Forty-Plus Years of Bliss

A small bit of shameless self-promotion can’t hurt too much.

Back when Tim Brulia and I began putting the pieces together for what would become the GUD with Rob Holecko's help, one of the aspects that I always wanted to include was a portion of the site that would be dedicated to showing what the weekly uniform match-ups were for every week of the regular and postseason for as far back as we could manage.

After accumulating the required information using many far flung resources as Google News, newspaperarchives.com, the Library of Congress, youtube videos, and private collections of NFL photos from GUD members like Larry Schmitt, I wish to inform the GUD viewership that, with the exception of approximately a dozen games (NFL and AAFC) from the 1940s, we know what every other NFL, AAFC, and AFL game looked like from 1940 through the current action leading up to this season’s conclusion in New York City.

At this time, GUD viewership can seek out the weekly uniform match-ups from the 1970 NFL-AFL Merger forward. Several additional seasons have also been completed from the Pre-Merger Era. Currently, Tim and Rob are working together to get the latter half of the 1960s installed and soon after follow up with the rest of the 1960s for both the NFL and the AFL.

Once they reach as far back as the 1950s, in theory, things should progress at a fairly good rate as we will only be dealing with the limited number of NFL teams each week. In other words, less work for each season will be needed.

After that will come the rest of the 1940s, which will likely be the ‘swan-song’ for this aspect of the GUD. Due to pro football’s status as a ‘second rate’ sport behind baseball and college football, less attention was placed towards the League and newspaper exposure, the backbone of our research for the weekly match-ups, was spotty at best.  It is extremely unlikely that we will ever get to the point where we can add contests from the 1930s to this project.

But never say ‘never.’