| Helmets, Helmets, Helmets A Field Guide to Football Helmets helmets@misterhabs.com |
Welcome to Helmets, Helmets, Helmets an internet "field guide" to professional football helmets. My name is Ben Haberek, and I first opened this site May 11, 2003. My e-mail address is at the top of this page. Write me with your comments, corrections, questions, and concerns.
Helmets, Helmets, Helmets is an on-going project by me, an artist and a football fan, to create and maintain an on-line "database" of images representing the football helmets worn by teams from professional football leagues. Initially, I started drawing helmets for use in computer football Sims and online fantasy football leagues I participated in. Here you will eventually find helmets for every professional football league, major or minor, indoor, outdoor, men's or women's. I'm also including prototypes, alternates, and eventually, fan concepts and some of my own fantasy football designs. Maybe one day I'll even add college helmets.
While I've done most of the work here myself, this site wouldn't be possible without the help of many others. If you have any information that would help make this site better, please send it in! Please scroll down and read this page to see how you can help.
This site is best viewed in a 1024 x 768 resolution. If you do not see a frame at the left of this page, click on this link to go to the correct URL.
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Click here to go to the Links Page.
Please post additions, corrections and suggestions in the Forum here!
Over people have visited this site since January 19th, 2004.
Thanks to Charles Arey for inspiring all this. Thanks to Dave Jingo for generously providing so many of the logos seen here. I just draw helmets -- he actually makes them. Check out his site on the Links Page. Thanks to Klaus P. Gebhard Jr., John Meyer, Kevin Mericle, Donovan (Pantone) Moore, Bill Jones and many others for providing so much information since the site opened. Thanks also to Ryan at the Sports Logo Encyclopedia, for providing many of the logos and the original helmet templates I've used. Thanks to Rich Coe and everyone at the Virtual Helmet Museum, for tons of information and inspiration.
This site was created to be a counterpart of sorts for The Helmet Project, an amazing site created by Charles Arey cataloging the history of College and Pro football helmets. Mr. Arey's work is extensive and impressive, but incomplete. He has never included many of the so-called "minor" professional leagues to his site. That's where I come in. Once I found the Helmet Project, I was hooked. I decided that I could share my work just as Mr. Arey has, and here is the result.
Most of the images at this site are the creation of myself by using Paint Shop Pro 9 to "erase" logos off existing helmet pictures that I've found, creating templates for drawing new helmets by adding new logos and/or changing the color and stripe schemes. The logos have come from a variety of sources, many of which are provided in the links page. I've edited these logos as needed using a similar process.
All of the helmet images at this site are based on a template similar to the one shown here at the right, with changes to color, logo and/or stripe sequence. This picture is about 55 % the size of the original. The 3-dimensional effect allows you to see most of the helmet, except the back. I use the right side simply because that was what the original helmets looked like. Sometimes helmets will only have a logo on the right side, which is an added bonus. Unfortunately this template does have it's limits. Some helmets do have unique logos and designs on the back of the helmet, like the Detroit Fury's chaos secondary logo, or an asymmetrical stripe sequence, like the 1976 Dallas Cowboys, neither of which can be viewed. I've tried to indicate in the text descriptions when there is more to the helmet than what you can see from the image.
The helmet images are grouped together by each team's current league affiliation. Links to each league can be found in the frame on the left. I've grouped them into three categories -- Outdoor, Indoor and Women's leagues -- and placed the active leagues at the top of each category. Just click on a league name to open its page. At the top of each league page you'll find the most current helmet designs for each team. "Current" is a relative term however, especially in some of the more minor leagues, where designs seem to change from game to game at times. If you notice that a particular team has switched to another design, please let me know, with as much information as you can give me about the new design.
Below the current helmets section on each page I've tried to include a few comments about the league and the helmets in the current section. Also, for many of the leagues, I've included a section containing older, historical helmets for both active and defunct team, as well as prototypes and possible alternates. Especially true with "minor" leagues, helmets will be introduced, used extensively in promotion on team web sites and press releases, and yet never see the field. I've generally included these alternates, either because I have no other information to go on, or because I simply like the way they look.
I'm pretty good about tracking things down, but I still miss things. You will occasionally see two other symbols filling in the "slot" for one of the missing helmets. This one with the blue "coming soon!" denotes a helmet for which I have enough information to complete, but for whatever reason haven't finished yet. I have a full time job teaching high school and a new daughter, so finding quality time to draw is becoming more and more difficult. 
The other symbol, the one with the red question mark, stands in for a helmet for which I don't have enough info to create the image. These are the ones for which I need help from you (yes, you) so I can add these teams. When you see the question mark, I either don't know what the helmet looks like, or else I know what it looks like but don't have a copy of the helmet logo in order to draw the helmet.
I need your help in filling in the "missing" helmets for any team listed at this site. There are a few things that are especially helpful in order to add a helmet image for the missing teams: Clear, digital images or photographs are extremely helpful so that I can depict helmet logo and color. I can draw the helmet from just a description, but I'd rather have a photograph to refer to. Accuracy is certainly a goal, but right now I'm more concerned with getting as much information as possible. Of course, if the helmet has no logo, a description of the helmet is fine (i.e., "black shell, red mask, no stripes"). Any information is helpful, even other "drawings" done by other people.Even better than photos? A copy of the logo! Not the same thing as a photograph that shows the logo on the helmet - I mean the logo as it would appear before being applied the helmet, as would be used in a media guide or a team web site. Hopefully the copy will be the same color scheme as the logo which appears on the helmet. I can "capture" logos from photographs, but using digital copies of the logos is much easier. Approximations you've drawn yourself are certainly helpful, but I'd rather have the actual logo. Many of these helmets here were actually made from "digitalized" gumball helmet decals. I'm not very particular as long as the source is accurate.Just as useful to me would be a scan of the actual helmet decal. A photograph of the logo taken with a digital camera is also helpful, especially if it is taken before application to the helmet. A logo decal on a flat surface will work just fine.
If you have photos or images to contribute, please submit them in digital format (.gif, .jpg, .bmp, .tiff, etc.). I do not have access to a scanner (yet), so actual decals or copies of logos on paper are only good for reference, although I do appreciate anything you can provide. Just e-mail your photos or logo copies to the address given at the top of this page. If the material is available somewhere on the internet, send me the address of that material and I'll take care of the rest.
As a contributor, you may feel free to copy the helmet pictures on these pages and use them on your own web sites, just ask me for what you need. If you absolutely must have versions of the helmet images that are of different sizes or higher resolutions than you see at this site, e-mail me and we'll discuss it. All I would ask in return is that you help by posting a link to Helmets, Helmets, Helmets from your web site. so that additional people will find the site and contribute towards its development, and please contribute further information yourself whenever you can. Commercial use of the images is NOT permitted, because the various professional teams own all such rights to their respective logos; so do not attempt to print these images onto some product that you intend to sell. Please be advised that I work very hard on this site and I pay for the bandwidth myself. I consider any use of my images without my permission to be theft. I've disabled remote linking, and as much as I'd love to debate intellectual property rights, just because something's on the internet, it's not free. If you take someone's hard work and effort and pass it off as your own, it's plagiarism and you're nothing but a thief. Okay, enough ranting. I'm willing to entertain offers to draw helmets "by-request". Please understand, however, that I am not a professional graphic designer, and have very little, if any, experience designing logos. Still, I can certainly manipulate what's already available. Also, as I stated earlier, when I'm not drawing, I teach high school and have a newborn daughter at home, which takes up a great deal of my time. Please e-mail your requests and we'll talk.
Defunct Sports Leagues and Teams
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