When Football Officials Wore White: A Colorful History

In the modern football game, when we think about black and white on a football field, we think about the officials, the referee, the umpire, the judges.

But it hasn't always been that color that they've worn back in the day.

They weren't all white.

We're going to talk about that aspect of football history with Timothy Brown@footballarchaeology.com right after this.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Dar Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of Pigskind dispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal deposit of football history.

And welcome to another evening of spending with Timothy p.

Brown of footballarchaeology.com Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Yeah, thank you, Darren.

Look forward to chatting.

And this is a night where we can say brown is the new white or white is new brown or something like that.

Yeah.

And gets in the subject that people don't know about yet.

But yeah.

And all stripes are off on this one.

So that's right.

So of course we're talking about a tidbit that you wrote recently called when football officials wore white shirts.

Maybe you could tell us about that history.

Yeah, that was two and a half years ago recently.

Oh boy, time flies.

So, yeah, so I mean, basically that, that was a pretty quick article.

But, but kind of the ideal thing was to wear a white shirt.

And it was, so that picture was one of the early ones where a team was wearing white shirts as well.

So it kind of made the, and that became kind of a challenge because, you know, originally officials kind of wore whatever they had mostly just kind of beat up, dirtier suits because kind of everybody wore suits all the time.

But they'd wear, you know, beat up suits because they were going to fall in the mud and, you know, whatever.

So there wasn't really any, anything kind of official.

And then it kind of evolved that a lot of the officials would wear their college letter sweaters because it kind of showed that they were, that they were knowledgeable, that they knew the game.

And then oftentimes they were, they were doing, they were doing games that, where they had played or whoever they were associated with was not participating.

You know, so if they were, if they represented or if they played at Purdue, they might do the Chicago Michigan game, but they wouldn't do Purdue in Indiana.

Right.

So, so there, there was quite a period really into the teens where a lot of officials, assuming they could still fit a fit in them, would wear their college letter sweater.

And even the coaches would do that.

I think about images of like fielding Yost.

He's perfect example that he was always wearing playing gear.

Yep.

So, so then, so then what, what started happening though was the teams were, you know, starting to recognize the need to have contrasting colors.

There's no rule that had the team should wear contrasting colors, but teams kind of started doing it on their own.

And one of the more innovative ways to do that was to wear white jerseys.

Like Stanford was one of the early ones and they're probably the most famous one, but Northwestern wore white jerseys pretty early on.

And so but what would happen then is if the, when the refs were wearing or the officials were wearing white jerseys, then the players would get confused and they'd like, out of the corner of their eye they'd see a white flash and they try to lateral the ball.

But it was an, it was an official rather than a teammate.

So this guy named Lloyd Olds, who was a professor and longtime track coach at Eastern Michigan, he decided he needed to do something about that.

So he, he went to the local sporting goods dealer in Ann Arbor and ordered a shirt custom made that had black and white vertical stripes.

And so that was the origin of the officials jersey.

And you know, then that all became pretty regulated.

And you know, I mean, there was no official rule saying that officials had to wear those things.

But like the Big Ten finally said okay, because he did this in like the twenties.

But they said, okay, our every official is going to wear black and white striped shirt.

And so at that time there were a bunch of regional officiating associations.

And so there were other parts of the country that adopted black and white shirts, but they weren't what we think of as the zebra shirt.

So like there was a.

The Southern Football Officials association which basically covered what's now the ACC and SEC and then the Southern Conference.

And they had a.

They had a shirt that was like.

It was basically a white shirt, black collar, and then one black stripe down the front along where the buttons would be.

And then they went through three or four different versions.

You know, they switched it up a couple times, but it was like, you know, like one thing that, you know, they were trying to get officiating to be official, right, to be certified instead of just, you know, whatever guy that they could grab off the street.

So in order to do.

One way to do that was to allow.

If you were a member of the association and you had gone through training and certified, then you could wear our shirt.

And so that was, you know, one way to.

To kind of make sure everybody recognized the officials knew what they were talking about was to.

I mean, they could still be blind as bat, but at least they knew the rules, right?

So.

And then there was another one in.

They kind of got rid of theirs.

I think they went to like the zebra shirt, maybe the early 50s, late 40s, and then the.

In the.

