Who was the first college football team to wear winged helmets? The answer might surprise you.
Nowadays, the idea of Ohio State wearing winged helmets would be considered blasphemy. Over the past 88 years, the winged helmet has become synonymous with Michigan, Ohio State’s hated rival. The only time you’ll ever see a Buckeye wear a winged helmet in modern times is during the practice week leading up to The Game, when Ohio State’s scout-teamers don maize and blue helmets and jerseys to help the Buckeyes prepare to play the team up north.
For five years in the 1930s, however, Ohio State was the team wearing winged helmets in The Game.
Sam Willaman’s Buckeyes were the first college football team to wear winged helmets when they adopted the design in 1930. Their version of the winged helmet, designed by Spalding, had more to do with safety than aesthetics; according to SpartanJerseys.com, the lighter-colored wing, placed on top of a dark-colored leather helmet, was put in place as extra padding to help protect players from collisions.
Ohio State wearing the winged helmets during a 27-0 win over Navy in 1930. (Photo: The Makio, 1931, Ohio State University Archives)
Ohio State wore the winged helmets through Francis Schmidt’s first season in 1934 – when the Buckeyes earned their first of four straight shutout wins over Michigan under Schmidt – before switching back to solid-colored helmets in 1935.
The Buckeyes weren’t the only team to wear winged helmets before the Wolverines. Indiana, Georgetown and Michigan’s other rival, Michigan State, also wore versions of the winged helmet in the early 1930s. Indiana’s winged helmet design looked similar to Michigan’s, with three white stripes running across the top of the helmet from front to back, but the direct inspiration for Michigan’s helmet design came from Princeton.
Princeton began wearing its winged helmets, with three orange stripes on a black base, during its undefeated national championship season of 1935. The Wolverines began wearing winged helmets three years later, in 1938, when Michigan hired Fritz Crisler away from Princeton to be its new head coach. Nearly nine decades later, the blue helmets with maize wings remain a staple of the Wolverines’ uniforms.
Ohio State never wore winged helmets again after the 1934 season, but the modern-day Ohio State helmets that now rank among college football’s iconic designs weren’t introduced until 1968. After Woody Hayes and athletic trainer Ernie Biggs introduced the concept of awarding Buckeye Leaf helmet stickers to players in 1967, Ohio State switched to silver helmets with a scarlet, white and black stripe in the center for the following season. The “Super Sophomores” led the 1968 Buckeyes to a 10-0 season and a national championship, and Ohio State’s now-emblematic helmet design remains nearly unchanged 58 years later.
