Best College Football Helmets

Sports Illustrated just ran an article ranking the top ten color-only and combo college football helmets. The winged maize-and-blue helmet design is without a doubt one of the most well known and liked designs in sports. You know a football helmet design is good when other schools copy you. Below is Princeton’s helmet design. It looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it? At least they took the time and effort to change the colors.

It turns out that the design was originally conceived for Princeton by the then Tigers coach Fritz Crisler. According to Sports Illustrated, “he came up with the winged helmet design in 1935 to help his quarterback better identify his receivers downfield.” When Crisler accepted the Michigan job in 1938, he took the design with him. He just needed to change the colors from orange and black to maize and blue. It looks like we’re the ones who copied the design and changed the colors… well at least we’re the ones who made it famous.