Today's Tidbit... Notre Dame's Halftime Jersey Switcheroo

In an age in which teams swap alternate uniforms as easily as a pair of socks, it seems odd that football teams once wore the same uniform game after game, home and away. You wore your team colors regardless of who you played and what they wore. That's just the way it was.

There were the trendsetters, of course, who chose a different path. Cornell was one of them. Their early 1920s teams under Gus Gilmore often wore white practice vests over their red jerseys when facing similarly-hued opponents. Others did the same, but the approach did not become popular.

Other schools had a second set of jerseys in their secondary color they used when facing a team wearing a similar colored jersey, and others, like Notre Dame, generally wore navy blue jerseys but pulled out green versions on occasion.

For example, Notre Dame publicized their intention to wear green jerseys against a black-jerseyed Princeton team in 1923 but ended up wearing their traditional navy blue, perhaps hoping to confuse scouts attending the game.

For their 1926 game versus Penn State, the Nittany Lions came out late for pre-game warmup wearing navy blue like the Irish, leading Rockne to send his boys back into the locker room to don green jerseys.

They did the same versus Army in 1927 and Navy in 1928 and caused a minor scandal in 1927 when the numbers on the green jerseys did not match those listed in the program. Rockne shrugged off the complaints, noting that they had ordered the jerseys late and could not coordinate consistent numbering.

Elmer Layden was the Irish coach in 1939 when they pulled their oddest switcheroo. (1940 Notre Dame yearbook)