Thursday, September 8, 2011

I'd Feel Better About A Four-Leaf Clover

As announced last June, Notre Dame will be honoring the first night game to be played in the Big House by wearing "throw-back" uniforms:

Paying homage to the rich football tradition of Notre Dame football, the Irish "Under the Lights" adidas uniform includes a white jersey with Kelly green lettering and two Kelly green shoulder stripes, old gold-colored pants, white socks with green stripes and white shoes. A large shamrock logo appears on the traditional gold helmet for the first time since the early 1960s. The years the Fighting Irish won National Championships are listed inside the bottom hem of the jersey. 
A picture of the retro-helmet was recently tweeted by @NDFBEquipment -



I saw some comments on the web earlier this week where some were objecting to the "new" helmets, saying that they preferred the "traditional" solid gold helmet.  It seems to have been lost on the audience that this shamrock helmet IS PART OF Irish history.  Mulling it over, I recalled that Blue-Gray Sky had done a retrospective on Irish uniforms at some point, so I thought I would dig that up and post the link here, since BGS isn't active anymore.  Which sucks.


As an added bonus check out this piece, and this piece from Helmet Hut which have more detail on the shamrock helmet.
   
Now don't get me wrong - my first reaction upon seeing the shamrock helmet was "Ewww."  But I'll keep an open mind until Saturday night.  And if the team plays well, I'll be demanding they wear the same helmets all season.



5 comments:

Titus said...

I think people would remember these much more fondly if the Kuharich years hadn't been so terrible. Besides, Kuharich more or less admitted that the shamrocks were gimmick: he thought the uniform needed some jazzing up to be more like an NFL rig. The uniform has changed so little, and the green jerseys have been brought out so many times, that they've really run out of anything else to use for this kind of thing. So the shamrock helmets had to come out some time. I can deal with a gimmick as long as they win.

Jack said...

At first I thought they were going to put a decal on your helmet every time you did a good deed on the field ! (like Ohio State) ... A 4-leaf clover-- = 4H ( ¡ Better for Michigan State..our enemy ! )

Anonymous said...

I remember the shamrock helmets fondly from my days growing up in South Bend late 50's, early 60's.
Monty Stickles and Daryl Lamonica wore them. One of my friends in grade school was the son of Don Doll, who was an ND assistant at that time. The son had a kid's version of the helmet he wore every time we'd play pick-up football at Potawatomi Park! Thought they were cool at the time.

Anonymous said...

Eric Murtaugh wrote the Definite Notre Dame Uniform History article with a history of the shamrock on the helmet with pictures. He links the BGS article.
http://onefootdown.fantake.com/2011/03/17/the-definitive-notre-dame-uniform-history-pictorial/

Anonymous said...

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