The South West Conference sort of thing.

It was mostly like Texas, but that.

That was the Southwest Football association or Officials Association.

So both of them were sfoa, and SFOA still exists.

But anyways, they.

They like the guy who was the head of that organization at the time, he created a shirt that was like.

It was white, and then it had like same kind of black stripe going down the.

The buttons, but at about like where a collar would start, like on a polo shirt.

Then it went ved out over the shoulders and then met again.

So it's like a diamond, you know, that stuck on top of the shirt.

And, and that.

They didn't get rid of that till like 67 or 68.

So they kept that for a long time.

And it was basically until that guy retired, they kept the shirt, that shirt.

But, you know, I.

In that particular tidbit, you know, I've got some images of, you know, teams where you got.

When you had teams playing from different conferences.

You know, now you have like the officiating crew comes from a different conference, right?

You got a Big Ten and Big 12 or whatever they're called nowadays.

Um, if they're playing, then you'll have a sec officiating crew.

But back, back then you'd have whatever two conferences they were from, you'd have a mixed crew.

And so, you know, there's games where you got officials who are out on the field together, some wearing zebra shirts.

And some wearing the regional shirts.

So, you know, it's just kind of goofy looking.

You know, it's one of those things, you can't even imagine it now, but it made sense, you know, back in the day.

So anyways, that's kind of the, the gist of when officials had white shirts and then when they started having black.

White shirts.

Yeah, it's, it's amazing, you know, just in my like quarter of a century officiating, how much uniform changed.

You know, when I, when I started, you know, we, of course we had the black and white shirts that we had.

You know, they still wear today at the high school level.

But you know, white, white knickers I wore, I had, you know, stirrup socks like baseball socks.

And the first thing to change is the socks they incorporated.

So you had the black and white, almost like the 70s high top socks.

They were all one piece hose, you know, and then you had regular white sock below it.

You can't, you know, it's white knickers or traditional.

I said, well actually I said probably wearing a black dress slacks was probably before, anytime before white knickers.

If you go back and look at some photos.

So I shared some photos that I, I had seen, you know, with, with some of them, like, wow, I guess you're right.

I said, so actually we're going back to the way it was, at least below the waist.

But yeah, so some interesting things.

And of course the NFL changing their stripes probably 20 some years ago to, to their more, you know, I don't know what you call it, zigzag, lightning bolt type stripes on some of, some of the places, you know.

Yeah, that's kind of unique.

Instead of the straight up, you know, my, my, some of my friends of course would, would bust them for me a little bit and say, you know, there's only, only two people wear stripes, you know, the blind and people that are inmates.

You know, which one are you?

I guess you're both or you know, it's things like have those kind of comments like that too.

But our stripes go the opposite way of the inmates.

Yeah, well, you know, it is, you know, it's an interesting thing just how the, you know, these, the uniforms basically followed the path of officiating becoming, you know, more professional.

Right.

And all the training that was required in order to officiate and you know, because Again, you know, back in the day it was like if you had played and you had been the captain of the local high school, then that was probably pretty good to officiate, you know, local high school games things.

So yeah, I mean they always wanted somebody who was like they considered trustworthy and stuff.

But yeah, I mean the uniform is basically a way to just.

Is a credential.

Right.

I mean it's like, it's like you know, military stripes, you know, and whatever, you know, something that designate you as, as different that they, they would.

I, I know early on when I was fishing, they would take you through some, basically some credence why.

Why you'd wear black and white and it was for showing neutrality.

You know, you weren't partial to either the, the dark uniform or the light uniform.

You're neutral and that, you know, set you apart from everybody else.

And as uniform, I mean it gets pretty anal.

Maybe folks don't really appreciate me now.

Everybody will look.

But when you watch officiating crews, everybody has to either wear the short sleeve or the long sleeve.

I mean even high school on down, I mean, I guess little kids games you can show up.

But, but there's sometimes where it was like the weather was like iffy.

You don't know if you know, it's like, you know, 60 degrees is.

It can be too chilly to wear, you know, short sleeves and maybe you want to wear long sleeves.

So you'd have to pack your, your gear to, to have both to take.

So everybody's going on the field and there used to be a time when I first started fishing, you had, you could wear jackets, the black and white striped jackets.

