The Auburn Uniform Database turned ten years old this year. Over the last decade, I have spent countless hours – thousands of hours – digging into this unique niche of Auburn history. I tend to keep a lot of the process close to the vest and not share it.
But, as we enter the second decade of this work, I’ve realized that all of this deserves to be shared in some form or fashion. And that’s what I want to focus on in the coming years – finding unique ways to share the evidence and information that I have collected and sifted through.
For the time being, I’d like to share a few stories about this work. The highs and the lows. The frustration of not being able to locate something and the exhilaration of finally doing just that.
Before we jump into the individual stories, let me explain two things real quick.
I often describe my workflow as being cyclical. I often jump between a few different “stages.” Those include:
- “Admin work”: Creating Excel spreadsheets and file folders to house all the information, photographs, and other evidence, and managing the data that goes into each. This is generally my first step when diving into a topic to keep everything in order.
- Research: Diving into sources for evidence. These can include official team photo galleries, school yearbooks, both the Glomerata and opponent publications – and newspaper archives – primarily Newspapers.com.
- Creation: Taking the research gathered and putting it all together into the mockups seen on this site and creating content to showcase that information, whether that be in article form or for social media.
For me, these stages aren’t standard and fixed in this order. It’s generally based on my mood and what I wish to accomplish. There are days that I create AUD social content for weeks at a time and others in which I spend hours just perfecting the Excel files.
When I started diving into the historic uniforms worn by Auburn’s teams, I knew that the further back in time I went, the harder it would become to discover the necessary research materials. The ultimate goal of displaying every single uniform worn by every single varsity Auburn athletic team was a long shot from the beginning, and I knew that.
While the lack of evidence does become increasingly frustrating, I also know that Auburn has been among the best in the country when it comes to archiving the school’s history. As I branch out to utilize the publications archived at other schools, I become more and more thankful for the work the Auburn Libraries and other entities involved for their pre-emptive work in preserving Auburn’s unique history. Some schools just don’t have what Auburn has here (looking at you, Texas and Oklahoma, among others).
The Color Photo
The large Excel spreadsheet that I use for Auburn Football uniform research has every single game documented since the 1946 season. That includes Auburn’s helmet, jersey, and pants color, along with the opponent’s uniform combination. The 1945 season only has a handful of missing games.
Recently, I was looking to expand the opponent uniform combination aspect of this spreadsheet in order to discover more color-on-color games and to determine Auburn’s record against teams in certain colors. (This is a nerdy uniform website, after all).
The Auburn Glomerata had just one photo identified as the Georgia Tech game, though it was a wide shot of the stadium. The clippings available through Newspapers.com also didn’t shine much light on the team uniforms.
This is the quality of image available for many games in the period. (image via Atlanta Constitution archives)
In 1945, Auburn wore two jerseys – navy and orange – and two pants – navy and white. It was evident with the photos on hand that Auburn was in all navy. Select photos showed one team in dark uniforms with bright numbers. The other team was also in dark uniforms but with darker numbers than the opposing squad. Knowing what we knew of Auburn’s uniforms, we could piece this one together.
Auburn’s navy jerseys had orange numbers. In black-and-white photos, the differences in those values are sometimes evident. It was clear that Auburn was in all navy with orange trim. But what about Georgia Tech? Traditionally a blue and gold/yellow school, Tech sported black uniforms at times in the 1980s. They likely did the same here.
With the Gloms and newspaper archives coming up empty, the next option was Georgia Tech’s yearbook, The Blue Print (college yearbook names are spectacular). Yearbooks typically included more black-and-white photos, but they were often of higher quality than newspapers. And, with the additional game photos included, it may be possible to decipher the images as navy or black. Or maybe there was a written account in there.
All the 1945 Tech students had to do was include photos – that’s no guarantee in this age.
Much to my surprise, when I flipped the digital Tech yearbook to the football section, the section cover included a full-page photo of the game in question. And, as a bonus, it was entirely in color!
(1946 Blue Print)
Never in a million guesses would I have thought Tech wore all gold for this game! But there it is. Auburn in all navy with orange numerals. Georgia Tech in gold uniforms with white numbers. An amazing find!
And then the pessimism hit again. “What if this isn’t actually Auburn?” It sure looked like it, but how can we be sure?
