Football's First Helmet Logos

Several recent posts have covered aspects of football history discovered during a review of 2,000+ old college yearbooks. One post showed Texas invented the whiteout in 1920. Another included the only known image of a puntout being executed, while a third showed the field conditions of old were rather wretched.

Just as the world forgot about Texas' 1920s whiteouts when Penn State revived them (borrowing from hockey fans in Calgary), the same applies to the origins of helmet logos. The Los Angeles Rams are widely credited with being the first team to paint logos on their helmets in 1948. The story goes that Fred Gehrke, a Rams running back and art major at Utah, spiced things up by painting rams horns on a helmet. After showing the helmet to the team owner and winning approval for its use, Gehrke painted horns on all the team's helmets and the rest, as I wrote elsewhere, is art history.

Jack Banta, Bob Waterfield, and Bob Hoffman sitting on the bench during a game. Banta's helmet has the Ram’s original horns. (Wiki)

Of course, the historical record changes with new information, which is the case with helmet logos.