[Editor’s Note: This is Part II of Kary Klismet’s “Dressed For The Season” series, focusing on Thanksgiving related and adjacent uniforms. If you missed Part I, click here. Enjoy & Happy Thanksgiving! — PH]
by Kary Klismet
8. Denver Broncos, 1960-61
With our autumnal color spectrum firmly established, let’s explore some of the other ways that teams have intermixed them. Brown and yellow? Check! Denver’s franchise in the upstart American Football League was one of the first in professional football to experiment with that chromatic combination. And with those infamous vertically striped socks, it’s no surprise that it’s a path that few have followed!
Nevertheless, with hosiery harkening to the harvest season serving as the foundation for a well-balanced blend of brown and yellow throughout the rest of the uniform, the Broncos galloped through their first two seasons looking like wild horses dashing through a Rocky Mountain aspen forest in the fall! They famously burned the socks after switching uniforms to their more familiar orange and blue color scheme in 1962. But a new generation of fans got to see the old duds (pun intended!) when the Broncos wore them as throwbacks for a couple games in 2009. I, for one, would love to see them once a year around Thanksgiving (if only the NFL’s helmet rules would allow it).
A pro football team that wears brown and orange? I know who you’re thinking of (and we’ll get to them soon enough), but did you know there was another pro football team that wore brown and orange? This one flipped the script by wearing orange jerseys with brown trim. And by using an earthy shade of burnt orange that fits flawlessly within our range of fall colors, they distinguished themselves just enough from other orange and brown-clad teams to earn a spot on this list.
In case you’ve never heard of them, we’re talking about the Memphis Southmen of the old World Football League. Also known as the Grizzlies (it’s a long story, but you can read about it here), they rocked this rustic-tinged regalia for the entirety of their short-lived existence from 1974-75. It’s a look that not only recalled the fall foliage, but also the colors you might see on a Memphis Thanksgiving table when they bring out the barbecued turkey. (That’s not the bear on the Southmen’s helmet you hear growling. That’s my stomach!)
So now we get to that other brown and orange pro football team I was mentioning! Does anything conjure the iconic feeling of football on a fall day more than images of the late, great Jim Brown tearing through the opponent’s defense in old Municipal Stadium, or Brian Sipe leading the Kardiac Kids on another come-from-behind victory?
Cleveland has had a wide variety of uniforms throughout its history that I could have chosen for this slot (okay, just kidding on that last photo!), but the combination that strikes me as the most fall-like is the home set they wore from 2020 to 2023, with orange pants and the brown facemask. I may like the white facemask better (it’s what I grew up watching them wear), but dang if that helmet with the brown facemask wouldn’t work spectacularly as a centerpiece on a Thanksgiving table somewhere along the shores of Lake Erie!
How does a team take its brown and yellow color scheme and make it feel even more fall-like? By using multiple shades of brown and yellow! That’s what the Wyoming Cowboys did with the side panels of their uniforms for much of the 1980s.
Some might consider it a ripoff of the Milwaukee Bucks’ famous “Irish Rainbow” uniforms, but I prefer to think of it as more of an homage. Maybe we can call it a “Thanksgiving Rainbow!”
From the lofty 7,220-foot elevation of Laramie, Wyoming, we travel next to an unlikely destination for autumn adornments: the lush Pacific shores of the Aloha State! No, it’s not a road trip in the Mountain West Conference. Rather, we’re traveling back in time, too – back to 1974-75, when Honolulu was home to a WFL team whose location name and team name were rolled into one.
You might not expect a team from a tropical paradise to outdo the likes of the legendarily brown-clad Cleveland Browns and Wyoming Cowboys on a Thanksgiving-themed list like this, but just look at that color scheme – the dark brown, the rich yellow, and the red! It’s like a whole forest’s worth of autumn leaves fell out of the trees and stuck to the Hawaiians’ uniforms!
Yes, the differently-shaded stripes on the Utah Jazz’s fan-favorite alternates from a few years ago were meant to invoke images of the sedimentary layers of the state’s red rock landscapes. But what if we thought of them as different shades of fall leaves, instead?
You could probably find a leaf to match each and every one of those uniform stripes while on a November hike in the Wasatch Mountains just east of Salt Lake City. And that scenery is just about as breathtaking as anything else the Beehive State has to offer, with the finest-looking uniforms the Jazz have ever worn just a slight step behind.
A fall classic, best known for an appearance in the Fall Classic, these uniforms deserve their high ranking on this list with a triple Thanksgiving treat of brown, orange and yellow. The Padres, with their deep history of wearing brown uniforms, were pretty much assured of a spot on this list from the beginning. The real question was whether to choose a uniform from one of their brown-and-yellow eras or from their stint as a brown-and-orange team from 1985 to 1990.
The answer? Neither! Why select from one two-color set or the other when you can have all three fall colors on the same uniform (as the Pads did for the first half of the ‘80s)?
The Friars might have achieved their apparel apotheosis from 1980 to ‘83, when their unis included a pullover jersey and a triple-autumnal-striped sansabelt, which were sinfully sacked the following year in favor of belted pants and a button-up jersey. But the notoriety that winning the National League pennant in ‘84 brought to the tweaked versions of this uniform set was enough to give them co-equal status with the slightly superior earlier editions. In either iteration of the outfit, however, the Padres have never looked more ready for Thanksgiving than they did during their early ‘80s heyday.
It takes a special uniform to top this cornucopia of contenders, and, to their credit the Virginia Tech’s baseball team has delivered with a 100 mph fastball right down the middle of the plate. Not only did they beat out the rest of the teams on this list, but they also had to fend off plenty of challenges from within their own athletic department – particularly the football team – to claim the title.
