More Alternatives to Zebra Shirts

Each week, schools across the nation excitedly announce the unique combination of colors and styles their teams will wear that weekend. Yet, despite the hype, the never-ending variety all starts to look the same. The weekly new duds, you might say, have jumped the proverbial duck. Conversely, the other guys on football fields – the officials- show up game after game in the same black-and-white striped shirts to unerringly make their calls.

Despite the prevalence of the officials' zebra outfits today, it took decades for those shirts to become the dominant look nationwide, as I detailed in an earlier article. While I encourage readers to read that article, I'll provide a summary before discussing the newly identified alternatives to the zebra shirt that are the focus of this article.

When football began, officials wore everyday clothes or their college letters sweaters on the field. The latter symbolized their knowledge of football and their neutrality since officials seldom worked games involving their schools. However, by the 1920s, many basketball and football officials wore white shirts and pants (or knickers). White visually differentiated officials from the players since teams seldom wore white. (It became customary to wear white on the road in the 1950s to help TV viewers distinguish the blue team from the red. The NCAA only mandated white for the visiting team in 1983.) 

Although some teams preceded them, Stanford, Northwestern, and a few other teams began donning white jerseys in the 1920s. During the same period, state high school and regional college football associations worked to enhance the quality and integrity of officiating by training and testing prospective officials. Having officials wear consistent garb helped reinforce the value these organizations provided, so most mandated their officials wear a uniform of one design or another.

Some groups opted for the black-and-white zebra shirt. Created by Lloyd Olds, an official and professor at Eastern Michigan, the zebra shirt spread organically before being adopted by the associations. However, some groups of officials went their own way as the previously mentioned article documents. The Southeast Football Officials Association (SFOA) and the Southwest Football Officials Association (SFOA) shared acronyms/neologisms, but not shirts since they designed separate alternatives to the zebra.

Fans flipped over the Southeast FOA shirts of the 1930s, the 1940s, and the Southwest FOA shirts of the 1930s to 1960s. (1935 Florida, 1942 North Carolina, and 1956 TCU yearbooks)