jersey added which we previously did not have confirmation of them wearing until the 1971 season.  The discovery of 'tapered sleeves' on these jerseys required us also to update the '71, '72, '73, '74 and '75 Giants.  (old versions: '70, '71, '72, '73, '74, '75)
     We also confirmed the changes to the 1942 Brooklyn Dodgers helmets that we discussed Tuesday.  (old version)

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     Only three days to go until we launch on Sunday, and we still have thirteen year pages (1997-2009) and thirty 2010 team pages to go, so I guess I'll be busy the next three days!

They Put Their Pants On One Side At A Time

     Another thirteen 'year pages' have been added to the database, and we are now up through 1986.  The first team season pages were also added to the database Tuesday, as the 2010 Packers and 2010 Steelers are now in the fold.  As soon as the 1987-2009 year pages are complete, our main goal by website launching, which is four days away, will be to have all of the 2010 team season pages in, as well as all of the 2010 weekly matchup pages done.  Then, after the website launches, we will gradually work on the putting in of previous seasons.

     Yesterday we explained briefly how the navigation of this part of the site will operate, perhaps today a brief tutorial here with a working example would be in order.  Leave this page open to follow along and do the following in a new window.  You can go to either the Packers or Steelers 2010 team season page, either by clicking either of those teams on the '2010 page' or the 2010 thumbnail on either the Pittsburgh or Green Bay team pages.  As these are the only two team-seasons completed yet, you'll notice by clicking any of the other thumbnails on these pages, you'll simply get the full-size view of the image.  When the site is complete, however, all thumbnail links will act as these two do.
     Scroll down on the team page to the bottom, you'll see the post-season games, and on the right Super Bowl XLV, which looks something like this picture to the right.  There are five things that can be clicked on here.  1.) The maroon arrow: Clicking on the image will naturally display a full-size image of the matchup.  2.) The blue arrow:  Clicking on the opponent's team name will take you to that team's season page.  3.) The purple arrow:  Clicking on the result of the game (i.e. "W, 31-25") will take you to the pro-football-reference.com box score of the game.  4.)  The green arrow, which isn't active yet, will take you to all the games played that week [or in the case of the Super Bowl, all of the postseason games.] 5.) The red arrow: Clicking on the "vs" (or "at" in the case of away games) will take you to the team-vs-team historical matchup pages, which we'll talk about in a moment.
     You'll notice that below the game is the date and time of the game, as well as announcer information.  Our website historian, Tim Brulia, was one of the researchers who contributed to the compilation of this announcer data at another website.  This announcer information goes all the way back to 1950.  You'll also notice the box score data at pro-football-reference.com only goes back to 1940.
     A feature which will take some time to implement will be the team historical matchup pages.  We have completed one, the Packers-Steelers, as a sample. On the team page, at the Super Bowl thumbnail, if you'll click the "vs" you will be taken to this page.  These pages do take a lot of time to compile, therefore our plan is to roll these out by the time each matchup next occurs, therefore by Week 1 2011, we hope to have in the database Packers-Saints, Falcons-Bears, Browns-Bengals and all of the other matchups scheduled for that week.  Therefore the last of the inter-conference matchups, those that occurred last year, AFC North vs NFC South, etc., will be the last to be added to the database, as these teams aren't scheduled to meet again until 2014, however, we may get them entered sooner if possible.

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     Tuesday's discussion around here focused on the late 1960's San Francisco 49ers pant colors.  The shade of gold (not "yellow" gold, but actual "gold" gold) has been up for debate.  Apparently the 49ers, from 1964 through 1969 had "two-toned" pants.  The front was one shade of beige-gold, and the back was a different shade.  If you'll notice in this picture, particularly looking at the kicker's plant leg, you see the difference.   The front was "kinda satinny" and the back was more like a khaki spandex, but without the shimmer.  Does anybody know the reason/purpose for these two-toned pants?

     Initially we weren't going to include this information, feeling that it may lead to some confusion, however, in the interest of accuracy, we have decided to add this, and we have indicated the color difference in the database as in the image to the right.  This, I believe, clearly conveys the fact that there is a difference in the shade of color of the front and back sides of the pants.

     While researching this, however, we came across a couple pics of John Brodie (below) which indicate they were still wearing these pants in games in 1970 and 1971.  (The picture on the left is from November 8, 1970 against Chicago, and the picture on the right, we believe to be from October 10, 1971 versus Los Angeles at home.)  So that's our next order of business on this matter, determining exactly when they stopped wearing these pants.

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     One more item of business, here is a artistically (debatable) colorized version of the 1942 Redskins-Dodgers New York Times pic we discussed yesterday:
        

Which Arms Are His?

     Thirteen more team year pages are in, as 1961 through 1973 have been added to the database. Hopefully I can crank the rest of these out today, and we can turn our attention towards the 2010 team pages. You'll notice we have combined the large view of the team image and the team schedule all on one page. By the time we launch, all 2010 team pages will be in, and if you click on a 2010 team (from either the team's page or the 2010 page) you'll get a page like this, with the full team image and the week-to-week scores and matchups of that year's team. For years previous to 2010, when we first launch the website, clicking on a team's thumbnail will just go directly to the image, as it does now.  But after we roll out additional years of team pages, beginning with 2009, and then 2008, and so on, all teams will have pages like this.  These pages will be a little more time-consuming to create, so bear with us and keep following this blog to see when features get added to the website.
     When a team's yearly pages is complete, which will look something like this to the left, you find at the bottom, if you scroll down, the team's weekly head-to-head matchups.  Part of the purpose of this blog is to demonstrate features of this website.  To give a preview of this page and how it will operate when it is fully functional, take a look at the example below of Weeks 1 and 2 of the Green Bay Packers' 2010 season.

     When on this page, if you click on the 'Week 1' or 'Week 2', you will go to a page featuring all the matchups of that week's NFL action.  If you click on the 'Philadelphia' or the 'Buffalo' you will go to that team's 2010 page.  And if you click on the 'W, 27-20' or the 'W, 34-7' you will be taken to the pro-football-reference.com box score of that game. And of course, clicking on the thumbnail image of the team matchup will give you a high resolution view of that matchup image.
    And now a feature of the website that will be rolled out gradually this fall as it coincides with (hopefully) the opening of the 2011 NFL season, if you click on the 'at' or the 'vs', you will be taken to a page which will show all of the head-to-head matchups in history between those two teams. These "multi-linked" weekly images on the teams' season pages may seem confusing at first, but after you click on them a few times, it will seem intuituve, and this was the cleanest way to present these links.
     Tomorrow we'll have a special advanced look at a working example of how the 'team season' page links will work, plus a sample of the team-vs-team historical matchup pages.

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     Yesterday, we told you about the Washington Redskins wearing blue for a game in 1942 in Brooklyn against the Dodgers.  After looking at the picture on that page from the first scan I had, I had believed that the runner, Dick Todd, was visible with three stripes on his arms, similar to the Dodgers' stripe patterns, and that they were a darker gray than the three stripes on the Brooklyn defender on the left side of the picture.

     After looking at a better scan of the image, however, I came to believe Bill Schaefer's explanation of the image,  Therefore, it is our determination that the 1942 Redskins were not "borrowing" the Dodgers' blue back-up unis, in place of their secondary set, but rather that they just decided to try blue, instead of the white that they had apparently last used in 1940.  Our website historian, Tim Brulia, weighed in with this observation:

"I think the Skins are wearing blue jerseys modeled after the normal maroons. If they were wearing stripes on the jerseys, I think [Arthur] Daley would have made mention of it. In my times scanning the game write-ups in the NY Times, Daley - way more than the other beat writers on the Times staff - would make mention of jersey colors.

We are going to see navy vs navy with many Packers-Bears games, some blue vs blue with the Rams and Lions, and some maroon-red with the Skins and Dodgers in the 30's & 40's. BUT for sure, there were two instances of the Redskins wearing non-maroon with Redskin heads on the sleeves, and this instance in 1942. This shot is not conclusive as to what Dick Todd is wearing here. Thus, [we should] play it safe until (or if) we ever get a better pic from this game.

As for what teams packed for road trips, normally the visiting team had to wear the secondary jerseys...but not always. In the early 50's, The Skins wore their normal maroons to Pittsburgh, and it was the Steelers who had to switch to secondary whites."

     Bill posits another possible alternative theory: "Could the Redskins have been wearing the Giants blue tops?" Well, the Giants were in Chicago (to play the navy-clad Bears) that day and assuming they only took their red uniforms with them, and assuming someone was around in New York with access to the blue uniforms, I still think it would have been unlikely that by the time that the Redskins realized they would have a need to borrow them, they would have gone to the effort of trying to procure them, when if they were in need of "emergency" alternate uniforms and were stuck having to use a non-Redskins color like blue, it would have been much easier to borrow the Dodgers' duds right there at Ebbets than to try to get uniforms from way uptown at the Polo Grounds down to Brooklyn.  As Occam's razor indicates, the simplest solution is usually the correct one (or something like that) so it's probably just that the Redskins wanted to try out blue for their backup kit that year.  But what shade of blue was it?  Was it navy or a bright "Giants" blue?  Or a honolulu blue like the Lions?  Well the newspaper image was pretty dark, so it was probably something closer to navy (besides that would probably look good with the Redskins helmet and pants colors) but with no real leads other than Daley's write up, all we know is "blue."

     Another discovery to come out of this was the helmets of the Dodgers.  In the database we had the 1940-42 Dodgers as having the "spider" helmet pattern, however, after seeing this picture, it appears that at least on this day in 1942 the Dodgers were wearing a variation known as the "cross" pattern.  There is, however, no reason to specifically believe that the 1940-41 Dodgers didn't wear both, or only wore the cross pattern.  Our final determination on this is still being discussed.

