1962 Broncos

Believe it or not, this thread has NOTHING to do with what color the Broncos' helmet decal was at the start of the season.

We know that the decal was dark at the start of the season at least through 9/30 @ New York.


The next game that we have a photo for, AND shows a white helmet logo was 11/4 @ San Diego.


The question is...When did the change occur?
There are 4 possibilities (beyond that the SD game on 11/4 was "the change").

10/5 Oakland @ Denver
10/14 Denver @ Oakland - Definitely shown to be the white horse by Beowulf! 10/21 and 10/28 must be white too.
10/21 Houston @ Denver - Uncertain but leaning towards white. Now definitely white due to 10/14 'whiteness.'
10/28 Buffalo @ Denver

Can we fill in any of the gaps, guys?

10/21/1962 Houston - Denver game:



This pic is a color pic from the December rematch in Houston:



From 9/7/62: Denver vs San Diego

On that first one, can you tell white horse/dark horse?
The second one is from Week 13.
The last photo vs San Diego is from Week 1.

It's hard to tell, but I think it is white...

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not 100% sure but I belive these are from 1962 10-14 broncos @ raiders

Awesome!
They'd have to be since 1962 was the last year of Oakland wearing these uniforms and '62 was the first year of Denver wearing their new ones. Also, there was no 'white at home' in the AFL during regular or post-season.
Great find!

so only game in question is Oct 5 Oakland at Denver... before that was dark helmet and after was light helmet...

of course our own timmyb already narrowed it down to this in the Uni Watch comments almost three months ago:

timmy b | May 3, 2011 at 3:54 pm |

Perhaps it would help to narrow down WHEN the dark horse turned white.

These were the first seven games of the 1962 season for the Broncos:
9/7: Chargers (home, night)
9/15: at Buffalo (night)
9/21: at Boston (night)
9/30: at New York (day)
10/5: Raiders (home, night)
10/14: at Oakland (day)
10/21: Oilers (day)

It looks like they wore dark horse at New York on 9/30 and they wore white horse at Oakland 10/14. So, we need to find a clear pic from the 10/5 Friday night home game with the Raiders. That game is when they either wore the dark horse for the last time, OR it’s the first game when they wore the white horse.

If I had to make a guess as to why they went to a white horse, it might be because under the floodlights of a night game, the dark horse didn’t show as well as a white horse. Supposedly that was the reason why the Lions added a white outline on the Lion on the helmet midway thru the 1970 season (even though the Lion was on their helmet as far back as 1961).

I guess no one's ever found a pic of that 10/5/62 game. If anyone reading this has paid access to NewspaperArchive.com, they have the Oakland newspaper from that time period, might be worth a look.

You would think with the new uniforms and all that year, all of a sudden changing the color of the helmet logo would be worth a mention in the writeup of that 1st particular game. Maybe even worth a mention like "The Broncos walked on to the field sporting new white helmet logos to replace the (insert color here) ones they wore for the first 4/5 weeks of the season." I believe the story attached to the 10/5 Raiders game may be as valuable as the photo itself.

Could be wrong on this, but IIRC, someone on uni watch was really digging thru microfilm at the Denver library and said the last game with the dark horse was against Oakland at home and the first game with the white horse was at Oakland.

So the first 5 games had the dark horse and the last 9 games had the white horse.

yes, I remember Glenn was going to check out the Denver microfilm, but I didn't see what ever came from that... I may have missed the day he reported back on that.

Rob Holecko wrote:This pic is a color pic from the December rematch in Houston:

I think this photo is from '64

well this source said it was the 12-2-1962 game, but really it could be either, I guess:

http://www.remembertheafl.com/Broncos.htm

I think it's from '64 because of the striped socks of the Oilers

I have a photo of Blanda supposedly from the '62 game and he (and another player) was wearing solid blue socks (and it was raining hard)

Rob Holecko wrote:well this source said it was the 12-2-1962 game, but really it could be either, I guess:

http://www.remembertheafl.com/Broncos.htm

The gent who runs that website, Ange Coniglio, was one of the talking heads on the Full Color Football series, but that isn't an endorsement of his research skills--he may be the world's most STRIDENT supporter of the AFL.

well, and that particular picture, he sources as being mentioned in the book Touchdown! by George Sullivan, and I don't know how reliable it is, either.

This pic is a color pic from the December rematch in Houston:


I beleve it's 1964 too. According to http://www.pro-football-reference.com/ Denvers' roster had no player using #24 in '62. Willie Brown wore #24 from '63 through the '66 seasons.

The pic is from 1964. You can see the red stripe on Hannigan's helmet. The '62 Oilers had a single white stripe.

timmyb wrote:The pic is from 1964. You can see the red stripe on Hannigan's helmet. The '62 Oilers had a single white stripe.

Also, the Oilers didn't go with the three stripes on the jersey until '64...