Timoth Brown if Football Archaeology joins me to state plainly that helmet logos were not immediate: the Los Angeles Rams painted horns on their helmets in 1948 and the change went largely unnoticed until decades later. Tim explains why early teams often put markings on the back or top of helmets and why the side logo only became standard later. We trace scattered experiments in the 1920s and 1930s, the Rams’ 1948 horns, and the slow adoption by NFL teams through the 1950s and early 1960s. We conclude that television visibility, the need for clear team identification on small black-and-white sets, and the rise of licensing and branding drove the widespread use of side helmet logos. We note that colleges delayed widespread logo use because of TV numbers and inconsistent placement until the late 1960s and 1970s.

The conversation is based on Tim's recent article titled: The Horns of the Rams’ Dilemma - https://www.footballarchaeology.com/p/the-horns-of-the-rams-dilemma

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Every single time we turn on a football game today, team logos are plastered front and center, especially right on the side of the helmet.

Well, in this episode, we sit down with sports historian Timothy Brown of FootballArchaeology.com to break down his fascinating deep dive into the horns of the Rams dilemma.

We explore why it took decades for helmet logos to finally catch on, why early teams put logos on the back or top of the helmet instead, and how television and modern branding changed the gridiron forever.

Let's jump right in.

Thank you.

Look forward to chatting.

And we'll be talking a little bit about logos, logos, logos.

Well, we know how we, we love to talk about logos.

You know, we just had, what, less than a year ago, we got to talk to Noah Cohen about some logos on helmets and the iconology of the football helmets.

That was a great talk.

We've talked about logos on a lot of different places.

But I think you're going to focus on the helmets today again because you wrote this article called the Horns of the Rams Dilemma.

And what can you tell us about this story, Tim?

Yeah, so, you know, I wrote this one mostly to focus on how long it took for logos on helmets to catch on.

You know, like it's now such a central part of team identities, right?

I mean, if you want to communicate the two teams playing in a game, you know, you put their helmets on on the screen or on a, on a poster or whatever, you know, and so the, the helmet with the logo just communicates who we're talking about, unless we're talking about somebody like a, an Oregon who switches theirs up every, every three minutes.

So, but even then, the novelty of theirs is of what identifies them, I guess.

So, you know, there isn't a simple way to figure out who wore the first logos on their helmets, but best as I can tell, and the earliest ones I found were the early twenties.

University of Chicago had there, they have a, A C. It's basically the same style C that you see on a Bear's helmet or Cincinnati, you know, Reds uniform.

And so they had a, you know, a white C on their helmets that they had on the back of the helmet, and then in some later instances, they had at the top of the helmet.

So that's early 20s.

And then, then it just kind of went away.

You know, no real explanation to my knowledge.

In the 30s, maybe 35, 36, the University of Washington had a W. On the back of their helmets, too.

Again, maybe lasted two years and then disappeared again.

So it's like, okay, and again, if there's somebody else who had them, I haven't seen them other than in the 30s with the introduction of the.

Of the winged helmets.

It wasn't unusual.

And like, the manufacturers, you look in their catalogs that they would offer to like, it was kind of a.

It's like they engraved or they.

They cut out of the.

The winged pad that.

Like an S for Michigan State had an S cut out of theirs.

Purdue had a peak cut out of theirs, and, you know, any number of others like that.

But then, you know, that kind of disappeared, too.

So.

So then the.

A guy named Fred Gehke, who was a running back for the Rams, had the idea to.

To paint Rams horns on the Rams helmets.

And he.

He'd been an art major in college, and so he did.

You know, he came up with this idea, showed it to the owner, and the owner said, yeah, and I'll.

You know, the story is that he paid him like, a dollar apiece to paint these things, all the team helmets.

You know what.

You know, that's one of those.

That's the story Gerkey told later on, whether it's true or not is he.

Probably made 25 bucks that day.

He's a rich man.

So.

And, you know, so I kind of went back looking for, well, how did people react to those things then, right?

I mean, what was.

What did they say about them in the newspapers about the.

The Rams logos?

And basically, there's nothing out there.

You know, they.

It really went, like, totally unrecognized, at least from what I, you know, the searching I did.

And I mean, I searched hundreds of articles, you know, you know, looking for names like logos or horns and helmets and Da, da.

There's like, nothing out there.

And.

But then in.

So the next team, I mean, there were.

