Will Alabama ever wear white helmets under Kalen DeDeBoer?
It's been almost exactly four decades since Alabama has worn anything other than crimson helmets in a game, and that seems unlikely to change any time soon.
The Crimson Tide wore white helmets in eight games during the Ray Perkins era, most recently in a 29-7 win at Cincinnati on Nov. 17, 1984. That was 40 years ago this Sunday, and 515 Alabama football games ago heading into Saturday's game with Mercer.
Nick Saban said on his coach's show in 2022 that he didn't envision Alabama ever changing away from crimson helmets, saying the Crimson Tide's current game day look was part of the program's "culture" and "brand" and "what people expect to see." First-year head coach Kalen DeBoer echoed those sentiments when asked about it by AL.com on Wednesday.
"You know, there's just a lot of pride in who we are and I'm sure that somewhere in the history, you can point to different-colored helmets being worn and maybe someone is for that," DeBoer said on the SEC coaches' teleconference. "But right now, we're just keeping the focus on the main thing and that's our play on the field and representing the crimson helmet the way we can, in the best way possible."
Alternate helmet colors weren't unheard of during DeBoer's two previous FBS head-coaching stops. In the 18 games he coached at Fresno State in 2020-21, the Bulldogs wore red helmets 11 times, white helmets six times and blue helmets once (in a 2021 game vs. New Mexico).
At Washington, the Huskies wore their regular gold helmets 25 times in 28 games under DeBoer in 2022-23. However, the Huskies wore chrome helmets vs. both California and in the Alamo Bowl vs. Texas in 2022 and unveiled purple helmets vs. Arizona State in 2023.
And while Fresno State and Washington aren't as traditional-rich as Alabama, it's not as if the Huskies in particular have no history of excellence in the sport. Washington has been playing football since 1892 (the same year Alabama competed in its first intercollegiate game), with two national championships and 18 conference titles through the years.
DeBoer said at least at Washington, decisions on alternate helmets and uniforms were often made outside of the head coach's office.
"Actually, with those programs or at least Washington, there was an agreement that we had to wear (purple) helmets for one game," DeBoer said. "But for here, just the tradition and everything that surrounds the crimson helmets, (it) hasn't even been something I've even thought for a second about.
"... A lot of those things don't happen overnight either. I'm not trying lead on like I'm even thinking about it, but sometimes it takes a year just to get a jersey or the gear that you wear on the sidelines, the gear you order for your players. And that's the same thing with all this other stuff when it comes to game day attire as well."
But why did Alabama wear white helmets at seemingly random intervals in the first place? And why did it stop? We did some investigating.
In addition to five games in 1983 and three games in 1984, Alabama wore white helmets with regularity during the early days of the Paul "Bear" Bryant era. The Crimson Tide wore white helmets against Arkansas in the 1962 Sugar Bowl, when it closed out an 11-0, national-championship season — the first of six titles it would win under Bryant.
At times in those days, Alabama would actually outfit players at different positions in different helmet colors — linemen in crimson, backs and other eligible receivers in white. That practice has since been outlawed by the NCAA.
"Other teams used to wonder about us," longtime Alabama sports information director Charley Thornton told The Anniston Star in 1983. "They wanted to know whether we had enough money to buy everybody red helmets. But, of course, only Bryant would have thought about giving his receivers white helmets to make it easier to see for the quarterbacks." (Put a pin in that thought for later.)
And then there was the iconic 17-10 win over USC in the 1971 season-opener in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Alabama wore white helmets for that game, too, when it unveiled the wishbone offense and fielded a racially integrated team for the first time.
'A little bit of a different look'
Alabama wore white helmets at least twice more in that 1971 season, in a 42-0 win at Vanderbilt and in a 34-20 victory over Houston in Tuscaloosa. But that was it until Perkins took over following Bryant's retirement at the end of the 1982 season.
The Crimson Tide wore white helmets five times in Perkins' debut season, for games road games vs. Vanderbilt, LSU and Boston College and at home vs. Mississippi State (in Tuscaloosa) and Southern Miss (in Birmingham). Four of those games were Alabama wins, the exception a 20-13 defeat vs. Doug Flutie and Boston College in Foxborough, Mass.
"It's a return to tradition," Perkins said prior to his first season at Alabama. "That's what we wore when we won two national championships here in the 1960s.
"... It will give us a little bit of a different look — maybe sharper."
