It wasn't that long ago -- just five or six years -- that virtually every major college football team had only one helmet design. The main exception was Washington State, which had separate helmets for home and road (which was considered a major eccentricity at the time).
Things sure have changed. A college football team with only one or two helmets is now viewed as being somewhere between quaint and pathetic. Thanks to the explosion in helmet designs -- blackout, whiteout, gray, carbon fiber, camouflage, chrome, pride, stars and stripes, rivalry, matte-finish, throwback and more -- many programs have at least three different helmet colors that they can customize with various decals and face mask colors to create a near-endless array of designs. (As if to underscore this point, Oregon has just announced a new pink helmet.)
Uni Watch
With the helmet explosion showing no signs of abating, many Uni Watch readers have begun asking questions: How much do these helmets cost? Who pays for them? What happens to them all, especially the ones that are used only once or twice?