[St. Loser Fan]

So, on a scale of Joel Schumacher Batman and Robin to LA Rams/Ferragamos... where do the current uniforms rate?

Batman Forever

[aeneas1]

the rams iconic helmet horns, a bit of history:

1941-1946: the rams sported leather helmets painted yellow.

1947: after five seasons of wearing yellow helmets, the rams switched things up and painted their leather helmets navy blue.

1948: rams hb fred gehrke painted yellow horns onto the rams 1947 blue leather helmets marking the first time in nfl history that a team sported a logo / insignia on their helmets - it would take 7 more years for the next team, the colts, to add a logo to their helmet... 1948 also marked the last time the rams wore leather helmets, and it was the only year that fred gehrke painted horns on the rams helmets.

note: in my past life i used to authenticate vintage football helmets for all of the major sports memorabilia auction houses and was also an avid collector - since that time i have only seen one authentic 1948 rams leather helmet surface, and it sold at auction in 2017 for $10,000 (pictured below) - if there is another one in existence it has not surfaced publicly, in fact the 1948 rams helmet on display at the pro football hall of fame was actually painted for the hall by fred gehrke himself in the early 70s so that they would have a 1948 helmet to display when he was given the pfhof pioneer award for his significant contribution to nfl history.

1949: one year after gehrke made nfl history, the rams ditched his beautiful helmet horn design along with their leather helmets.... the rams, giants, lions and redskins were early adopters of riddell's plastic football helmets, the furture, while the rest of the league continued to wear leather for the next couple of years or so... not only did riddell now supply plastic football helmets to the rams, but they also provided the rams with a new horn design for their helmets, an in-house, stock, helmet horn template... so after just one season gehrke's horns were gone, were no more, they were replaced by riddell's stock horn design, which could have easily become the rams helmet horns that we know today.

1950: someone, some angel, in the rams organization made a decision to dump riddell's stock horn template after the 1949 season, after just one year of use, and require riddell to figure out a way to paint gehrke's classic horn design on their plastic helmets... this was easier requested / said than done and required a lot of custom work by riddell because, frankly, gehrke's beautiful horn design was a pain in the ass to apply to riddell's plastic helmets.

riddell's plastic helmets in use at the time were "rt" models, r for riddell, t for tenite (the name of the plastic used)... riddell actually molded their helmets from transparent tenite plastic - paint was applied to the inside (not outside) of the helmet shell and the paint color could be seen when the helmet was worn because of the helmet's transparency, this process also provided solid protection for the paint and helmet design.

in the rams case, riddell placed horn stencils in the shape of gehrke's iconic design on the inside of the transparent helmet shell, then sprayed the interior of the helmet shell navy blue, removed the stencils leaving a navy blue helmet with transparent horns, and then sprayed the interior of the helmet yellow which created the yellow horns against a navy background.

the helmet shell consisted of 3 pieces - the left half of the shell, the right half of the shell, and a raised center strip that anchored the two halves together using glue and rivets... riddell wrapped the bottom portion of the helmet, below the earholes, with leather, which secured interior jaw / cheek pads in place.

in order for gehrke's horns to display / show well, riddell made a custom leather wrap for rams helmets - instead of using of leather for the wraps throughout (on the inside and outside of the helmet as was the norm), riddell used transparent vinyl on the outside of the helmet so that the bottom of the horn, which curled below the earholes, could be seen.

riddell also had to hand paint the raised center strip that joined the two helmet halves together in order to preserve gehrke's horn design that formed a "v" at the front of the helmet... this custom work was as a big undertaking, and a big pain in the butt, that riddell only did for the rams as no other team had the same type of demanding helmet logo.

by the mid 1950s riddell retired their rt plastic helmets and replaced them with their rk and tk plastic helmet models, made of a hard, non-transparent plastic... during this transition the wraps at the bottom of the helmet, below the earholes, that held the jaw padding in place, were eliminated and riddell no longer had to make custom wraps for the rams so that the bottom of the horns could be seen.

and because the horn stencils could now be placed on the outside of the helmet before spraying, given the helmets were no longer transparent and painted on the inside, the "v" formed at the front of the helmet by the horns could be painted much easier... in short, altho not a complete picnic compared to other team helmets, painting the rams horns became much easier for riddell.

however with the transition from the riddell rt plastic helmets of the late 40s / early 50s to rk and tk helmets of the mid 50s and beyond, came the first significant change to gehrke's horn design - the horn curl that wrapped under and around the helmet earholes became smaller, far less exaggerated, when compared to gehrke's original design.

1964: another change to gehrke's original horn design happened in 1964 when the rams changed their helmet horn color from yellow to white - the horns no longer formed a "v" at the front of the helmet, and instead were separated by the width of the helmet's center ridge that connected the left and right halves of the helmet.

this was clearly done by riddell in order to expedite the horn painting process - with the change riddell no longer had to worry about the center ridge of the helmet, or forming the "v", which complicated the painting process... in fact, from this point on, every change to the rams helmet horns, and there were many, was done in order to make the horn creation and maintenance process easier and more efficient.

and for the next 9 seasons, from 1964 through 1972, during the entire time that the rams sported white helmet horns, riddell would use the same horn stencil throughout and the rams helmet horns would remain unchanged... this stretch of time, 1964-1972, also marked the last time that the rams, that riddell, would paint the horns on the rams helmet, from 1973 through today the rams have used decals.

