Football Archaeology

Share this post

Football Art in College Yearbooks

www.footballarchaeology.com

Discover more from Football Archaeology

Digging into gridiron history to examine how football's evolution shapes today's game.
Over 1,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in
Articles

Football Art in College Yearbooks

Timothy P. Brown
Mar 4, 2022
Share this post

Football Art in College Yearbooks

www.footballarchaeology.com
Share

Over the last eighteen months, I’ve reviewed the football sections of 3,000+ college yearbooks dating from the late 1800s to 1960, looking for photographs that illustrate the nature of football at the time. Most review time occurs while half-monitoring a midweek MAC football game or similar. The other half of my attention is spent scrolling through the yearbooks to locate their football sections and review their contents. Items of interest are clipped and labeled to facilitate finding those images when needed to illustrate points in this blog.

Old yearbooks also have student artwork that visually separates one section from another. Below are eight favorites. They range from the early twentieth century when color printing became affordable for limited use, to the late 1940s, after which color photographs replaced artwork.

1906 North Carolina Yackety Yak
1908 North Carolina Yackety Yak
1910 Virginia Corks and Curls
1917 Texas Cactus
1917 Virginia Tech Bugle
1928 Carnegie Institute Thistle
1933 U.S. Naval Academy Lucky Bag
1949 Georgia Tech Blue Print

That's it. I lack the expertise to comment on the artistic merits of these examples. I just know I like them and thought others might as well.

I'll share other examples as I find them.

If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to my newsletter or check out my books.

Share this post

Football Art in College Yearbooks

www.footballarchaeology.com
Share
Previous
Next
Comments
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Timothy P. Brown
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing