Anything but Uniform: Dartmouth

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Penn starts the Ivy League season this weekend with Dartmouth -- the team with arguably the most interesting uniforms in the league and the most recent changes.

As recently as 2001, the Big Green wore this. I know it's hard to see, but you can see the following attributes -- sleeve stripes, white pants, black socks, "normal" varsity block numerals.

in 2002, it was the same design, which was made by Wilson.

In 2003, the Big Green switched to Reebok, with this at home, and this on the road in 2004.The big difference is the addition of black, which when it's paired with green together, looks awful.

Then, under new coach Buddy Teevens, Dartmouth switched to Nike in 2005, and all green look. Here's a front view.

The road jerseys, which Penn will see tomorrow, look much better, as you can see here. I'm not a huge fan of green-on-green, and this uniform look, while it's a standard Nike template, does have unique numerals, which I like.

You may have noticed that I've ignored the most obvious feature of Dartmouth's uniforms -- the helmet.

Here's a good look at it. Dartmouth's media guide from a couple years ago has an explanation of their helmet, which was created by one of their coaches (I can't remember which one, because I obviously forgot my copy of the page), in order to be unique. It certainly is, with the logo up front. I can only think of one other team -- the Wisconsin throwback uniforms from a year ago that have something like that. It's a nice touch.

Now, according to the media guide, Teevens got rid of that helmet his first time at Dartmouth, starting in 1987, in order to try to revitalize a struggling program. When he left in 1992, John Lyons brought back the old-school helmet, which Teevens left in place this time.

He may not have turned around the football team yet, but at least Teevens has the uniform going in the right direction.