I don't think they allow you to do that anymore.

But that was really nice.

In the winter time, you know, you have a December game and you could put a striped jacket on.

But if, if one person wore a jacket, everybody had to wear a jacket.

So if you had one guy in your crew didn't have a jacket, tough, tough luck.

You're wearing long sleeves and you know, suck it up.

It's kind of a little, little nuances.

So you look uniform and everybody's the same except for one guy wearing away hat.

But yeah, that was the other thing that was kind of interesting.

If you, if you go back and watch NFL games From like the 70s, the, you know, nowadays the referee wears a white hat.

Everybody else wears the black with white piping.

But the NFL in the 70s, the referee was the one that wore the black with white piping.

And all the other officials wore the white caps and just kind of, you know, a little backwards from what college and high school were.

And they, they soon.

They changed that.

I don't know, probably in the 80s.

I think they changed.

Well, the thing the AFL had the colored strips, right?

Yes.

Yeah, the, the fourth AFL, the one that we, we know is the AFL in the 60s.

Yeah.

I couldn't remember if the, if the NFL had tried that at one point too, or not.

But they, they may have.

They had like red.

I think it was red stripes primarily.

But yeah, the other thing is kind of interesting when you see these officials wearing these white shirts back in this era that, you know, you're Talking about the 20s especially, it's amazing how other sports, their officials either football emulates what other sports are doing.

So I almost think of like a boxing official in wearing a white stripe with a bow tie.

And you see some of that in football in that era.

And you know, now nowadays, you know, football you think of as the stripes.

But I, I went to, my son played lacrosse, which I wasn't familiar with until he was in high school and playing it, and they wore black and white stripes, black and white pipe hats, yellow flags, you know, so some of the other sports said, hey, this works, we're going to do that too.

Well, I actually meant to, to mention that because the, the white stripe of.

Or the white shirted official actually started in basketball.

Now it could have started a track or something like that, but the mentions that I, you know, saw from newspapers at the time was that that started in, in basketball and then.

But you know, you had a lot of the same people who officiated one sport, officiated the other.

They just carried their gear over and, you know, applied it.

So yeah, so, okay, so, so the football start, the black and white stripes and that's how basketball and lacrosse pick up on them.

Or is that.

Yeah, football started that first.

I mean, okay, even like, you know, Lloyd Olds, who, who the inventor of the zebra shirt, he officiated basketball too.

And because he was doing it at the time, he was doing it at a know, high school level for the most part.

And then he would, you know, later on he worked, you know, kind of what we'd now think of as G4 level games.

You know, so he was doing college and high school, but.

But he started wearing those shirts, you know, there the story is that he started against when a team from Arizona came up and wore white, white shirts.

But I've looked and looked.

I've never found any, any Arizona team playing up in Michigan.

So I think, you know, when he, whenever he got quoted saying that, he just mixed up, you know, could have been a team from Ohio or Arkansas or whatever, but it wasn't.

Well, in Arizona, right?

Yeah, that would be kind of rare for them though.

Want to come from the desert up to the cold climate of Michigan.

Very cool.

But hey, this great story, Tim, and you know, great history is something, you know, we sort of take for granted that how the officials are dressed and don't get to appreciate what other eras did with their officiating in football in general.

And you, you cover this quite a bit in your tidbits and almost on a daily basis.

So maybe you could share with the listeners how they can enjoy and partake in some of your tidbits.

Yeah, I would just put a plug for the search function.

So, you know, you can, you can find this stuff on footballarchaeology.com but up in the upper right hand corner there's a little search function.

So if you just put in officials uniforms, it'll pull up like three or four articles that I've written, you know, and mostly the ones that I've referenced.

But like, we've talked about these different uniforms and, and it would help just to see them.

So, you know, if you're listening and you think about it, go to the site, search for the search form.

But so anyways, it's on footballarchaeology.com you can subscribe, you'll get the email.

You know, every time I publish an article, you can choose to turn off the email and just, you know, get it in your substack feed or just bookmark it, you know, whatever it is, however, however it works for you and then you can follow me on Blue Sky.

Well, well, Tim Brown, we thank you once again for joining us here on these Tuesday evenings and getting to talk about football history.

And we'd love to talk to you again next week.

Very good.

Look forward to it.

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