Date Posted:19:53:41 08/08/12 Wed Author:No name Author Host/IP: 108.73.110.11 Subject: Some Grambling info
Charles, I noticed you don't have much information on Grambling. I did some searching and found this stuff:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,263900,00.html
^That website has two pictures in the slideshow. One shows the Grambling helmet with the yellow-red-yellow stripe in the background and the photo is dated 11/15/97. So the striped helmet was in use at least through the '97 season. The other photo shows the Grambling team in 1971, and the helmet is plain black with what I assume is a single yellow (or possibly red) stripe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQpQMk63G-E&feature=player_embedded
^Within the first 6 seconds of this video you can briefly see a player wearing a plain black helmet with a single red stripe. Later in the video, you can see what appears to be a player wearing a plain black helmet with a single yellow stripe.
And finally, the most helpful article: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2071363
^This article was written in 2005 and it says Grambling has used the "G" logo on its helmets for "almost 31 years", which I interpret as meaning they began to use it in either 1974 or 1975. Later in the article, Doug Williams (who was a freshman at Grambling for the 1974 season) is quoted as saying that at the time, adding the logo wasn't a big deal to the players at first. That would support the fact that it was added in 1975, if Williams was able to give a "before and after" account of adding the logo to the helmets. The article also mentions that before the G was added the school wore black helmets with no logo, consistent with the other pics and video I posted.
Sorry if you know all this, but thought I would post anyway.
>Charles, I noticed you don't have much information on
>Grambling. I did some searching and found this stuff:
Thanks, I have now added the one red stripe helmet to the web site. Surprisingly I have received very little historical information for Grambling, though I think the team's helmet history is probably very simple.
I think the "single yellow stripe" helmet may have been a single white stripe instead, but none of the photographs I have seen are adequately clear to clarify. Also the different color stripes may have been used simultaneously, which makes it difficult to define a "helmet design" for any particular year, though I have nowhere near enough data to even make such an attempt.
I keep hoping that what I have done with this web site will encourage people at Grambling and other schools to track down old football players and interview them about what their helmets looked like back in the day, before they get too old to remember. If there truly are as few surviving photographs for some of these teams as there appears to be, then such interviews may be the only way to ever pin down a helmet history for these teams. A former player who was 22 years old in 1960 will be 74 years old in 2012, so these efforts should not be delayed! I've been intending to write an "editorial" on this subject for several years but I never seem to get around to it...