Of course, an occasional helmet color switch wasn't the only change Perkins made, and it was far from the most-controversial. He made big moves such as switching from the wishbone offense to a pro-style set, tearing down Bryant's iconic practice observation tower and firing long-time radio announcer John Forney, as well as subtler changes such as taking the names off the backs of Crimson Tide players' jerseys and making them full-length rather than the "half-tee," midriff-exposing style common in college football at the time.
The white helmets and red jerseys at home made for a particularly odd visual for Alabama observers used to matching jerseys and helmets. Birmingham Post-Herald sports writer Roger Shuler noted after the 1983 Mississippi State game that it was a "look very much like Nebraska."
Perkins brought the white helmets back for three games in 1984 — all on the road with white jerseys, vs. Georgia Tech, Mississippi State and Cincinnati. Alabama lost to the Yellow Jackets, but beat the Bulldogs and Bearcats. (The Crimson Tide wore crimson helmets in its 28-27 loss at Tennessee in 1984 because the Volunteers wore their traditional white headgears.)
Alabama went 5-6 overall that season, however, its first losing record in 27 years. It might be correlation without causation, but Alabama hasn't worn what then Dothan Eagle Sports Editor Phil Paramore described in 1984 as "those awful-looking" white headgears since.
When he first introduced the white helmets in 1983, Perkins noted that doing so was a common occurrence for Alabama in the early and mid-1960s, which happened to be when he played for the Crimson Tide. In those days, Alabama wore the white helmets almost exclusively when it was facing a team with similarly colored headgears — such as Mississippi State, Arkansas and Houston.
As Thornton noted in 1983, there has long been a belief that teams wearing white helmets makes life easier on quarterbacks, who might be less likely to throw an interception to an opponent with a different colored headgear on. The NFL's Buffalo Bills supposedly switched to red helmets in the mid-1980s, when they were in the same AFC East Division as white-helmeted teams such as the Miami Dolphins, Indianapolis Colts and New England Patriots (the New York Jets had switched from white to green helmets some years before).
We've also seen similar switches in the SEC in recent years, as when Mississippi State and Texas A&M — whose dominant uniform color is an almost identical shade of maroon — face off. On several occasions, one of two (typically the road team) will wear white helmets.
An advantage for quarterbacks?
So is there something to the idea that a contrast in helmet colors helps quarterbacks? Major Applewhite, an All-Big 12 quarterback at Texas who is now head coach at South Alabama, doesn't necessarily buy it.
"I never really thought much about it, to be honest with you," Applewhite said. "I didn't feel like that was a big deal, against Oklahoma State or Nebraska anyone else (who also wore white helmets) we played."
As Saban did, Applewhite noted that consistency in uniform colors and style in an important part of brand identity in college football. He said that when his team appears on national television, he wants viewers to immediately be able to identify who is playing when they turn on the broadcast.
And, Applewhite said, while switching jersey or pants colors for a particular game — as the Jaguars and many other teams often do — isn't that big of a logistical headache, changing helmets could be. Not only is there an expense and manpower consideration for fitting players in different helmets, changing decals and so forth, there's also a storage issue.
"If you start wearing all these different colors of helmets, then you have to have backup helmets," Applewhite said. "And that's where the expense comes in. And people also talk about wanting different color cleats. I just can't inventory that many pairs of cleats — four different colors of cleats, three different colors of helmets. I just don't have the space. You'd need to have a warehouse."
Perkins stayed two more seasons at Alabama after 1984, but the Crimson Tide never wore the white helmets again. This was widely noted in the media after the 1985 season-opener at Georgia, whose traditional red helmets would seemingly apply as similar enough to Alabama's crimson headgears to warrant a switch.
Perkins did find another use for the white helmets, however. When Alabama was preparing for its 1985 game vs. Penn State, he outfitted the Crimson Tide's scout team in white headgears with a black stripe down the middle during practice in order to mimic the Nittany Lions' traditional look.
"We had the white helmets here," Perkins told The Birmingham News, "so I thought I'd put them to good use."
Applewhite grew up not far from the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, La., but famously rooted for Alabama as a youth, named as he was after Major Ogilvie, a star Crimson Tide running back from 1977-80. After his standout career at Texas in the late 1990s, Applewhite was offensive coordinator at both Alabama under Saban and at his alma mater under Mack Brown before spending two years as an analyst with the Crimson Tide and then joining the South Alabama staff in 2021.
Suffice it to say, Applewhite understands uniform tradition and iconic college football brands as well as anyone. He said the best comment he ever heard on the subject came from a legendary Longhorns coach.
"I grew up an Alabama fan, and I went to Texas," Applewhite said. "There's an old Darrell Royal quote, 'these aren't costumes, these are work clothes.'"