We check the Georgia Tech schedule, that’s how. This game was clearly at Tech’s home field in Atlanta. Seven of the team’s ten games were played at Grant Field. Those home games included: Notre Dame, Howard (now Samford), Auburn, Duke, LSU, Clemson, and Georgia. Of those, only Clemson would come close to Auburn’s color scheme. But they primarily wore orange jerseys at this time, complete with Northwestern stripes around the sleeves.
And with those concerns put to rest, we can finally confirm that this is, indeed, the 1945 Auburn-Georgia Tech game. All of that to simply determine the color of the uniforms worn in a single game almost 80 years ago.
Stripes of a Different Color
UT-Chattanooga was a longtime common opponent for the Auburn Tigers. The two have met on the gridiron 21 times (Auburn leads the series 21-0-0). The 1942 meeting was just the second, the first since the 1926 season.
Auburn would often open the season with a Friday night game at Montgomery’s Cramton Bowl in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. It was the rare game under the lights for the Tigers at this time. The Chattanooga game got the call for that Friday Night Lights feature this season.
Night games are difficult with vintage black-and-white photographs. There isn’t much detail in the background and any decipherable information tends to be a little muddy, or confusing at best. Better yet, the newspaper clippings are even muddier, having been printed on not-the-best paper, held in fair quality for decades, and then scanned once again for digital archiving purposes.
And then, despite Glomeratas, Chattanooga’s yearbook, and these newspapers available, there were only two images uncovered.
The only photos discovered of the 1942 Auburn-Chattanooga game in Montgomery. (images Chattanooga Daily Times)
We know that Chattanooga wears navy and gold nowadays, but it’s not uncommon for a school to completely change their colors over time. It’s clear in the photos above that the Moccasins’ uniforms were dark with lighter-colored stripes on the shoulders (and boy, how beautiful is this uniform?!). But what colors were they?
Let’s go back to the Moccasin, the school’s yearbook. Uniforms aren’t often worn for just one season, so let’s check the volumes before and after the 1942 season for better-quality images.
Low and behold, Chattanooga had two sets of shoulder-striped uniforms! The Moccasins wore a bright-bodied jersey with darker stripes as well. Two colorways of a gorgeous uniform to sport as they please.
Images of UT-Chattanooga’s 1940s uniforms. The second image appears to be an intrasquad scrimmage with both the light and dark colorways being worn. (image via 1947 Moccasin yearbook)
But that doesn’t answer the color question.
After digging around further, the team was often referred to as the “Blue and Yellow” team. This was a standard terminology practice by journalists of the era. Trying to mix up their phrases, the writers would often refer to teams by a number of nicknames. This is also how Auburn teams became known as “Plainsmen” back in the day.
That was enough to confirm that the dark color on the uniforms was indeed navy, with the yellow/gold being utilized for the stripes.
Rewrite The Script
In the early parts of 2020, I spent some time diving into Auburn Baseball uniforms to expand the uniforms featured on this site. There was one uniform in particular that simply gave me trouble when trying to identify every detail on the jersey.
And the kicker – this was during a College World Series appearance season.
The year is 1997. Tim Hudson, David Ross, and company led the Tigers to their forth appearance in the Omaha championship tournament. It was the third – and final – season in which this navy jersey was going to be worn. The Tigers even clinched their CWS berth with a win over Florida State in Tallahassee, Florida, while wearing these very jerseys.
Between 1995 and 1997, the three years of use for the jersey in question, only a handful of photos were uncovered of the top. And only a single color image was found.
(image via Auburn Athletics)
As you can see, the jersey is a navy base with the SEC patch on the left sleeve, Russell Athletic logo on the right sleeve, and a script Auburn wordmark across the chest. But that script looks different.
Auburn first introduced a script logo in 1985 with the uniform that Bo Jackson and Frank Thomas would be sporting. That original script was retired after the 1994 season and the navy uniform in question was introduced in 1995. The modern script made its appearance in 2009 and has been used ever since.
No matter how many photos I discovered, I couldn’t get a great look at the entire script used on this blue jersey. Most of the time, just the latter half was visible. The photo above clearly shows a unique A, but it’s difficult to tell exactly what it looks like and how it interacts with the rest of the wordmark.