1973: several big changes happened - 1) the rams became one of the last nfl teams to finally jump on the helmet decal wagon, prior to 1973 the rams helmet horns had always been painted, but in 1973 they began using horn decals on their helmets 2) riddell began to offer helmets molded in a variety of different colors, so for the first time in rams history the rams no longer had their plastic helmets painted navy blue, instead the helmets were made of blue plastic and 3) the rams returned to yellow horns.

worth noting, the shape of the new yellow horn decals was perfectly identical to the white horn stencils that riddell used to paint white horns on navy during the previous 9 seasons.

also worth noting, the new horn decals came with a learning curve - the rams equipment room quickly discovered that facemasks could not be installed over the horn decals (as they could over the painted horns) because they would cause the decals to bunch at the attachment points and because the decals could not be replaced without first removing the facemask (a time-consuming process just to replace a helmet decal)... as such the rams equipment manager(s) ended up cutting the horn decals in many places before applying them to the helmets.

on average each horn decal had to be cut 4 times before application, 8 cuts per set (helmet), which was a lot of work - and until todd hewitt was fired by the rams in 2011, for 39 years, only he and his father, don hewitt, had applied the rams horn decals, no one else.

in the photos below it's easy to see how the front of the horn decal was cut to fit around the nose bumper with the riddell nameplate, with a large portion of the horn decal reaching the front lip of the helmet, as it should, but this would not last because it was so time consuming.

in short, by cutting the decals to accommodate the facemask, the rams equipment guys could easily remove and replace the horn decals without removing the facemasks.

by the mid 80s, about a decade after the switch to horn decals, the rams equipment room decided to save time by no longer cutting the horn decals to fit around the nose bumper, instead opting to apply the decals above the bumper, which left the front of the horn decals about 3 inches from the front lip of the helmet, a look that many rams fans noticed and didn't like... yet the horn decals would remain this way for the next 15+ seasons, until 2000, when the rams switched to metallic gold horn decals.

2000: for some reason, after a decade and a half, the rams equipment room decided to once again cut the horn decals to fit around the nose bumper so that they could be extended to the front lip of the helmet... this decision coincided with the switch from yellow horn decals to metallic gold decals.

not only did the rams switch horn decal colors and how they cut / applied the horn decals, but for the first time in 39 years (since the rams switched to blue & white helmets in 1964), the rams changed the shape of their helmet horns... the horn decals became much narrower, and much longer, as the rams tried to come up with a decal that would fit the many new helmet shapes and styles, in fact the rams actually used several different decal sizes during this period, something they had never done before.

2020: which brings us to now, the latest changes to the rams iconic horns, to gehrke's iconic design, changes that are easily the most drastic excluding the 1949 one-season use of riddell's stock horn templates... but like past changes to the horn decal, this entry is about incorporating expediency and convenience in horn maintenance.

the horns are intentionally placed wide of the nose bumper in order to avoid decal cuts to this area, and the large curl at the end of the horn, that wraps around the earhole, has been eliminated completely in order to avoid having to cut this area of the decal to accommodate facemask hardware.

[Will0120]

the horns are intentionally placed wide of the nose bumper in order to avoid decal cuts to this area, and the large curl at the end of the horn, that wraps around the earhole, has been eliminated completely in order to avoid having to cut this area of the decal to accommodate facemask hardware.

a16.jpeg

Awesome history lesson A1. Thank you so much for that, fun read for sure. For the last part of your write up, is this a suspicion on your end or it's a confirmed known fact on why they removed the curl?

[Hacksaw]

1950: someone, some angel, in the rams organization made a decision to dump riddell's stock horn templates after the 1949 season, after just one year of use ,,,,,

I'm not so secretly hoping the same thing will occur with the 2020 helmet design.

[UtahRam]

They could have the horns pre-made with the cut around the bumper. It's all just nonsense. I hope Demoff is let go.

[St. Loser Fan]

They could have the horns pre-made with the cut around the bumper. It's all just nonsense. I hope Demoff is let go.

I'd love to see Demoff of the short list for the next NFL commissioner. Either that or the first manned landing on the sun.

[Elvis]

Rams hve been going hard with the blue/blue look so far this year but here's Stafford in bone:



Obo in blue.

I'm still skeptical that we'll see a new uni this year but we'll see.

[Elvis]

[Mr. Sparkle]

That's a great write up on the horns!
For a sequel, could you do one on the logo?
I think that is much more split than the uniforms.
Hard to believe that the St. Louis Millennium colors were their official uniform for about as long as the Ferragamo's.

[St. Loser Fan]