Brooklyn Dodger defenders clearly wearing the "cross" helmet pattern in 1942

Go! Chargers! Go!

The San Diego Chargers' team page is live on the website, making it the thirty-second and final team to be added and Sunday was also a busy day around here as far as entering team pages went, with 1936 through 1960 all being completed. Hopefully the rest of those will be done in the next day or two.   As soon as the rest of the year pages are in, we will begin to add the 2010 Team Pages with the weekly head-to-head matchups.

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     There were a couple corrections to the website, first of all with the 1963 Jets, the first year after they changed their name from the Titans, the team that had the green airplane on the side of their helmet, it was determined that they only had one stripe on their helmet, so we made that change to the database.  But the real story Sunday was the discovery by Tim about the 1942 Redskins.  He came across the New York Times from October 19, 1942, where it was reported by Arthur Daley that:

      If it seems odd that the maroon Redskins would have to don blue to avoid clashing with the Dodgers, it's because unlike the baseball Brooklyn Dodgers, the football Dodgers wore both blue and red.  The Redskins and Dodgers must have found themselves in a clashing situation, forcing one of the teams to wear a different color.  Or perhaps with the transportation difficulties mentioned in the article that prevented the band from arriving (I didn't know the Redskins band ordinarily traveled to road games back in the day...♫ "Hail to the Redskins...hail victory...hail to the Redskins....fight for old D.C." ♫) ...perhaps with the traveling issues, the team's gear didn't arrive either and so maybe they had to borrow the Dodgers' secondary unis.  Or all they had was their maroon outfit, which clashed with the Dodgers' red, and as the home team the Dodgers insisted on wearing red...  Anyway, you can see the whole article about the game with a picture here.
     We wonder if this was the only time the Skins ever wound up wearing this color?  With the Dodgers and Cardinals both wearing red at times, could it be possible that blue was worn by the D.C. boys other than just this once in this era?  And was it actually their own jerseys they wore or did they have to borrow from the Dodgers?  If this was the only time that they ever wore blue, it lends credence to the possibility that it was the Dodgers' unis they were wearing. It would be interesting to see if the players wore their usual numbers, and if the numbers looked like the font the Redskins used at the time, or if they do in fact look like the Dodgers' blue uniforms. It is hard to make out any Redskins numbers in the photo in the newspaper article.  Anyway the blue uniform is now in the database.

Is this what Slingin' Sammy looked like on a day in 1942 against the Dodgers?
Note: This amateur-ly colorized picture is not from that game, but a different game against the Bears.

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     P.S. I sorry if there are typos, but I am writing this post for the second time because this happened the first time and I am not a happy camper about it.

A Week To Go

     We are seven days away from the "official" launch of the website, and on Saturday we made good strides in getting many of the team pages done, with most of the teams from the old AFL being added.  A head start was also made on the year index pages, with 1933, 1934 and 1935 now in.  Those seem to go in pretty quickly, especially the early years with the fewer teams.  The only team page missing at this point is the Chargers, as work continues on the lightning bolt pattern that they used on their pants through the years, as well as a few adjustments to some teams like the Redskins and Panthers that we are still negotiating.

     Some compromises were made on the matter of the pant-striping overhauls that we were considering over the past days.  While our ultimate goal is of total accuracy, we must temper that with the fact that too much unnecessary detail (right) may actually work against us, cluttering up the images and making them less intuitive for the website visitor.
     In particular, the can of worms that was opened by including both left- and right- side views of the Washington Redskins' pant-stripe pattern appeared to be beginning to lead us down a path which would require an overhaul of many teams' images.  So a compromise was reached and rather than include both side pant-leg views on images where the detail was merely mirrored or reversed, we have decided to simply add a note at the bottom of the website explaining that while certain teams' pant-stripe patterns may not be completely identical on both sides, in cases where a view of just one side would be sufficient, in the interest of clarity, that is what is presented.  A more in-depth break down of these teams is available on the 'About The Template' page.

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     Another issue that we decided to put on the back burner was the 1970 New York Giants off-white pants that we viewed in the footage from the preseason game against the Steelers.  While it did appear to be a different shade of white, we decided that they were most likely older pants, or it was just a slight variation, and when presented against the newer jersey tops, which had almost a bluish hue, the color variation likely appeared greater than it was.  Colors fade through time, and our rule of thumb will be to present the colors of uniform features in the color they were intended to be when they were brand new.

     You'll also notice that we have a groovy new banner, we stole it from a interesting website that chronicles the oldest living football players, I hope they don't mind.     

      Well, hopefully many of the year pages can be put in today, as well as the finishing up of the team pages.  The Gridiron Uniform Database is really starting to take shape.

     Coming Monday, a discovery about a team that wore a color in 1942 that we had not been previously aware of, and may surprise you.