There's a high school team or two who were like the Rams or, you know, some similar kind of team mascot.

But the next NFL team to add a logo was the Colts, who added double horseshoes on the back of the helmets.

So on either side of the stripe that year, they wore blue helmets with white horseshoes.

And then you had the Eagles added wings in 54, 55.

Washington added a feather on the top of the helmet in 58.

And then there's others, like, you know, Wisconsin had a block W. They were the first Rose bowl team with a logo.

So, you know, it's just one.

One of the odd things.

It's like, you know, we.

We know that the logo belongs on the side of the helmet, and yet so many of the early helm helmet logos were on the back, on the.

Top,.

On the front.

You know, I mean, really, the, the side look, the logo on the side was the outlier, you know, for much of the early history.

And then, you know, so even like the.

The Rams media guide, I've got copies of their 48 and 49 media guides, and they don't say anything about the piece of logos on the helmets.

So even they didn't like tout it or, or anything, you know, like, with their.

With their own documentation.

So it's just kind of odd.

But, you know, eventually then in.

So in.

The logos really took off in the NFL in the early 60s, you know, so there'd been a couple teams adding them along.

And I, I gotta believe that it really came on because of television.

You know, that with Black and white TVs of the day, and they were small.

Anything that helped you identify which team, you know, one team from the other was helpful.

And you know, if you turn on a game, it's like, okay, well, who's who?

Well, if you had like a C on the side of your helmet or whatever it was some logo helped you figure out like, who's the dark team and who's the.

The white team, you know.

And then.

And in colleges they had.

Had the.

The colleges really didn't take on logos till more late 60s.

And that was mostly because they.

They had.

In the mid-50s, they.

There'd been a whole movement to wearing TV numbers.

So they were either on shoulder sleeves.

Some people wore them on their pants.

But a lot of teams and conferences even kind of required them to be on the side of the helmet.

So you'd have the numbers, player numbers on the side of the helmet that.

Like the style of Alabama today.

But pretty much everybody's doing it, you know, back then.

So that kind of delayed the colleges adding the logos.

And if they did add logos, they did it like Wisconsin.

So they'd put the logo that have the numbers on the side and the logo on the front.

And Indiana with, you know, their, Their logo.

They.

I think they had theirs on the front and back with numbers on the side Right.

So.

So anyways, it's just this whole like, again, something we consider so central.

They just kind of, they kind of ignored it early on.

You know, it just wasn't.

I was like, okay, the Rams did this, but no one really paid too much attention to it.

And yet now, you know, you would think it would have been a bigger deal, but it just.

Somebody's got to show me some information that says it was a big deal back then because nothing I can find says that it was.

Yeah, maybe, maybe they didn't want to waste that much pain on that giant piece of real estate on either side of the head, and so they went with the smaller ones.

Who knows?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I just think it's, it's kind of bizarre.

And you know, part of the other thing about it too is just that like, that's early 60s is when a lot of the, kind of the, the real licensing stuff started appearing.

And even that was like in college.

It's more like 72, I think, is when the Collegiate Licensing association was formed.

And so, like, you know, you look at some of the old materials that came out like the.

They had like four different logos.

You know, there was just totally inconsistent logo usage by teams.

You know, I mean, we think of it as, oh, you got it.

You know, it's.

You got to be strict and this is the logo and it's got to be, you know, all the, all the forms and fit, you know, sizing and all that kind of stuff, but just a different world.

Yeah, well, we are sure glad that you, you take a look at this kind of stuff and, you know, the way you research things and find the stuff, because, you know, it's things that we don't even think about that we appreciate or maybe we don't appreciate when we watch games on TV or live or however we're going to take in our games, even our local high school games, they, they all have logos on them.

And you do this a lot with the, the research in some of the antiquity of rules and things like that.

Your tidbits maybe you could share with people where they can find your tidbits in your work.

Yeah, just, you know, my, my site is footballarchaeology.com it's a substack site.

So, you know, you just go on, you subscribe and if you, if you subscribe, you'll get an email with the story every time that I, that I publish a new one.

Otherwise just, you know, go out there, bookmark it, search around, see, you know, see what you see what you can find.

There's lots of good stuff out there if you like tales of old time football and oddities and the way things used to work.

All right, Tim.

Well, we really appreciate you coming on today and we'd love to talk to you again next week.

Look forward to it.

Thanks, Derek.

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