1960 AFL Photos Thread

[Gothamite]

Man, I am so looking forward to the Broncos' throwback games. That's a gorgeous color combination.

The Broncos played five pre-season games in 1960 and based on the crowd, sidelines, etc I think these are from one of those pre-season games against the Raiders.

I've posted this before, but one of those Raider uniforms went up for auction recently:

[MarkAtnip]

Regarding the color photos, I had always thought those were the only color photos that existed of the 1960 season for the Broncos without bothering to check the uni/font issue. Are there ANY color photos of 1960 Broncos game action???

Just a couple of quick additions today. The Championship Fob, awarded to the league winning Oilers:

and a program from the first Buffalo Bills game.

[Spearhead]

Oilers v Chargers in the first AFL title game 1-1-61:

Oiler huddle, 1960 Jeppesen Stadium:

[Old School Fool]

Those first Raiders uniforms are awesome. Hopefully one day we'll get that 1963 Gold Numbers debacle cleared up, even though I'm pretty sure it's silver, I think we need to double check because I've seen pictures of black numbers, and silver sleeve numbers.

[John in KY]

Those first Raiders uniforms are awesome. Hopefully one day we'll get that 1963 Gold Numbers debacle cleared up, even though I'm pretty sure it's silver, I think we need to double check because I've seen pictures of black numbers, and silver sleeve numbers.

I was in diapers when the Raiders made that change, but I think a lot of problems are from hand-tinted cards and from bad reproductions of photos. I suspect that the "gold numbers" were on hand-tinted cards done by someone who had never seen a color photo of the new silver and black colors and assumed the team was still using black and yellow as their color scheme.

I've seen that photo you are referring to - I think that is just either glare from the silver number making the front or rear numbers look black, while the sleeve numbers showed up correctly. The other explanation could be that the league felt the silver numbers were unreadable and made them take off the silver part (the numbers had a very wide black border) by the time that photo was taken.

[In 5..4..3..2..1]

Mark, I have read that all these uniforms are actually tributes to the 1963 versions of the various throwbacks so that would explain Pat Patriot being on the helmet instead of the original Pat Hat.

[ColeJ]

Mark, I have read that all these uniforms are actually tributes to the 1963 versions of the various throwbacks so that would explain Pat Patriot being on the helmet instead of the original Pat Hat.

the oilers ones are definately 1960, and not 63... but i can't vouch for any of the other teams.

[In 5..4..3..2..1]

Well,I guess the Pats and I think I heard the Chargers are 1963 versions. i'll back and check the article I read.

[In 5..4..3..2..1]

Pats,Bills,Chargers and Raiders are wearing 1963 version is what the article I read says.

[darkhaha]

Those first Raiders uniforms are awesome. Hopefully one day we'll get that 1963 Gold Numbers debacle cleared up, even though I'm pretty sure it's silver, I think we need to double check because I've seen pictures of black numbers, and silver sleeve numbers.

I was in diapers when the Raiders made that change, but I think a lot of problems are from hand-tinted cards and from bad reproductions of photos. I suspect that the "gold numbers" were on hand-tinted cards done by someone who had never seen a color photo of the new silver and black colors and assumed the team was still using black and yellow as their color scheme.

I've seen that photo you are referring to - I think that is just either glare from the silver number making the front or rear numbers look black, while the sleeve numbers showed up correctly. The other explanation could be that the league felt the silver numbers were unreadable and made them take off the silver part (the numbers had a very wide black border) by the time that photo was taken.

There is a pretty definitive discussion of this topic on this AFL thread.

[darkhaha]

Pats,Bills,Chargers and Raiders are wearing 1963 version is what the article I read says.

From the photos I've seen, I think that's correct. All the rest appear to be 1960 sets.

[BlueSky]

Pats,Bills,Chargers and Raiders are wearing 1963 version is what the article I read says.

You're right, the Chargers' unis are being promoted as the 1963 version. Too bad the Chargers weren't wearing powder blue in 1963. Who says? Their own website! They were still wearing Pacific Blue, which IMO blows the powder blue away.

The difference is greater than it appears here. I really, really don't get this. Even more, I don't get that uni nuts like Paul Lukas don't seem to be interested in such an obvious discrepancy. Strange.

As for old pics, the Raaaay-duhs have posted 139 archive photos here and some are really great. Some are pretty vanilla or recent (the set spans their entire history) but here are some remarkable ones I noted as I went through. You can choose the picture number on the bar across the top to go directly to a pic.

# 12 - you just don't see helmets beat to crap like this any more

17 - nice shot of the Oilers 'silver blue' road set

24 - look closely at the logo on the helmets. Branch's looks wider. They're obviously different, most visibly in the wordmark.

56 - Dan Pastorini playing QB for Oakland

97 - nice shot of the Seahawks' original road set

[Gothamite]

How confident are we in descriptions like "Pacific Blue" v. "Collegiate Blue," "Columbia Blue" or even "Powder Blue", anyway? They're just names.

