Before visiting teams consistently wore white or light-colored jerseys, passers sometimes had difficulty differentiating their eligible receivers from the defensive players. One means of highlighting them was to paint the receivers’ helmets differently than other players. The image shows Oregon painted the back of their eligible receivers’ helmets so they would stand out to their passers as they ran downfield.

For more on how the forward pass changed the color of helmets, check out the article below.

Football Archaeology

How the Forward Pass Changed the Color of Football Helmets

Teams did not begin painting their helmets to look good; they did so to become more effective forward passers. Likewise, hidden ball tricks and night games spurred later changes in helmet colors and markings for reasons that no longer apply in today's game…

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2 years ago · Timothy P. Brown

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