Rams Fans United - Los Angeles Rams Fan Discussion Forum

Keep watching it over and over...

actually i think this vid was already posted, absolutely awesome vid, altho the little tike in the vid seems to be sporting a raiders away jersey, seems they could have found a rams jersey for him to don.... especially love the below shot of the guys walking out of the tunnel:

speaking of the shot below, how about some nerd trivia? alexander, redden and dickerson are all sporting helmets made by bike, which later became schutt... up until 1975 the rams wore riddell almost exclusively, from the time they started sporting plastic helmets in 1949.

riddell always took great care of the rams, including painstakingly painting the horns on the helmet shells, until 1973 when the rams finally switched to decals (one of the very last teams to do so)... painting the horns was no easy task, especially from 1949 through the mid 50s, a period when riddell helmets were actually transparent, the paint was applied to the inside of the shell, not the outside, but could be seen because of the shell's transparency.

riddell not only painted the horns on the inside of the shell, but also created transparent wrap-around jaw pads exclusively for the rams. wrap-around jaw pads of that era were made of leather and covered a large area outside of the helmet shell, as well as the inside of the shell, below the ear hole. but this was a problem for rams helmets because such an approach would cover a large part of the horn, the section of the horn that curled below the ear hole. so instead of using leather for the outside portion of the wrap-around jaw pad, riddell instead custom made wrap-around jaw pads made of transparent vinyl and leather, i.e. the inside portion of the jaw pad was leather, while the outside portion was transparent vinyl, which allowed the full horn to be seen.

anyway don hewitt, the rams' longtime equipment manager, was close friends with riddell, loved their helmets, and was loyal to riddell, at a time when most other teams used several different helmet brands. but things changed in 1975 when the rams drafted dennis harrah in the first round. harrah had used a bike helmet in college, bike was extremely popular at the college level in those days while riddell still dominated the pros, and he wanted a bike helmet when he played for the rams.

according to don's son, todd, it killed don to have to go with another helmet manufacturer, he felt like he was letting riddell down, but priority 1 was fitting players with the helmet they wanted and most, until harrah arrived, were happy with the riddell's the rams had. but once harrah started sporting a bike the floodgates opened and more and more rams players wanted bike, they were especially popular among skill position players. and know you know the rest of the story!

That's a cool story, aeneas.

That Les Richter helmet is beautiful.

max wrote:That's a cool story, aeneas.

That Les Richter helmet is beautiful.

yeah, the helmet model richter is sporting in my avatar is by far my all-time favorite, it's the transparent riddell model with the horns painted on the inside i was talking about, circa mid 50s... i used to collect vintage football helmets, have over 500 (do i need help or what?) and would often authenticate for the top sports memorabilia auction houses, it was a lot of fun but very time consuming, made some great friends along the way tho, a lot of nfl equipment managers and the head curator of the hof... anyway the richter helmet model was my white whale, one of the rarest if not rarest vintage helmets out there, in 10+ years of collecting i had only seen one in a private collection, never at auction, it was said to have belonged to tom fears but i had my doubts, it was the real deal tho, an authentic rams gamer from that era, thing was a beauty... then a few years ago one popped up on ebay of all places but got nabbed before the auction ran its course, the buyer made the seller an offer and he promptly ended the auction, i was pizzed!!! a week later another one popped up on ebay, this one belonged to all-pro rams lb don paul, i was able to nab it... the following week my buddy from the hof sent me pictures of their newest acquisition, robustelli's rams helmet from that era, same model, and then a few weeks later another one, attributed to ollie matson, showed up at one of higher end auction houses.... in short, i had gone 10+ years of never seeing one at auction, only seeing one in a private collection, to seeing 4 at auction in the span of a few weeks, crazy! that said, haven't seen another one since!

aeneas1 wrote:

max wrote:That's a cool story, aeneas.

That Les Richter helmet is beautiful.

yeah, the helmet model richter is sporting in my avatar is by far my all-time favorite, it's the transparent riddell model with the horns painted on the inside i was talking about, circa mid 50s... i used to collect vintage football helmets, have over 500 (do i need help or what?) and would often authenticate for the top sports memorabilia auction houses, it was a lot of fun but very time consuming, made some great friends along the way tho, a lot of nfl equipment managers and the head curator of the hof... anyway the richter helmet model was my white whale, one of the rarest if not rarest vintage helmets out there, in 10+ years of collecting i had only seen one in a private collection, never at auction, it was said to have belonged to tom fears but i had my doubts, it was the real deal tho, an authentic rams gamer from that era, thing was a beauty... then a few years ago one popped up on ebay of all places but got nabbed before the auction ran its course, the buyer made the seller an offer and he promptly ended the auction, i was pizzed!!! a week later another one popped up on ebay, this one belonged to all-pro rams lb don paul, i was able to nab it... the following week my buddy from the hof sent me pictures of their newest acquisition, robustelli's rams helmet from that era, same model, and then a few weeks later another one, attributed to ollie matson, showed up at one of higher end auction houses.... in short, i had gone 10+ years of never seeing one at auction, only seeing one in a private collection, to seeing 4 at auction in the span of a few weeks, crazy! that said, haven't seen another one since!

This is amazing stuff. Are all of your helmets from the Rams? Would you ever let your helmet collection be displayed publicly?

Yeah that's the video they showed us at the press conference. It is special.

Aeneas is the best. If you want a section here at RFU to show off and talk about your collection, just say the word...