The SSUR has the Chargers in one shade of blue throughout their AFL days. It appears to be a little lighter than the blue of their throwbacks, but not the slate shade of your graphic.

[darkhaha]

How confident are we in descriptions like "Pacific Blue" v. "Collegiate Blue," "Columbia Blue" or even "Powder Blue", anyway? They're just names.

The SSUR has the Chargers in one shade of blue throughout their AFL days. It appears to be a little lighter than the blue of their throwbacks, but not the slate shade of your graphic.

I agree that descriptors such as "Pacific Blue" and "Collegiate Blue" don't tell us much. However, and with all due to respect ColorWerx and the SSUR site, I think the Chargers blue did go through some changes during the sixties. I refer once again to this page of the AFL Legacy Games thread... If you scroll down a bit you'll see some great pics of the Chargers in several different years.... The mid-sixties set is definitely a bit darker than what came later...

[BlueSky]

How confident are we in descriptions like "Pacific Blue" v. "Collegiate Blue," "Columbia Blue" or even "Powder Blue", anyway? They're just names.

The SSUR has the Chargers in one shade of blue throughout their AFL days. It appears to be a little lighter than the blue of their throwbacks, but not the slate shade of your graphic.

My graphic? That's from the Chargers' own website!

In any case, one look at pics from that era shows without question that their original shade (and what they wore in '63) was much darker and nowhere near the electric powder blue they're trying to pass off as their '63 colors now.

And P.S...the '63 gold is darker too.

[BigDmo]

How confident are we in descriptions like "Pacific Blue" v. "Collegiate Blue," "Columbia Blue" or even "Powder Blue", anyway? They're just names.

The SSUR has the Chargers in one shade of blue throughout their AFL days. It appears to be a little lighter than the blue of their throwbacks, but not the slate shade of your graphic.

My graphic? That's from the Chargers' own website!

In any case, one look at pics from that era shows without question that their original shade (and what they wore in '63) was much darker and nowhere near the electric powder blue they're trying to pass off as their '63 colors now.

And P.S...the '63 gold is darker too.

You should probably take into a account the fact htat they dind't have digital cameras in the 60's that were capable of capturing the colors correctly. That photo from the 60's probably came out dark and through time may have faded.

[BlueSky]

How confident are we in descriptions like "Pacific Blue" v. "Collegiate Blue," "Columbia Blue" or even "Powder Blue", anyway? They're just names.

The SSUR has the Chargers in one shade of blue throughout their AFL days. It appears to be a little lighter than the blue of their throwbacks, but not the slate shade of your graphic.

My graphic? That's from the Chargers' own website!

In any case, one look at pics from that era shows without question that their original shade (and what they wore in '63) was much darker and nowhere near the electric powder blue they're trying to pass off as their '63 colors now.

And P.S...the '63 gold is darker too.

You should probably take into a account the fact htat they dind't have digital cameras in the 60's that were capable of capturing the colors correctly. That photo from the 60's probably came out dark and through time may have faded.

It doesn't take a digital camera to capture colors correctly. In fact, one of the struggles as camera company engineers developed (no pun intended) digital photography was to make sensors that worked as well as film does. A few years ago there was still a debate over which was better and some diehards refuse to switch to digital for that very reason. Also, it's absurd to assume that every color picture of the Chargers from the early sixties has degraded to some degree, and that they all degraded to the exact same shade of blue. Finally, those uniform history graphics were presumably prepared by and/or approved by the Chargers themselves. Given all the evidence, it's a safe assumption that Pacific Blue was simply a darker (and better looking for a football uni IMO) shade of blue. More evidence...note that the bottom cover is from December 1963.

[Gothamite]

There's a reason that calibration charts were invented. And it wasn't because color film produces reliable color values under all circumstances.

The same jersey will photograph differently under different light conditions. Some shades are more susceptible to this than others (purple is the worst), maybe the light blue is as well. That's why comparing photos from different conditions and periods are a notoriously inaccurate indicator of actual color - you can never make reasonable assumptions based on them.

Not to mention that today's poly fabrics have a higher sheen to them than durene does, so modern jerseys will always often brighter, especially in bright sunlight.

I trust Donovan as an authority more than I do old color pictures. Unless and until the SSUR changes its color profile for the Chargers, I'm just not buying it.

[BlueSky]

That's your call, but then of course you LIKE the brown/yellow Broncos combo.

Seriously, you dismiss the Chargers' own website? And you can look at those pics and say with a straight face that Pacific Blue is anywhere close to Electric Powder Blue?

Wow.

We need some kind of Batsignal that summons Colorwerx in situations like this.

[Gothamite]

He monitors all frequencies, constantly. His attention is obviously deverted elsewhere at the moment, but he'll get to us.

Given the shoddy treatment teams have towards their own uniform history, I don't see why their website should be held in any special esteem.

Besides, the Chargers created the Columbia blue throwback uniforms. You would trust the team's website, but not the team itself when they create the throwbacks? Myself, I trust neither.