Besting all comers, the Hokies ballplayers have claimed the crown with this ensemble that took the St. Louis Cardinals’ familiar bird-on-bat trope and gave it a wonderfully Thanksgiving-appropriate twist. I mean, has a bat ever looked more like a Thanksgiving accessory than it does as part of this uniform? (Well, there was that one time a guy grew a gourd that looked like a baseball bat, but I still think these jerseys have that beat.) Combining a maroon and burnt orange color scheme ideal for fall with imagery of the one species of fowl that’s always the star of the holiday – the HokieBird – err, turkey – the Hokies have easily gobbled up the competition.
And with that, we’ve closed out another vestiary volume in the Dressed for the Season series. I hope you found my picks palatable. But if not, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Whip up your best argument for who should have been included and serve it in the comments below! And here’s wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving!
The Broncos brown and yellow is so ugly it crosses over into beautiful
I tend to agree, Alex! As a Broncos fan, I have a soft spot in my heart for those brown and yellow uniforms. I’m not saying I want them to go back to them on a regular basis, but I thoroughly enjoyed it when they wore them as throwbacks back in 2009.
I would have put thr Browns first and the brown facemask was perfect. The wite is okay, at least it’s not gray.
The gray facemasks for the Browns are the worst! Gray facemasks work for some teams, but it’s a complete departure from the rest of the Browns’ color scheme. I have a slight preference for the white facemasks because of the contrast it provides, but the brown ones really do work well with the uniform theme. (Obviously, since I rated them so highly!) :^)
Never realized it but the Hawaiians uniforms look a lot like what a Padres football jersey would look like.
On a similar note, I’m sure I’m in the extreme minority but I have always been extremely partial to the 85-90 Padres brown and orange look.
I can see that about the Hawaiians uniforms, Jason! Ah, the ’70s, when teams weren’t afraid to wear brown! I’m with you on the ’85-’90 Padres uniforms, too. The St. Louis Browns (link) had proven it a generation earlier, but the Padres reminded us that brown and orange rally can work as a color combination in baseball.
Those uniforms were nice, but the teams didn’t play too well.
I wish that the Cal State Long Beach 49ers would have kept their brown color, instead of replacing it with black. The Brown & Gold (yellow) was a really great look.
Totally agreed, Rick! I also wish they’d kept “49’ers” as their team name (link), but I guess that’s an argument for a different day.
Re. the Wyoming Cowboys’ unis -after the Bucks adopted that design Sand Knit began using it as one of their standard templates. I’ve seen a few other college teams of the era wearing that design, along with a CBA team I’ve been unable to identify and Tracer Milano of the Italian league.
Ripon Athletic (the spiritual successor to Sand Knit) still produce it – it’s appropriately known as “Bucks Concept” these days.
Great historical context on that uniform template, Matt! Thanks for sharing it. I do recall seeing a few other teams from that era with similar uniforms. It worked better for some than others, but I’ve always loved how those Wyoming uniforms looked.
Brown and Yellow (Gold) is a difficult color combination to do for sport uniforms
My high school colors were brown and yellow (gold) and our football uniforms were ugly at best but since our team was pretty dominant, they were respected!!!!
Brown and gold go great together (usually). Same with brown and orange. But that’s really about all that work well. I know there are some amongst you that like baby blue and brown, but it’s not my cuppa. But aside from those, nothing else pairs well with brown. And it’s really difficult to pull off brown and orange and gold. The Padres kinda/sorta worked those three well, but for the most part, keep brown and orange away from gold, and vice versa. The original Broncos looked great in their brown and gold…not so much with the brown and white.
” but did you know there was another pro football team that wore brown and orange?”
Can’t forget that Grey Cup championship orange and brown of the BC Lions. Winning Grey Gup in fall colours Nov. 24, 1985.
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Thanks for the reminder, Wade! That iteration of BC’s uniforms are on my radar for future installments of Dressed for the Season. Don’t be surprised if they pop up sometime down the road!
The early ’80s Padres’ uniforms are close to perfection, especially when you consider the fall colors being optimal for October baseball. But I wonder how they would have looked with orange and yellow graphics on the home uniforms (no brown).
Good question, Walter! Now if only I knew of someone with the requisite artistic skills to draw up a mock-up of such a uniform…
I know there’s no brown involved, but the early Canucks flying skate uniforms really do conjure Thanksgiving for me! (With the V either on the front or the shoulders.) I wish the Canucks would throw back to the “shoulder V” era flying skate uniforms, rather than the duller ones that dropped the V and traded red for orange.
Thanks for the input! I used to think the Canucks’ uniforms were brown instead of black, and I was a little disappointed when I realized it was black rather than dark brown. I thought they were the Padres of the NHL, and I’ve never quite looked at them the same when I discovered my mistake. Still, those old Canucks unis hold a soft spot in my heart, and I’ve got them on my radar for future Dressed for the Season pieces.
As a Virginia Tech alum, I’m so happy to see the Hokies earn the #1 spot! I tend to wear Hokie gear for Thanksgiving just because it’s so thematically appropriate. For example, today, I wore a maroon button down shirt, an orange watch band, and (difficult to see) Hokie socks!
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Glad I could add a little something extra to your Thanksgiving Day, Andrew! B^)
Kinda late – hey yesterday was Thanksgiving!
Great listing, Kary.
I sometimes like to add a local (Philly region) team to your choices…here’s 3:
St. Hubert’s HS track-
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Delran soccer-
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And every once and a while , Rowan football gets it just right-
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