150th Anniversary of College Football

College football turns 150 this season.

The first football game between two college programs was played on November 6, 1869 as Rutgers defeated Princeton 6-4 in New Jersey. 

The College Football 150th Anniversary organization announced in November a new program to honor the 150th anniversary of the first college football game. Throughout the 2019-20 season, all top level football teams will be wearing the CFB150 logo. The 130 FBS teams will wear the logo as a patch on the chest. The organization recommended the patch be located above the conference patch. 

FCS programs will wear the 150 logo as a decal on the back of helmets.

An extra patch can make for a busy uniform. (image via Kevin C. Cox, Getty Images)

All patches and decals are provided to the schools at no cost. According to the press release from November, over 200,000 patches and decals have been ordered by all Division 1 teams and multiple NAIA and junior college programs.

Auburn hasn’t announced the addition of the patch as of this post, but we presume the Tigers will join the rest of the nation in wearing the patch.

The 150th anniversary is the second major celebration of college football that will effect the team uniforms. In 1969, numerous schools celebrated the 100th anniversary of the first game and wore a 100 logo on their helmets, in multiple orientations. The helmet decal was naturally a team-by-team decision, so there were many games in which one team wore the logo and the opponent did not. By The Helmet Project‘s count, over 80 teams have been spotted wearing the 100 decals.

Auburn was one of the teams that did not wear the 100th-anniversary logo. Auburn had just added the AU logo to the helmets in 1966 and apparently wasn’t interested in changing. While many teams across the country wore the commemorative logo, the Tigers only faced one team with the 100 donning their helmets: Alabama. 

Auburn is no stranger to anniversary logos and patches. In 1992, the Tigers football team wore a 100th Season of Auburn Football patch. Only one white-backed patch was created, which made for an interesting look on the blue jerseys.

2006 was the 150th anniversary of Auburn University, and the commemorative logo was featured on the field at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

The SEC celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2007 with all teams wearing a patch for the occasion. The logo was also painted on Pat Dye Field.

Auburn revealed a 125th season of football logo in 2017 but it never saw action on the football uniforms or on the field.

200,000 patches and decals have been ordered for the 2019 season (image via CFB150)

The issue with the current landscape of uniforms is they tend to become very crowded. With a manufacturer logo, conference patch, and typically a school name or logo featured on the chest, there isn’t a whole lot of room for much more. Bowl patches have seemingly increased in size in recent seasons. Some teams add captaincy patches and memorial patches along with a myriad of other patches. Adding a season-long patch like the CFB150, it can easily make for a loud, billboard-like appearance of a uniform.

I like the idea of commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of collegiate football. I like what the CFB150 organization has put together for the upcoming season. I wish teams had more of an opportunity to do it in more unique ways. Naturally, with the current state of branding and identity for schools and businesses in general, there wasn’t much of a chance to see teams replicate the 100 decals from 1969. Very few teams, if any, would agree to remove their logo from even one side of their helmets. That, along with the equipment and attention to design, is one of the bigger changes in sports in the last half century.

College football isn’t the alone in celebrating milestones – the Auburn Uniform Database is celebrating five years this season! A fifth anniversary logo was designed for the celebration and is featured at the top of this site and on new anniversary t-shirts.

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Featured image via Brett Davis, USA Today Sports