To Join the VHM helmet club, you can e-mail Rich for a free membership by clicking here: richcoe@ca.rr.com
Important Note: This college helmet site is not updated, however the VHM is updated frequently.
Updates - 10/18/03
I've been busy playing catch up. I'll be trying to update one page per day. I'm currently working on the Sun Belt Conference so if you have any photos to add send them along.
New Message Board - 12/13/02
The HCFHG has a new message board. Here you can talk about the College Football Helmets you see here and ones you don't. Be sure to join up and find out all the latest site updates, input and feed back. Just enter your email address below to sign up.
Subscribe to HCFHG Powered bygroups.yahoo.com Exciting News! - 12/11/02
Hopjohn's College Football Helmet Guide is excited to announce it has just joined forces with Rich Coe's Virtual Helmet Museum. Effective immediately Hopjohn's College Mini Helmet guide will make its new home at as a part of Rich's larger site pertaining to all things helmets. Be sure to update your bookmarks. A big thanks to Rich for welcoming this site to its new home. - Hopjohn
Welcome Visitors
Welcome to Hopjohn's College Football Helmet Guide. I hope you enjoy the site. Please be sure and read the information provided below to make best use of this site. Thanks. - Hopjohn
Terms of Use
Please do not use this site or the accompanying message board as an advertising or resource tool for your business. This site is strictly non-profit. I don't wish to make money from it and I certainly do not condone others to make money from the information provided within, whether directly or indirectly. This is not a money making tool. If for whatever reason you feel impelled to make profit by using the information provided here then you do so in blatant opposition to the webmasters wishes and intent.All logos and team names herein are the property of their respective teams. This information provided herein is strictly for free viewing enjoyment.
Do not make use of remote loading of photos or material located here. Doing so is a direct violation of this servers terms of users agreement and may cause this site to have temporary downtimes or even be permanently removed.
Beginnings
Initial development of this site began in November 1998 in conjunction with the primitive web pages of the now deceased Mini Helmet Club Website. I'd like to give special thanks to all the former MHC members, Rich Coe, Charles Arey, Jay Shelton, Randy Cremer, Marc Cheek and all the other college football fans who have contributed to the development of this site. THANK YOU !! your efforts are greatly appreciated.
A New Focus - August 18th, 2002
As you might have noticed this site has undergone a few changes. After years of collecting Mini Helmets it has worn tiresome and way too expensive. I've picked up a new hobby that is much more affordable and all the more enjoyable. As a result I've decided to change the focus of this web site to something that more people can relate to. From this point forward the site will be simply about cataloging photographically, and with the use of charts, the history of each college team's helmets. No longer will there be mention to mini helmets or mini helmet related liks. With these changes, it should be noted that the width column in the tables should be multiplied by 2 when the column is iisted as mini width in order to give an accurate measurement of stripe widths on an actual helmet. The Mini column will slowly be eliminated from the existing tables as it no longer has any significance. The remaining material such as collecting tips and ideas, places to buy mini helmets etc. will be eliminated in favor of material more suited to helmet history and college football in general.As always I will do my best maintain a high level of accuracy throughout the site. Though keep in mind conflicting helmet information occurs frequently and it's not always easy to determine what info is most accurate. My motto on this has has always been "Do the best that you can with what you have to work with."
The helmets I intend to use on the site are from the late 50's forward. I chose this as the cut-off point for several reasons. First and foremost this is about the time hard shell helmets became a standard mainstay for most teams. In years previous many teams were still using leather covered helmets of differeng styles from team member to team member, and often without any cohesiveness in terms of team design. There are of course exceptions, so in some cases I've added helmets prior to 1955, which were unusually distinct and consistent among team members. See Clemson for an example.
How you can help
Much of this site depends greatly on word of mouth and through photo depictions. Please help this site grow by submitting missing photos, improved photos, added information, and corrections to any table information you find to be inaccurate to hopjohn@yahoo.com You may also make use of the message board to submit information or to just post messages pertaining to the site.Understanding the Helmet Tables
Each college table looks similar to the one below. Each row in the table represents a different helmet worn by the corresponding college.Example:
| Years | Decal | Shell | Mask | Stripes L to R | Stripe Width |
| ?-70-? | white "GT" w/ navy? outline. lip of G makes for top of T | white | gray | black?/gold?/black? | 1"?-1"- 1" |
| ?-74-75-? | white "GT" w/ navy outline. lip of G makes for top of T | gold | gray | none | |
| ?-78-present | white "GT" w/ navy outline. lip of G makes for top of T | gold | navy | none |
The Years column uses a system of question marks to identify what years the helmet was known to be worn. If "?-" appears this means the helmet was thought to be worn prior to the known year or series of years, but no specific years are known. Respectively, "-?" means the helmet was thought to have been worn after the given year or series of years, but no specific years are known. Using the middle row above as an example, this helmet was known to be worn in 1974 through 1975, but was believed to have been worn both before and after these years as well.The Decal column is simply a brief description of the decal used on the corresponding helmet. I've attempted to label each part in a color(s) : part format. For example... black star, green, purple outline, yellow beak, etc. Here the star is black, the outline is green on the interior and purple on the exterior, and the beak is yellow.
(Common abbreviations ol = outline and w/ = with)The Shell column is simply the color of the helmet's shell.
The Mask column is simply the color of the helmet's face mask. If this is left blank it means a face mask wasn't used.
The Stripes column is the color of the stripes from left to right separated by a "/". There are many instances where the actual shell represents a stripe, this is because it is actually a gap between other colored stripes. A question mark indicates some uncertainty about the stripe color.
The Stripe Width column is the width to use on a game helmet. Measurements are listed in fractions of an inch from left to right in the same configuration as the stripes. If a gap is present the measurement represents the gap instead. These measurements are ones I've come up with personally from viewing photos, feel free to disagree. I've noticed stripe widths can vary from player to player at times. Remember equipment managers are human too. I've tried to use the measurements that appear most common.
Photos: Below most of the photos, a year is listed, this is what season year the photo is from or in some cases my best educated guess. I've got hundreds of photos to put up on this site, but due to web space constraints I'm only able to put up photos that do the best at representing each helmet variation