Big Red Football @ Bucknell Sept. 18

[Josh '99]

[Q]Al DeFlorio Wrote:
Simpler is always better in uniforms, to my eyes.  I still prefer the Marinaro-era unis.  Looked great on the SI cover.[/q]Any Cornell uniform in any sport that makes its way ont an SI cover at any point is fine by me.  :-P

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]Hillel Hoffmann Wrote:

 Yes, those Tom-Allen-period uniforms were the best ever, and I don't it's just because of happy associations. I especially dug the helmet with the vertically compressed C.

In general, I like simple too. But I gotta admit that some of the quirky excess of traditional Ivy opponents' uniforms gives me the warm-n-fuzzies too, like those goofy stripes on Princeton's sleeves (and Penn's too, once upon a time) and Dartmouth's revival of their totally bitchin' Blackmon-era (Blackman?) helmets. Ahhhhhhh.[/q]
I agree on those late 60s/early 70s Cornell helmets (but who was Tom Allen?).  The rounded C went nicely with the rounded shape of the helmet.  Those helmets still had the external padding Cornell was noted for but were not as clumsy-looking as the ones from the fifties and sixties which were...well...unique.

[Hillel Hoffmann]

Oops. Did I really write "Tom"? That's Mark Allen, of course, CU HOF QB who was younger than Big Ed but may have overlapped some. Same helmets, no icky lump (as I recall).

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]Hillel Hoffmann Wrote:

 Oops. Did I really write "Tom"? That's Mark Allen, of course, CU HOF QB who was younger than Big Ed but may have overlapped some. Same helmets, no icky lump (as I recall).[/q]
Allen's first year was Big Ed's senior year.  Mark provided the passing game that complemented Ed's amazing running and resulted in a co-championship.  

And I'm staring at the SI cover from that year as I type.  The "icky lump" is still there but less icky than in earlier years.

[billhoward]

Mark (not Tom) Allen (Tom Allen is a congressman from Maine who did play some football, Bowdoin, Rhodes Scholar) was class of 1974 and started all three years, including the 8-1 champion season (tie with Dartmouth) Marinaro's senior year, Allen's sophomore year. Allen set or came close on a bunch of Cornell passing records including 395 yards passing and something like 387 yards total offense (he got sacked a couple times) against Penn one year. There was a lot of unrest early in Allen's career because Barrett Rosser, an imposing player physically (Allen was more like 6-1 and 195) was backup and some people thought the black guy (Rosser) was better than the white guy (Allen) or the really tall, really skinny white guy from Batavia who was well known in upstate New York from his HS days (Kevin Earl). Remember this was also the era of Cornell totally messing up vis a vis race relations in basketball with Tony Coma, the wizard at Cheney State,  a primarily black school near Philadelphia, who had a horrible drinking problem by the time he got to Ithaca, and wound up unifying the black and white players in an unforseen way -- they all disliked him. Coma's goal was to get covered in Sports Illustrated, and that goal he achieved with an article, "Low in Cayuga's Waters." On the plus side, there were no racial issues on the hockey team, the closest thing to a minority being one or two Americans from Buffalo.

November 1971 and those simple but gorgeous uniforms marked the end of the glory half-decade in Cornell sports that began with the arrival of Ken Dryden: the two hockey championships, the 1971 lacrosse title, Marinaro's almost-Heisman, and the fall 1971 football Ivy title. True, the hockey team was to make the NCAA final four two more times, but with disappointing finishes, and then it was all quiet until the lacrosse heroics of 1976 and 1977 while football lived through a combination of mediocre years (mostly), lacrosse fell off for a decade until 1987, and the hockey team was unable to match the late 1960s, as if any hockey team match the late 1960s. There was of course Pete Pfitzinger's Olympic miracle in the marathon, but that was after he was graduated.

That would be an interesting thread: What was Cornell's greatest decade? Greatest ten years stretching across a decade?

[A-19]

what are these new uniforms of which you speak? i can't find a good pic anywhere. anyone?

-mike

OK so i found a better pic: http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v?TARGET=showImage&article_id=414e63a6400ea&image_num=3

yes, they do look nice. i wonder if the home jerseys will follow suit.
aside from that, maybe the team should be using the money it spent on uniforms to train its players or hire a better coach, so we don't lose the next 11 games in a row also. i'm all about the jerseys, but it's not worth looking good if you play like shit in my opinion

[Al DeFlorio]

Sun article on the new unis:

http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/09/21/414faa97420b4

Says road helmets will be white while home helmets are red.  Sure looked red in Bucknell game pics.  Can't recall a football team with different road and home helmets.

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]Al DeFlorio Wrote:
Can't recall a football team with different road and home helmets.[/q]

The Houston Oilers used to do it in the 1970s, IIRC.

[billhoward]

No numbers on the shoulders? Not that it matters to most people, but player numbers on the shoulders and sometimes helmets made it easier for photographers to identify the players in the picture.

[Josh '99]

[Q]billhoward Wrote: No numbers on the shoulders? Not that it matters to most people, but player numbers on the shoulders and sometimes helmets made it easier for photographers to identify the players in the picture. [/q]And also, if I'm not mistaken, make it much easier for broadcasters to identify players during the game, assuming the broadcast position is above one sideline and the players are facing an end zone.

[KeithK]

Seems like an incredible waste of money to have two sets of helmets...

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

 Seems like an incredible waste of money to have two sets of helmets...[/q]
Cornell hockey went to two helmets a few years back after wearing white both home and away for many, many years.