They were the only choice available. When the move from leather to plastic was made, the only way of coloring a helmet was to paint it. Each lick removed a bit of paint, exposing the white underneath, so painted helmets fell out of favor, except for an occasional center stripe. IIRC, in 1960, Arkansas adopted new helmets, made with a dye process which added the dye during molding. Their color is, of course, very close to ours. Coach Bryant noticed and we had the new helmets the next year, the year of his first NC...
I have never liked black Jersey's(along with orange a few others). I was a big Falcon fan growing up when Bartkoski and Alfred Jenkins were there. I joined the Army, and when I came back from Germany to start school, the Jersey's and helmets were black and the players were doing the "Dirty Bird" on the sideline. It was like my wholesome Falcons were a thing of the past. They did adopt the red back into the uniforms and kept a lot of the black and they look great. It was the whole Jerry Glanville era I disliked.
I'm not a huge fan of black jerseys, either, and am glad that fad has passed. I grew up a big Falcons fan but gave up on them when they hired Glanville. That showed me they'd rather be a joke than a serious franchise. I didn't get to enjoy their Super Bowl run as much as I could have. And this is from someone who was continued to be a fan when they hired Marion Campbell a second time.
Things kind of went back to respectability when they hired Dan Reeves, but I had already kind of moved on. I know it's not a big deal to most, but I enjoyed Atlanta playing in a stadium rather than the dark Georgia Dome. It is unbelievable that the Dome is already set for the chopping block, the next stadium will have retractable roofs. I wish they would make stadiums for centuries instead of few decades. The Romans would have found our building projects wasteful
The Romans left a lot on the table and over-engineered by about 600 years! You could make a pretty good case for them being more wasteful. :biggrin2:Things kind of went back to respectability when they hired Dan Reeves, but I had already kind of moved on ... The Romans would have found our building projects wasteful
That is interesting I did not realize that. I was actually talking about the mid to late 80's under
I think Perk brought them back for a game or two. In fact, Bryant did also, after we went to the crimson helmets. However, it was when the opposing team also had dark helmets and CPB only put the white helmets on receivers...
I think the advantage they were supposed to confer - telling the good guys from the bad guys - was overblown. CPB was an early adopter of the colored helmets. ARK was in the SWC at the time, so we may have been the first in the SEC. A number stuck with the white helmets for several more years. In fact, some stuck with them to the present, usually with a colored center stripe - PSU, Neb...
IIRC, when Coach Bryant introduced the crimson helmets LSU and Ole Miss had colored helmets. UGA had solid silver and Vandy's were solid gold. All the other conference team's helmets were white. The use of the numbers on the Alabama helmets and jersey sleeves at first had to do with identification of players when watching game film.