Years later, in November 2023, I’m browsing eBay as I do every day, checking to see what new Auburn uniform items have been listed. And I find it.
Imagine my shock when, doing my daily eBay check recently, I found it.
The jersey I had hunted for a single quality photo of for so long. Right here in front of me, for sale.
I couldn’t pass up the chance for a vital reference for my work, but also a wonderful collection piece. pic.twitter.com/zdBEHaJuu1
— Clint Richardson (@Clintau24) December 7, 2023
The very jersey that has given me fits for years is now available for purchase. It was an important reference item for this research, but would also make a great addition to my Auburn uniform collection. I had to have it.
A few days later, it arrived. And it was as beautiful as expected. And there it is – that stinking script – staring at me in the face. It, however, was not attractive. It was an awkward script. It used a capital A that looks like some combination of an Atlanta Braves and Alabama Crimson Tide letter logo. It’s a unique look for Auburn, nonetheless.
But now we can perfect the replication of the script and, ultimately, provide more accurate mockups of the uniform worn during this time. A years-long hunt for a tiny detail was finally completed.
Yea…it’s just a bad design.
Assistance Needed
It’s been a point of pride (hubris, maybe) that everything you see here at the Auburn Uniform Database was done by me and me alone. But I feel like I’ve exhausted many of the avenues that I know of and could use some assistance in some areas.
Interactive Database Display
After all this time, I’ve decided that I want to add an interactive component to this website that includes much of (all?) of the data that I’ve collected into these Excel spreadsheets. Something that is searchable, filterable, customizable, able to include photos and links, and so on.
Friend of the AUD, Hail State Unis, has implemented a wonderful system to accomplish this.
That is the only example I can find of this very thing. I really want to gauge my options and see what’s available. If you know of a product that would accomplish something like this, please let me know.
In my own searches, I found a lot of spreadsheet displays (though they often got pricey real quick), but nothing more like Hail State Unis. I realize that my terminology may be off with this as well.
Vintage Photos
I have exhausted the routes I know of to discover photos of Auburn football games predating World War II. As mentioned in the stories above, there are four games between 1942 and 1945 that I was unable to discover any quality photos of, if any photos at all. Between 1920 and 1935, that number is much larger. Instead of missing three or four games, I only have three games discovered and identified per season.
The areas that I use for this research include:
- Auburn Glomerata
- Auburn Plainsman newspaper archives
- Auburn Library and Special Collections, digital and physical archives
- Auburn Photographic Services, digital archives
- Opposing school yearbooks (I checked every single opponent yearbook from the 1920s)
- Opposing school student newspaper archives
- Newspaper.com archives, the largest newspaper archived collection available
- And more
If you know of any additional sources, or if you happen to have or know someone who has photographs from this time available, please reach out.
Continued Support
Only a few times in the history of this site have I discussed financial support. A few years ago, I created a Buy Me A Coffee account. Think Patreon but without the tiers of bonuses and access. I didn’t want to use Patreon because I felt like I didn’t have anything extra to offer.
Knowing all the time and effort that goes into the Auburn Uniform Database – in addition to the web hosting and other recurring fees – if you wish to support this work, there are multiple ways to do so.
- Buy Me A Coffee: BMAC allows you to tip your favorite creators. The name simply comes from the gesture of “Hey, I’d like to buy you a drink.” BMAC can accept one-time donations (like a tip jar) or monthly recurring donations in the form of a “membership.” Memberships are similar to Patreon, where you get access to paywalled information.
- Affiliate programs: The AUD is partnered with a few brands like Fanatics, Under Armour, and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Visit the Support page to find affiliate links to these websites. Shopping through these links and completing an order will generate a commission that kicks back my way.
Please don’t feel obligated to support me and this work. These are simply being set up more so as a “tip jar” for those who truly enjoy the work and appreciate the effort that goes into it.
There are so many more stories just like these. If you want to read more, do follow me on Twitter where I share much more. And I may write more articles just like this if you like it – let me know!
Want to see more like this? Be sure to follow the Auburn Uniform Database on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for even more uniform news. For ways to support the AUD, including affiliate links to Fanatics and Dick’s Sporting Goods, visit the Support page.
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