I was in mid-matriculation when Carolina Football went from white helmets to various PMS-shades of blue helmets.  I bet you don’t know the “why” they did.  I bet not even Freddie Kiger knows this one!

 
Bill Dooley replaced Jim Hickey as UNC’s Head Football Coach following the 1966 season.   Dooley brought with him a different “attitude” towards college football and it’s overall seriousness in the grand scheme of things.  Duh! 
 
For Dooley and his SEC-bred staff it was akin to “war” best waged by socially-dysfunctional individuals of ill-temper.  A Bill Dooley quote (with a 58% chance of being apocryphal) went that:
 
 “Good guys wear white hats.  Our football team is not going to be ‘good guys’ any longer.”  …… Bye bye white helmets – Hello blue helmets.  Until this past Saturday.
 
Aside:  I have a theory that all “Coach (fill-in-blank) said” were actually said by Peahead Walker.  Walker was a notoriously goofy coach at Wake Forest (in Wake Forest) and other places in the 1940s-50s who supposedly said a number of malapropisms and other non-sequiturs regarding football and Life.   There is a companion theory that Peahead Walker himself never existed but is simply a catch-all source of any goofy saying by a football coach.   You decide.
 
Carolina football helmets have been various shades of “Carolina Blue” since 1968.  Dean Smith had five different PMS-shades of Carolina Blue he used for various purposes.  You really want to argue with Dean Smith?  I didn’t think so.
 
The interlocking NC has been the helmet decal all that time EXCEPT for several years under Dick Crum when he used a staggered UNC decal.  Most of the Crum-era has been power-washed from the collective memory of Tar Heels.  The staggered UNC was among the first such innovations to be dropped.   In Dick’s defense, I always liked his jersey numbering design.  Apparently I’m the only one who did.
 
Sports uniforms in general are not one of my hot-button issues.  I do think some of the ones over the past few years have been hideous.  I tend to be a traditionalist but you probably guessed that already….. Yankee pinstripes….. Cardinals’ bird-on-the-bat…..  a double gambler at The Rat….. etc, etc.   Rolls at the Porthole !!
 
I knew Saturday’s game was going to unveil the old/new white helmets but I hadn’t given it much thought until the team ran out on the field for VaTech.  The all-white head-to-toe look was BOFFO.   I did not get a tingle down my leg; but I really did like the look A LOT.
 
My immediate concern was “if we lose today will Coach Fedora forever outlaw the white helmets?”  Should we have unveiled them against Idaho-ho-ho to give them a chance as a good-luck charm?   The Fighting Fedorians solved the dilemma right where it should be solved – amid the lofty pines of Kenan’s greensward.
 
While many were marveling at Gio Bernard’s outstanding day, I was not at all surprised.  That all-white look from head-to-toe increased Gio’s speed by .262%.  Look faster – Be Faster.  Go Gio Go!
 
My advice to Coach Fedora and to Bubba is “blue helmets with blue jerseys” and “white helmets with white jerseys”.
 
Just so you don’t think I’m the only one; the several hundred former Carolina FB lettermen in the Choo Choo Lounge at halftime Saturday unanimously applauded the “new look”.  That included an old friend from Rocky Mount who knows a thing or two about wearing a Carolina white helmet.  A fellow by the name of Talbot.  Danny LOVED’em too!  As did the youngsters like Don McCauley who never knew “the whole story”…… until now.  
 
AND…… so did the Official Mascots of The Choo Choo Lounge – The Fabulous Comparato Twins – Nicole & Paige.  They thought they were “really cute”.   They know a lot about “cute”.
 
More BobLee?  Boblee@bobleesays.com