How Football's Zebras Got Their Stripes

It is easy to see football today and think the game’s evolutionary path was inevitable, but there is nothing pre-ordained about today’s game. Football might have taken any number of alternative paths, and often did, though many of those twists and turns are forgotten today. Consider that American football was played on a field with a 55-yard line and no end zones until 1912. Only the tweaking of the rules of the recently allowed forward pass led to the adding of end zones and the elimination of the 55-yard line. Likewise, the first wearing of numbered jerseys came in 1905 when rivals Drake and Iowa State met. Drake wore numbers between 1 and 25; the Cyclones wore 26 to 50. As numbered jerseys became popular, players were not numbered by position. Even when the NCAA mandated that player numbers correspond to their position, there were multiple systems proposed, including alphanumeric combinations tried by a handful of schools.

The 1951 LSU offense aligned in formation and showing their alpha-numeric jerseys. (1952 Gumbo, LSU yearbook)

The point here is that many changes in the game arrived half baked, were opposed by one faction or another, or benefited from a bit of fine tuning. And that brings us to the black-and-white striped shirts universally worn by football officials today. As I wrote in How Football Became Football, early football officials did not have uniforms; they wore everyday clothes. Many chose to wear older pants and jackets due to the need to keep pace with the players running around the field, as well as the muddy conditions of many football fields of the day. Besides everyday clothes, many officials wore their college letter sweaters during games. Letter sweaters marked the officials as authorities on the game and reinforced their neutrality since they generally did not work games involving their own college or schools for which they were associated. (Pre-WWII newspaper box scores typically listed the officials working the game and their alma maters.)

Georgetown captain Dap Dailey and Virginia captain Joe Wood shake hands before their game in 1911. The field judge, Emory S. Land, wears his Navy letter sweater. (Photo by Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress)